She points to the sign hanging above Nestor’s door, and just about everybody in the bar shouts back, “Don’t piss off Waylon!”
She laughs, like Waylon’s well-earned reputation for sudden violence is a funny story.
But then she starts strumming her guitar with a meditative look on her face, and the whole bar quiets to play her game.
I recognize the song immediately, even before she starts singing about a lamp that won’t light in her poetry room. But I don’t call it out. No, I don’t say a goddamn thing.
Her singing isn’t professional. Hell, she wouldn’t even be able to get through the door at Big Hill, my family’s record company. But her voice has something a lot of better singers can’t replicate. Personality, mood.
The song she’s chosen is melancholy and bittersweet. And that’s exactly how I feel as I listen to her sing—like the stone wall I’ve constructed around my heart is cracking in a few places with old memories from before I joined the Reapers.
No, I don’t call out the song’s title. I don’t disturb her mini-concert, even for a moment.
I’ve performed on stage with R&B legends. But for the few minutes of her amateur rendition of this particular song, all I want to do is listen.
There's a moment of rapt silence when she finishes. Then every biker in the bar burst into applause, including me.
“Thank you!” she calls out with a laugh. “Oh, my goodness, thank you so much! But did any of you know it?”
Nobody but me answers.
“Boat on the Sea,” I call out.
She smiles down from the stage, and an engine revs in my chest when she looks straight at me with those big brown eyes and says, “Yes, sir. You got it exactly right. Good job!”
“Hey, no fair!” The Bandits prez, who was so eager to get my autograph earlier, calls out. “'Boat on the sea' was the main hook on the chorus. Anybody could have guessed that!”
I keep my gaze locked on her, but I let that Bandit and everyone else know, “It’s the song that ends that movie, Grace of My Heart.”
“Right again, sir,” she says with an impressed nod. “What’s your name?”
All the Reapers look at her, then at me. Probably because they’re way more used to waitresses coming up to me and squealing, “Oh, my God, you’re G-Latham!”
I’m startled by her question myself.
But the PR bros at Stone River did warn me just a few days ago at our branding meeting that my fan numbers are glaringly white and majority male.
So, a lot of people love my particular brand of outlaw country trap, but they’re usually not women of color.
I reset my ego and answer, “Name’s Griff.”
Then I give her a slow up-and-down look and ask, “What’s yours?”
The question’s meant to throw her off the same way she did me when she pretty much announced to the whole bar that she has no idea who I am.
But she just grins and answers, “Come on, Griff, you know who I am. I came out in a pair of bird wings earlier? Remember that? And now I’m playing guitar half-naked on stage.”
She shakes her head at me like an exasperated teacher. “But if you really can’t remember it. Boys, let’s remind him.”
She cups one hand around her mouth and calls out, “What’s my name?”
“Red!” the whole bar shouts back.
Like she’s the music star, not me.
“What’s my name?” she shouts again.
“Red!” they cry even louder.
A wicked grin spreads across her lush mouth. And this time, she gives me the up-and-down look as she calls out, “One mo’ gain—just in case Griff has as hard a time hearing important details as he does remembering them.”
Even Waylon and the rest of the Reapers join in to yell back, “Red!”
Red laughs big and loud, filling the gritty roadhouse with the sound of her delight. “Okay, Griff, meet me at the bar to get your free beer on Red.”
She walks off the stage to cheers and laughter—mostly at my expense. But I’m not too bothered.
“I don’t care what any of you say,” I declare as soon as she disappears from my sight again. “I’m fucking her.”
Waylon snorts. “Yeah, good luck with that.”
Crash and Rowdy, my two biggest fanboys, refuse to meet my eyes.
And Hyena repeats, “Even Hades,” like maybe I didn’t hear him the first time.
“Hades ain’t me,” I remind him—remind all of them.
I could lie and say I'm not cocky. But why bother? I know what I look like. Even hotter than Hades, with more money and fame on top. I've never been turned down, especially here in the roadhouse where I'm big shit. And I’m sure that record won't be broken tonight.
Plus, I want this girl. Bad. Them telling me I can't have her only makes me want her more—at least until I nut between her legs and then instantly lose interest.