It was Carson’s turn to look uncomfortable, but we all laughed because it was rare we got one up on the ex-football star.
I smiled at them as they ducked their heads close and whispered to each other. I’d taught them both as a teacher at EBA years ago, when Carson was your run-of-the-mill bully and Benny was fairly obviously the closet gay boy who bore the brunt of his negative attention. The whole situation had been a mess of miscommunications, Carson’s bigoted father, a drug-dealing teacher, and Benny nearly dying from an overdose, so seeing them together and happy now was a gift I knew they both cherished.
I turned back to the windows and adjusted the pillows at the base of one window seat, surprised again at the turn my life had taken. If you had told me I’d ever be best friends with former students, let alone date one of them, I’d have called you crazy.
“You are so cute I could gag,” Rainbow informed them testily as she shoved a stack of books into the display by the cashier.
“You’re just becoming a bitter old shrew because you’re not getting any,” Tayline countered, sticking out her tongue at her best friend. “Seriously, when was the last time you got laid?”
“None of your business, sprite.”
“Only because you don’t have any business to share,” she countered.
I laughed at them over the low rumble of “Good Times Roll” by The Cars playing over the surround speakers, and Rainbow shot me a withering glare for siding with Tay.
I shrugged. “I’m sorry, Rainbow. She has a point.”
The beautiful Korean woman sighed and slumped against the cash desk dramatically. “Don’t I know it. Why can’t one of your delicious alpha bikers take an interest in me, huh?”
“Probably because you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar,” I pointed out, thinking of all the times I’d brought Rainbow to one of the club barbecues or hang-outs at Eugene’s, and she’d deliver sass upon heaping layer of sass.
She blew her bangs out of her face and winced. “I know. I get bitchy when I’m nervous, and those big, beautiful bikers? Who the hell wouldn’t be nervous around them?”
“That’s fair,” Benny added as he moved away from Carson to finish sweeping the aisles. “I still stammer like a freak when one of them first starts talking to me.”
“It’s adorable,” Carson assured him with a grin.
“It’s lame.”
“Anyone who thinks it’s lame can fuck off with it,” Carson countered with an easy shrug. “I think it’s cute as fuck.”
“It is,” I agreed, just for the record, because Carson was really the only voice Benny needed to hear.
He blushed that beautiful red and ducked his head behind a book.
“I get bitchy when I’m hungry,” Tay admitted, getting back to Rainbow. “Cy thinks it’s adorable too.”
“Cyclops actually said the word ‘adorable’?” Rainbow asked dubiously.
Her skepticism was warranted. Matthew Broderick, aka Cyclops or Cy so called because he’d lost an eye saving Tayline years ago from human traffickers, was not the kind of man one would assume had words like ‘cute,’ ‘cuddly,’ or ‘adorable’ in his lexicon.
But I was a woman claimed by a biker, so I knew the secret of all alpha men. If they found a woman worthy of their wild hearts, for that woman and that woman alone, he would be sweeter than any other kinda man.
“He did.” Tay proved my point with a secret little smile.
“Hard to believe when he almost ripped the head off Officer Ormand the other day,” Rainbow muttered.
“What?” I asked, always alert to the goings-on of the police force in Entrance because they were always ultra-aware of us.
Tay shot Rainbow a glare and then sighed. “It’s not that big a deal…Cy already reported in to Zeus about it.”
“Yeah, well, you didn’t tell me,” I pointed out, fisting a hand on one hip and cocking the other. “What went down?”
She rolled her eyes. “You know, you’ve gotten a whole lot bossier since being with King.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “If he’s going to be king one day, I have to be queen. What else would you expect?”
“You’ve always looked more like a Disney princess than a biker queen.”
“Looks can be deceiving,” I countered because I’d learned that the hard way back in my stupider days when I’d almost given up a shot at King just because he was involved with the club. “Now, fess up.”
Collectively, we grouped around the little living room setup I had in front of the windows, sinking into the big, comfy leather couches and the twin armchairs to listen to Tay.
“You know Ormand? He’s mid-forties, divorced, and a Canadian redneck if I ever saw one. He lives next door because he didn’t let his wife keep the house in the separation. Anyway, he’s always been a bit of a nosy parker, obviously because Cy comes and goes a lot, and any Entrance PD officer is going to keep an eye on that. Recently, he’s kind of upped the game. He has binoculars he uses from his bedroom to peer into my house, and he always comes out onto his porch when Cy shows up…it was all just male posturing nonsense, but I was driving home from school the other day and the fucker pulled me over for no reason. He was super aggressive with me, leaning into my open window and kind of berating me for being involved with The Fallen.”