Burn Down the Night (Everything I Left Unsaid #3)- Molly O'Keefe Page 0,98
décor. It was pretty comforting, actually. Or maybe I’d just been fucked into complacency. I’d find prison comforting at this point—that’s how chill I was.
Joan sat on the barstool to my right and that whole side of my body was tuned to her. I felt when she moved. When she glanced away to look at the specials board. When her eyes lifted to look at the side of my face, still bruised from the beating a week ago.
“You draw a lot of attention, you know?” she said.
“Maybe it’s you.” She was wearing a different skirt and a different tank top, but it was still her outrageous body under the clothes. Her “fuck you” attitude was dialed back and in its place was a kind of peace I never thought I’d see in her. She was easy right now, unwound. Her shoulders relaxed out of her battle stance.
She was painfully pretty. Like punch in the gut beautiful with that smile lingering around her lips.
Apparently fucking each other raw against a wall was exactly what we needed.
“I’m a dime a dozen around here,” she said, glancing across the restaurant. “You’re the only motorcycle club guy who looks like he survived a beatdown.”
I glanced around, too, and saw a lot of suburban dads with their families watching me out of the corners of their eyes. Moms pulling their kids in a little closer. Dudebros with their ball caps on backward, sizing me up.
There were women, too, looking at me. Some turned on by my size and my bruises and my tattoos. Others not so much.
“We never used to go to places like this,” I said.
“Like as a family?”
I laughed. “Like as a club.”
“Yeah, hard to imagine you guys here ordering the mahimahi special.”
Man, that sounded good.
The bartender came by and tossed some cardboard beer coasters in front of us, not giving us any of the happy patter he gave the other couples around the bar. “Happy hour,” he said. “Two for one.”
“Bud draft,” I ordered.
“White wine.”
The guy came back with two drinks for each of us and we ordered some food.
“Are we on a date?” I asked. I turned sideways on my stool and leaned over to shift her so her legs were between mine. If I could put her in my lap, I would. That had been so good between us. The kind of good that made a guy curious.
The kind of good that made a guy obsessed.
“A date,” she laughed. “When was the last time you were on a date?”
“High school. You?”
She opened her eyes wide and blinked. “It’s been a while. There was a girl a few months ago. She used to like going out for movies.”
“Good Girlfriend #1?”
She laughed and I liked that sound. “Something like that. So if this is a date, you buying?”
All that money I had and most of it was going to be going to Dylan’s fancy lawyer. But of what was left, I couldn’t think of a better way to spend it than buying my girl some happy-hour drinks.
My girl.
Just like that. That’s how it was. Joan was my girl. For how long, I couldn’t even begin to guess, but for now and for as long as I could make it work, she was mine. I smiled, thinking about what she would do if I told her that. The ballistics that would go off in this restaurant.
“I’m buying,” I told her.
“Then I should have gotten the crab legs.”
I ran my hand over her thigh, from the top of her knee to the bottom edge of her skirt. I wanted to push it up and slip my hand under there, but I felt the eyes of all those suburban dads.
If we were in the club right now, I’d do it anyway.
“Do you miss it?”
“What?” I asked and took a sip of my Bud. It was icy cold and perfect. Fuck, I was agreeable.
Like she’d been reading my mind she said, “The club? Those places you used to go to? Being king?”
“I wasn’t any kind of king. And no…I don’t miss it.” I had always been looking over my shoulder, constantly braced for disaster. I didn’t miss it at all. It was a goddamn relief not being king.
“I know you told me not to worry and you told Eric the same thing. But those guys in jail…They talked about you.”
“I’m not surprised.”
“But…,” she tilted her head. “Are you worried? I mean between them and what I have to do—”