"Hey Mina," he called, stopping half in the hall.
"Yeah?"
"Have I mentioned how fucking worth the wait this was?" he asked, turning and walking away without waiting for a response.
I followed behind him agreeing whole-heartedly.
Except, unlike him, the wait hadn't just been a couple months.
I had been waiting to open up for my entire freaking life.
And I had the gut feeling that he was absolutely right; it was so worth the wait.THIRTEENRennyLo left shortly after the guys filed out, no doubt going to see what was going on with Janie, how much she was going to suffer for keeping the notoriously mercurial and volatile Janie out of the loop.
Two of the Hailstorm guys were with Summer, Maze, and Penny along with Cyrus in the basement. Cyrus was apparently a big hit once he brought the guitar out and luckily had the laid-back, fun-loving personality to be able to handle children without getting flustered, something that was bound to get him a seal of approval from the women. Fact of the matter was, the kids were a very present part of the group suddenly and that wasn't something that was going to change until the numbers were bolstered and the members trustworthy.
Things would be too up in the air for a while.
Even if Lazarus, Reeve, and Cyrus worked out and became patched, the process was just starting. Three new men would hardly be enough. We needed a dozen new men within two years if we wanted to survive. And knowing Reign, he would continue to be as selective as he had always been. He wanted men with their own particular skill sets, men who would be loyal, and men who would respect the way he ran his club.
"Damn it," Mina hissed, snapping my attention back to where she was standing next to Laz at the stove. Reeve was making a pot of coffee, looking over at her exclamation as well.
"The first two always come out like shit," Laz consoled as she swiped the very pale, very doughy-looking pancakes into the garbage.
I liked Laz for a new addition. He was young enough to be capable but old and experienced enough to bring his particular knowledge to the club. Repo would likely pick him too seeing as Laz would give him a break from doing all the fucking cooking.
The fact that Mina took to him, my initial jealousy aside, was also another thing working for him. She wasn't exactly the type of woman who willingly set herself up for failure. She was too tight, too controlled for that. But she had signed up to cook with Lazarus twice, an act that pretty much guaranteed some screw ups as she learned what she was doing. And had it been just about anyone else teaching her, she probably would have concluded that it wasn't her thing and that she would leave it up to people who knew what they were doing. But because it was Laz and because he seemed as perpetually laid back as a mother fucking sloth but also the ability to encourage you without being condescending, had her reaching for the batter again, dropping a couple dollops down, and trusting in his words.
I wondered right about then how the ever loving hell he worked as a fighter. Even if the fighting was just on occasion, when it was needed. Maybe, if Ross wasn't in a snit about Laz joining our team and fired him, I would show up and see him in action- just to better understand him.
I'd bring Mina along too.
Because, quite frankly, now that I had her, I had no fucking plans on letting her go. Maybe that made me sound like a neanderthal, but the fact of the matter was, when a man who had been so committed to non-commitment found a woman who made him want to lock her down, well, he fucking locked her down.
So we were going to have a date at a goddamn underground fight club because that was about as romantic as a guy from an arms-dealing MC and a girl from a lawless army got.
"Hey Lo, what's up?" Mina asked, bumping Laz's shoulder and pointing to her pancakes. He nodded his head at her as she moved away, stopping short a foot to my side. "What?" she asked, her mouth falling open. "Really?"
Then she looked at me and her face split into the biggest smile I had ever seen her have.
She reached out, grabbing my bicep. "Wolf is awake," she told me and there was really no good way to describe what that kind of relief felt like.
Where Reign was the spine of the club and Cash was the heart, Wolf, yeah, Wolf was the fucking soul.
We had been walking around missing a chunk of ourselves for months, no one willing to admit it, but every one of us terrified we would have to learn to live with that absence in our lives forever.