Tacet a Mortuis (The Elite King's Club 3)

“I won’t be a second.” I could feel my phone vibrating in my pocket, and just as I was about to grab it out, Gengy’s cussing in his heavy Puerto Rican accented voice caught my attention.

“No, fuck you, man, that’s not how it’s going to go down. I’m telling you, McGregor is about to beat some ass!”

I chuckled, shaking my head as I entered the shop. “Good to see you’re still talking shit!” I yelled out, pulling my phone out from my back pocket.

Gengy’s shit talking stopped and his attention came to me. He gave me a shit-eating grin. “Oh! B, my man!” Then he leaned over the counter and pulled me in for a hug. “Where you been, broki? I could slap you upside your head not coming to visit me more!”

“I know, homie, that’s my bad. You still haven’t gotten that sign fixed though…”

“Hey!” He shook his finger in front of himself. “Don’t come up here in your rich pretty boy sports car and your clothes and throw money at me like I’m some stripper and about to give you a lap dance, I told you, I can handle my own.”

“You’ve been telling me that since I was ten, and how much would that lap dance cost me? I got a couple dollars in here…”

“Smart shit!” He laughed, tossing a dishcloth over his shoulder. Gengy was a sixty-year-old, beer belly, pot smoking, foul-mouthed, stubborn son of a bitch. But he and I bonded from day one and the rest was history.

“Whatchu want, B?”

I yapped off the pizza’s I wanted to order and he went about making them. I looked down at my phone, catching up the texts from these idiots.

Nate: Why?

Jase: We haven’t been there in a while, B.

Eli: Got blunts?

Cash: Can I bring Cindy?

Hunter: Who the fuck is Cindy?

Cash: She’s the chick I’m fucking

Eli: What like right now?

Cash: Someone take this kid to school…

Eli: Who the fuck you calling a kid? I had your mom under me last week.

Brantley: I’ll gather the children and be there.

I shook my head. Fucking idiots. The lot of them. Sliding my phone into my pocket, I caught Gengy up on all my bullshit from the past year, paid for the pizzas, and then went back to the car.

“Just saying,” Tate mumbled through a yawn. “If I catch salmonella poisoning—I’m totally blaming you, B.”

I snorted. “Don’t let the outside fool you. He’s cleaner on the inside than most of those pretty thousand dollar strips we go to.”

“Huh, uncanny,” Tatum snickered, more to herself but I caught it. I was on edge about how this was all going to pan out come tomorrow. I’ve kept big fucking things from everyone, and eventually, those big fucking things turn into mountains. You water shit for long enough and it will help plants grow. I had a feeling Nate was about to lose his shit. I don’t know what game Nate was playing with Tatum, but I could see it fucking with her head. Aside from her, he always tried to brush off his feelings for Tillie, but we never bought it.

It was easy to say you don’t love someone when your feelings weren’t being shoved in your face every day by that person breathing the same air as you. It was why long distance relationships never worked. You don’t see that person for long enough, the illusion that your feelings slowly start to dissipate into thin air begins, then suddenly you wonder if you ever really felt anything at all and how could you fall so hard so fast and then just poof, feel like it’s nothing. You move on with your life, put it down to making memories, and live happily. Until you see her again. The air electrifies between you, eyes collide like comets shooting through the sky, and in those moments, your world has flipped fucking upside. Gravity unleashes you and once again, you’re falling. I don’t know about soul mates and all that bullshit that people like to bring it down to, but I know a bit about connection, and that shit never lies. The space between the next time you see each other can be as long as you want, and yeah, maybe you do subconsciously build a shield that gives you false security, making you think you never really had feelings for them to begin with, but that’s easy to do when you’re not seeing them day and day out. Feeling the magnetic pull that brought you together to begin with. It takes a second for two souls to connect. Connections never lie, and that’s why when their eyes attach again after so long, I know for damn sure that Tate will be fucked.

I pulled out of the parking lot and drove us towards CK’s. When we got there, I watched Madison’s face morph into horror.