Burn Down the Night (Everything I Left Unsaid #3)- Molly O'Keefe Page 0,67

the little label. The real thing. This cigar probably cost a hundred dollars.

“Thank you.”

The last guy, a bald black man built like a boxer, ran his eyes over my tattoos and then he met mine and I saw—in the disapproving set of his chin—that he knew what I was. And what I’d been. Where I’d come from.

I gave him a mocking salute, which he returned. Months ago, that would have pulled me up and out of my chair, ready to go toe to toe with the guy.

But not today. Maybe it was the booze. Or the sun.

Or Joan.

Probably Joan, but I wasn’t going to look too hard at that.

For the first time, who I was and where I came from didn’t seem like the same thing.

They didn’t match up like they had my entire life, like every decision I made had its roots in that club compound where I’d been raised like the weeds growing out of its cracked concrete. Like the patch on my back had soaked into my skin. My blood.

But not anymore.

Something had changed.

Because they tried to kill me? Or because I left for Arizona and would not have gone back if Dylan didn’t call me?

Was the difference the boat? The woman in the white bikini?

I didn’t know.

But it hurt. The difference. And I won’t lie…it was fucking scary. If I wasn’t Skulls, who was I? What the hell did a guy like me do?

I lit that wedding gift up and smoked the finest cigar I’d ever had in my mouth.

Fake marriage had its perks.

It was hard work ignoring the phone on the deck beside me. Hard work not thinking about how I could flip it open, press a button, and call my brother. It became so hard not to think about it, that it was actually all I could think about.

And I could blame it on the booze or the cigar. Or the conversation with Joan. In the end—it didn’t matter. I picked up the phone and called my brother.

It rang three times, and I imagined it sitting on a workbench someplace in his garage. I imagined him not being able to hear the phone over the whine and burn of the engines that had built his new empire. I was so proud of him. So. Damn. Proud.

This is Dylan. Leave a message.

The beep made my heart stop and I almost hung up, but somehow I didn’t.

“Hey,” I said. “It’s me. I wanted to let you know I was okay. Joan told me you said I could come stay with you. Thanks. You know I can’t but…thanks.” In the rush of things I wanted to say, I suddenly found I couldn’t say anything. Not anything important. “Remember that time we took Carlos’s boat? Took it out on the river and ran out of gas?” I felt a wild bubble in my chest and realized it was laughter. Real laughter. “We had to paddle like…God, all day to get home. You were so pissed. When we got back, Carlos chased us around his yard with that tennis racket. He would have killed us with that thing if he caught us.” I was rambling. “Anyway, I…ah…yeah. Just wanted to tell you I was okay. I’m real—” proud of you. Jealous of you. Happy for you. “Anyway. Good night.”

I hung up before the beep and put the phone down on my stomach, like a warm little coal. Burning me, but not bad enough to move it.

Chapter 18

Joan

When I was in first grade, Joe Alfano pushed me down in the playground and I caught the asphalt with my face, skidding about a foot until I came to a stop against the pebbles under the swing sets.

The lunch lady gathered me and my bleeding, beat-up face and took me in to see the school secretary who also played the role of parole officer, debt collector, and unlikely nurse.

We called her Miss Ramona and she was not as nice as she thought she was.

Anyway, Miss Ramona clucked over me and cleaned me up with those scratchy brown school paper towels as best she could and she gave me an ice pack wrapped in the same crappy paper towels to hold against my chin, nose, and forehead, which were truly scraped to hell. I would have scabs for weeks.

“You know something,” she said to me, in the tone of a woman who was either trying to make me feel better or trying to make me forgive that asshole Joe Alfano, “he probably just