back and into Mal, who’s back there making sure the rush of happy hour doesn’t sneak up on us. Everett’s eyes land on mine, a frown set on his full lips.
“Careful there.” My hand jets out to Mal, who slips on the splatter of grease on the floor, and the fact that she has a two-hundred-pound man pinning her to the counter. I nod behind me. “Avie found out there’s a kid hustling people in the bar.”
Everett rolls his eyes, moving toward the grill again, a spatula in one hand, and a towel draped over the other. “Tell that little baller I want my twenty bucks back. He knew how to play pool.”
I laugh, but it’s forced. My mind is all over the place. I can’t possibly find entertainment in anything at the moment or get outside of my own head. I want to rush out there and grab Fletcher by the front of his flannel and demand he tells me what the fuck is up.
It takes me a few minutes to calm down, but when I return to the bar, I’m met with the secret-keeper vampire himself staring me down. He doesn’t look pleased. Probably because he knows I know things now. Or, because his potential kid is in a bar. Could be because of that.
I smile and fold my arms over my chest, my heart skipping into a frantic pace when his brooding stare lands on me. It sweeps quickly to Fletcher. “What are you doing with him in here?”
Fletcher shrugs and tosses money on the bar, his eyes on the neon sign above me. “He was hungry. So I brought him here for food.”
My stare sweeps to Avie. He shrugs, shaking his head as if this is his first taste of entertainment for the week. It probably is.
Lincoln exhales through flared nostrils. “It’s a fucking bar. He can’t be in here,” he says, without looking my direction.
“Yeah.” Avie looks uninterested, his focus on his phone, but he adds, “I tried to tell him that too.”
In the midst of all this, Atlas finishes that drawing he’s working on, jumps down from his stool, and hands me the drawing. “Here. I made this.” Twisting around, he looks at Lincoln. “Daddy!” he yells, and runs to his leg. “Did you catch any fish?”
Don’t react. Just let it go. So he has a kid. Big deal. It doesn’t really matter, does it?
Truthfully, no, it doesn’t. He doesn’t even owe me an explanation or the truth. It’s not like we’re in a relationship.
Lincoln swallows, smiling down at him. Ruffling his hair, he winks, eyes full of confusion. “Hey, bud.”
Atlas works his hand into Lincoln’s. “But did you catch any?”
“Not much,” I hear him tell his son.
His son. A son he could have had with another woman and might just be the one that died. With shaking hands, I glance down at the drawing Atlas gave me. It’s clouds and four stars in them. There are names written next to a star. My chest constricts as I read each one.
There’s a moment, right there. Do you catch it? It’s when Lincoln’s stunned, glassy eyes lift to mine. I swallow, blink slowly, and look into the eyes of the unknown. His chest moves easily with his uneven breaths, and then he takes Atlas out of the bar. Presley opens the door for them, her shift about to start. Dressed in tight jeans and a black top that gives her cleavage the attention it deserves, if you ask me, she stops at a table near the windows where Bear is sitting with two other guys. She smiles at them. They laugh, flirt, and I think maybe big brother might not like what he sees.
Avie crosses his arms over his chest, his eyes on the interaction at the table. His brows collapse, and he pushes off the bar and into his office. The door slams shut behind him.
That right there, the expression on my brother’s face and Presley flirting, that’s the problem with fishing in the company pond. It creates problems for all of us.
So do secrets.
Mal wraps her arm around my shoulder and takes the drawing from me. “What’s that?”
“The kid made it for me.”
She examines it. “Ah, that’s sweet. He put Mom and Dad as stars.” Mal calls my parents Mom and Dad. Everyone did. All our friends growing up did—my parents were just those people. Friends to many and Mom and Dad to all. “Who is Rhett and Athena?” And then she stops