Christmas With The Brotherhood - A.J. Downey Page 0,1

dealing.

That shit was not okay. Not when it could fall back on the club. So, we had to deal with it. We just had to do it carefully. Club creed of no women and no children? Yeah, it was making it a bit difficult. It was also causing our president, Dray, to have some thoughts on the whole meth mill going around our town. As in, whoever was running it or involved with it knew about us and our ways. Hence, why whoever it was kept using females and young kids to pedal their fucking poison.

I pushed out the lounge doors and into the cold December night.

“Oh, thank God! You found him!”

“Eden?” I squinted into the dark and scowled.

“Yeah,” she said, stepping out of the mouth of the alley leading back to the restaurant’s parking lot.

“What the fuck?” I growled. She was beautiful, which unnerved me to a certain degree. One, nobody had the right to be that ethereally pretty, and two, I’d watched this girl grow up – except she wasn’t a little girl anymore. Not with what came out of her mouth next.

“I could ask you the same thing,” she said and sighed, her breath pluming the air around her. I couldn’t see her face real well anymore, backlit as she was by the streetlights behind her since she’d shifted out further onto the sidewalk.

“She the reason you’re out here?” I demanded, turning up my jacket collar and blowing into my hands as the snow fell around us on the dark central town streets.

“Yeah,” she answered for Slice. “I was worried about you.”

I snorted.

“Jesus, fuck,” I said, rolling my eyes. “She’s got you wrapped around her little finger, doesn’t she?” I demanded of my brother as he stepped more fully out of the bar behind me.

“Shut up, bro. She’s out here looking for you, not me.”

“How’d you both get here?” I demanded. “A cage, I hope.”

“Yeah, we took my cage,” she said, rolling her eyes.

“Pussy,” I grunted and gave Slice a shove.

“Better than being the only fool riding out here,” he said back. “You trying to—”

I cut him off, sharply. “Don’t even fuckin’ say it.”

He held up his hands and his breath fogged, whipped away by the wind picking up.

“Come with us,” Eden begged. “Don’t try to ride, not in this…”

“I’ll see you back at the club, both of you,” I said. I jabbed two fingers into the breast of Slice’s cut. “You better fuckin’ drive her. Revelator would murder us both if anything happened to his baby girl.”

Slice just nodded.

“Get in the cage, Eden.”

“Don’t you fucking boss me!” she cried, indignantly.

“Move your ass, little girl!” I barked. “I can’t believe you brought her out in this, bro.”

Slice rolled his keen blue eyes and flipped me off. “More like she dragged me out in this, which neither one of us would be out here if it weren’t for your dumb ass.”

“Sort it out later!” Eden cried, throwing her hands out like a referee in a football game about to make a call. I smiled, it reminded me of her cheerleading days, which weren’t that fuckin’ long ago.

“Take her home, bro, I’ll see you there,” I declared and pulling on my gloves from my jacket pocket, I moved deep into the night dark alley and left them both staring after me open mouthed.

“Crazy son of a bitch,” I heard Slice mutter, and I couldn’t disagree with that. You tended to get the label right around the time people realized you just stopped giving a fuck.

2

Eden…

“He’s fine, you know,” Slice said, and he sounded confident but I knew better. I stared out the foggy passenger-side window of my own car while we slowly rolled through the late-night streets and I shook my head.

“I know better,” I murmured.

“You worry too damn much.”

“You don’t worry enough,” I countered stubbornly.

Slice sighed and said, “You’re a good kid, Eden—”

“I’m not a kid anymore,” I said tartly. “I’m eighteen, legally an adult.”

“You’re always going to be that kid,” he said quietly, and I turned away from the frosty window to look at him. He gave me some side-eye and his mouth set into a grim line.

“What kid?” I demanded, scowling.

“The one that followed Dice like a little lost puppy,” he said, and I felt my frown deepen beneath my red curls. “You’ve been crushing on him since you were fucking six, Eddie, and enough is enough. He’s too old for you.”

“Ooo, a whole eleven years older!” I rolled my eyes. “That’s nothing,” I said dismissively.

“Maybe