There You Stand (Between Breaths 5)

“I call stripes,” I said as he reached for a cue stick hanging on the wall.

“Thanks again for yesterday,” I said in a low voice so only he’d hear. “I think Chopper seems different.”

“No problem,” he said while he chalked up his pool stick.

I cracked a smile. “Emmy was hoping you’d say yes about taking her favorite dog.”

He stared at me and nodded slowly.

He moved around me to get to the other end of the table and when our hips brushed, I schooled my reaction, never once glancing in his direction.

When he leaned over to take his shot, I stared at the wall and mumbled, “You were jealous seeing me with her at the park, true or false?”

His hands faltered and he almost blew his round, but I strode away to take a sip of my beer as if nothing had even been said. He shot two solids in the side pocket along with the cue ball. “Scratch.”

I aligned the cue ball on the red felt. As I leaned over to line up my stick, it stretched my back muscles and I winced. Jude watched me closely but I pretended that he hadn’t seen my face contort in any pain.

As he crossed to the other side of the table, he said so low, I wasn’t sure I heard him right. “True.”

One simple word, but it still throttled me. He’d been jealous.

We played a couple of minutes more in silence but on another pass behind me, he said, “Your back is killing you, true or false?”

I stared at him and then finally said, “True. I saw the doc but he only gave me a prescription for painkillers. I have an appointment for an MRI next.”

“Lower back?” he asked after taking an impressive shot.

“Yeah,” I said, trying to figure out where to land the eight ball for the win.

“Is it your sciatic nerve?” he asked, as if he were some expert on back conditions. But given his sport, maybe he was. He’d probably heard a lot of medical jargon working at that shop, especially since he was in charge of repairs. Bet those boards came in all mangled, each one with a doozy of a story behind them.

“Something like that,” I said. “It would spasm all the time after the accident. But hasn’t done it in years.”

“Did that fall in the water irritate it?”

“Probably,” I said, unsuccessfully attempting to land the eight ball in a side pocket.

“Jude,” Vaughn called across the bar, and I straightened as if I’d been caught doing something other than having an innocent conversation about my injury. “Food’s up.”

He looked at the bartender, who had placed his brown bag on the bar top and nodded.

“He’s got one last shot,” I said and Vaughn turned away.

As Jude’s hip rubbed by mine a final time, he said in a rush, “Wait ten minutes before you leave. Come next door to the skate shop, back entrance. I have an idea.”

My head spun around. He was asking me to come see him? My chest tightened and I looked around the bar as if our conversation had been overheard.

“Make it fifteen,” I said so as to not look too eager to Jude or to Vaughn.

He returned his pool stick to the rack and turned to the bar without once glancing backward. I continued the game by myself, pretending not to be aware of when he left or how many steps it took him to reach the exit.

After the game was over, I replaced all the equipment and walked to the bar to discard my empty beer bottle. I felt Vaughn’s eyes on me, so I looked up.

He scanned the area over his shoulder as if to be sure no one was listening. “You taking off?”

“Yeah,” I said, my stomach bunching into a hard ball.

“Your bike out back?”

Odd question but I got what he was doing—it was a warning of sorts.

“Yep.”

“Might be safer on the side street.”

My eyes widened and he angled his head.

“Don’t think he’s been with anybody in a long time,” he said real low as he replaced a bottle of vodka beneath the bar. “Could use the company.”

I nodded, trying to process what he was telling me.

“He’s hard to figure out,” I said reaching for a napkin to give my hands something to do. “But I . . . can’t seem to . . .”

I needed to shut the hell up, whether Vaughn and I had an understanding or not.

“He’s got eyes on him, and doesn’t want to screw anything up. Guy barely talks so that nobody recognizes his accent,” he said. “Been on the run awhile now. First safe place he’s landed.”

Safe? Was he calling the motorcycle club safe? Or this town?

I sucked in a breath. “Why are you telling me this?”

“Because I can tell he’s trying fucking hard not to like you,” he said. “And it’s goddamn painful to watch. You’re a good kid and so is he.”

Shit. If Vaughn noticed, did that mean everyone else did as well?

“Is he a good person?”

He stared at me a second more, blinking several times, as if startled by my question.

“If you didn’t believe that you wouldn’t be trying to get to know him, yeah?”

I shrugged and thought back to the jerk who’d left me with Chopper. “Haven’t been the best judge of character lately. Just know that for some reason I want to understand him.”

Right then, the back door opened and Malachi strode out with two other men, one of whom he bumped shoulders with. I couldn’t help noticing that it was the same guy I’d seen with Jude that day at the park. I spotted the outline of his gun holster this time. I was pretty darn sure parole officers didn’t go around carrying loaded weapons.