“You wanted to know what was on the Bay list?” I hear Liv ask.
I lift my head up, breathing hard as the guy carries me outside and she follows.
“Only one thing,” she teases, a wicked smile playing on her mouth. “You.”
Me? What?!
What the hell is she doing?
“Clay!” I hear someone call. I twist, looking around me, but I can’t see shit.
“Clay!” Callum barks next.
I see shoes and hear splashes through puddles as my friends find me and follow.
“You’re going to pay for this!” I growl at Liv.
“I’ve been paying since the day I met you,” she retorts. “It’s about time I enjoy it.”
“MACON!” SANTOS CALLS out as if announcing the pizza’s here. “Got some problems for you, man.” And then under his breath, “As if you don’t have enough already.”
“Put her down now,” Callum tells him, but no one listens.
We enter the body shop, Clay’s party following close and yelling, creating a ruckus as Dallas, Trace, and Army head over to see what’s up.
“Let me go!” Clay shouts.
The bar is only a hundred yards from the body shop, so it was as easy as carrying a sack of potatoes for my brother’s friend.
Trace smiles wide, his plaid pajama pants hanging low on his hips with no shirt. He fits his baseball cap on backward, covering his messy hair. “Oh, I’m gonna enjoy this,” he mutters, and then to Santos. “Drop her.”
Dallas wipes off his hands, and the rest of the Sanoa Bay patriarchy with an average age of twenty-seven crowd around, leaving their hobby bikes and beer, ready to drip all their machismo at any given opportunity. Normally, I shun it, but it’ll be useful tonight.
Santos flops Clay over and drops her on the old sofa, the brat shooting up, her eyes spitting daggers. I lean back against a worktable, ready for the show. She deserves this.
I can’t believe I dropped my guard in that locker room. She just felt so good.
I watch her, every muscle primed and ready and the fire in her eyes. God, she felt good.
But she’s not good. Emotions just bottled up over years without any outlet, and I was finally able to take them out on her and I guess it didn’t matter how. That’s all that was.
Macon steps out from underneath a car, grabbing the shop rag out of his back pocket as he looks around to see what the commotion is.
Taking one look at Clay, he turns away, bored. “Get ’em out of here.”
But Trace steps up. “Oh, come on, Macon—”
But Macon twists his head, the look we all know well leveling Trace. He shuts up.
“Liv said we were welcome tonight,” Callum points out. He walks over and takes Clay’s hand in his, pulling her to his side.
“My sister doesn’t get to extend invitations,” Macon tells him, tossing me a warning look.
I shrug. “What’s the harm in letting them absorb some local color?”
“Keep it up.” He wipes his hands. “You’re gonna absorb my boot in your ass.”
Yeah, yeah.
“Finish your fucking Night Tide on your side of the tracks,” he tells them.
Clay stares, her eyes shifting between my brother and me, looking like she expects me to intervene, and why the hell would I do that? Honestly, they’re lucky to get out of here unscathed. Macon is taking it easy.
“Come on, Clay.” Amy pulls at her friend.
“It smells like shit over here anyway,” Milo adds.
They start to drift toward the bay doors, but Clay refuses to budge. She pulls her hands free. “No.”
“Come on,” Amy urges. “I’m already fucking bored.”
You mean scared, Amy? I hold in my laugh.
“I said no.” Clay steps up toward my brother, and my heart stops for a moment. I stand up straight.
“So, what were you?” she asks him. “Navy? Air Force?” But she doesn’t wait to hear his answer. “It’s a free country. Everything you fought for.”
“I fought to preserve democracy, not practice it.” He still doesn’t look at her. “Get the fuck off our land.”
My eyes dart between them, Clay to my left and Macon to my right, alert. No one, except maybe family, speaks to him like that, and while I’m kind of enjoying it, she’s going to find out why really soon if she’s not careful.
No one leaves, the air in the shop thick with tension. Macon looks over, his dark eyes looking black under the bill of his cap. “If you don’t move, I’ll move you.”
Clay glances to me. A slight urge hits to intervene, and if he touches her, I might, but…
But Macon is right. Clay is an extension of everything wrong with St. Carmen. How they bully us. Take from us. Shame us. Keep us poor and ignorant and pregnant, breeding more servants for them.
I’m tempted to throw the key to Fox Hill into Macon’s hands right now and let Callum answer for it, but he’d just deny it. And even if Clay didn’t believe him, she’d still take his side. I’m not going to waste the only card I have to play quite yet.