I remembered it. Not the meeting because Bea and I hadn’t been allowed to attend, but I remembered the fury my father felt at the drug-related crime, at the fact that the same motorcycle club involved in the First Church Shooting were still ruling strong and true in his town. My dad had worked for years to gain his office and he was absolutely not going to let “thugs” out-influence him.
“Yeah, yeah, I know that stuff. Tell me about the men,” I told my friend.
Her eyes shadowed and she leaned forward in the universal girl friend gesture that signaled “real talk.” “Who’s got you asking?”
I shrugged one shoulder and plucked a glass from the drying rack to polish. “I’m curious.”
“Curiosity killed the cat, Loulou.”
“Yeah, well, this cat has cancer, so she’s not really concerned at playing it safe,” I retorted. “Are you going to tell me anything or what?”
Ruby’s slick red mouth pursed with hurt and I realized I was taking out my irritation on her.
“I’m sorry, babe. Bad day.” I reached over to take one of her thin hands in my own. Needle marks scarred the backs just as they’d scarred mine.
“I didn’t mean to sound like my mother.” She laughed. “I get more than anyone that you gotta do what you gotta do with the time we are given on this earth. You feel you have to do something, even if I think it’s a bad idea, I’m gonna support you and more, I’m gonna urge you to go for it.”
I hated talking about the cancer while I was Loulou but a tidal wave of sorrow and fear swallowed me whole as I looked into my friend’s empathetic eyes. She didn’t know much about my life outside the club, other than the fact that I had cancer, but she knew what it was like to wonder how long you’d live, to wonder if you were strong enough to survive.
She knew what it was like to be dying.
I blinked past the hot well of tears. “Don’t make me ruin my makeup,” I whispered hoarsely.
She ran her thumb over mine and squeezed. “I’ll just say this, okay? You can love an outlaw and he can even love you back, but that doesn’t make him any less an outlaw. You get me?”
“I got you,” I told her, jumping up over the counter slightly to press a kiss to her cheek. “Now, get back there and get dressed for your next number or Maja will be at you.”
Ruby shuddered in mock horror as she slid off her stool and strut away, drawing a dozen eyes to her ass as she did.
I laughed softly at the familiar spectacle before turning my eyes back to Zeus. Quentin was still talking as one of the bikers led him away, his face twisted with impatient passion, but Zeus seemed unmoved, one arm dangling over the booth clutching a nearly empty glass of Canadian whiskey.
I knew he drank Forty Creek Double Reserve because Felicity, one of the bartenders, had bragged to me about it the other day. How he only ever asked for her to bring him his drink. How he made sure to tip her big and how, the other day, he’d told her she had a damn fine smile.
A damn fine fucking smile.
Hearing it made me want to take a knife to her smile and turn her into a female version of the Joker. How would Zeus find her smile then?
I shook my head free of the jealousy and decided to take action. I’d given him three weeks of faux distance, but I wasn’t going down without a fight. Not now, not when Ruby had just reminded me that I might not have much time left.
And what time I did have left, I wanted to spend with him.
In fact, if I was being honest with myself, I would have traded the next fifty years for one good one spent with him.
I reached on my tiptoes for the top-shelf liquor and poured him a glass, neat.
“That for Garro?” Felicity asked me, sliding up to the bar with an empty tray. “His brother Nova is joining him with a Johnny Walker Blue. I was just coming to refresh them.”
“I got it covered,” I told her, quickly pouring out a measure of the whiskey and then sliding both drinks onto my tray.
My red-headed co-worker laughed at me condescendingly. “Honey, trust me, you wouldn’t know how to handle a man like that.”
I smiled at her with all my teeth as I walked around the bar and slid past her. “Let’s just see, shall we?”
He clocked me before he looked over at me. I could tell by the way his great big body tensed subtly, a rolling of immense muscles that brought to mind a predator about to strike. My belly quivered at the thought.