“Come on, get out and get on up to the club. I’ll park it for you,” he said.
“Thanks,” I grumbled and heaved myself out of the car into knee-deep snow on the side, where the prospects hadn’t shoveled. It was less slick and easier to climb the driveway in the powder versus where it had been shoveled and deiced. I mean, with record snowfall like we’d been having, the deicer wasn’t really able to do a whole lot.
“Smoke, come help her,” Reaver called up before getting into my car. I looked up to Sage holding down a hand to me, his brown eyes guarded and unreadable. I put my hand in his and he frowned.
“Where the fuck are your gloves?” he demanded.
“In my pocket.”
“Should put ‘em on next time. No point now, we’ll be inside in the time it takes you to dig them out.”
I smiled and Dante got out of the car while Reaver situated himself behind the wheel.
“Go on, get up there! I’ll wait.”
Sage helped me struggle up through the heavy drifts of snow to the club’s front door and as soon as we were safely under the overhang, I heard my car’s engine rev.
“Get in here,” Sage ordered and ushered me ahead of him. I went into the club, Dante right behind me, and sighed in relief as Sage shut the front door against the cold.
“You good?” Dray demanded from where he leaned up against the bar. Data spun around in his chair, the curtains to his command center whisked back and his monitors displaying every part of the grounds outside the club.
“We’re good,” Dante answered.
“Alright then.” Dray nodded and turned his attention back to Uncle Disney behind the bar. I smiled.
“Hi, Uncle Disney.”
“Hey, peanut,” he called back. I grinned. I would never get tired of him calling me that, but Sage’s expression mollified me. His expression crushed down into a major frown and he swept past me and my brother into the depths of the club.
“Dad gave us the key to his room,” I said to Dray softly. “In case it’s too dangerous to make the drive back.” Dray nodded.
The lock and key thing had started when everybody started popping out kids since firearms were usually kept in club rooms and not every brother, like my dad, had a gun safe in their quarters.
“Thanks for the heads-up, Eedee.”
I smiled and gave a nod. “Welcome.”
Laughter emanated from back in the media room and I went that way, looking forward to seeing my bestie, disappointed when she wasn’t there, at least not yet.
“Hey, Eedee.” Noah tossed his dishwater blond hair out of his hazel eyes and I smiled faintly.
“Hey, Noah.”
“’Sup Eedee?” Chandler, Noah’s younger brother, asked. He was my age but barely. I was on the cusp of nineteen, but Chandler had just turned eighteen. He was all Archer with promising rugged good looks and the same medium brown hair. The only thing of Melody’s he got was her eyes.
“Hey, Chandler. Not much, just got here.”
Noah chuckled, but the smile was wiped right off his face when someone bellowed from the back, “Hey, Prospect!”
“Duty calls,” I said with a grin and Noah shot me a little salute before pushing off his perch on the arm of the couch and passing me on the way out.
“Anybody pick the movies?” I asked.
“Not yet, no,” Chandler answered.
“Woo hoo,” I said with a wink, and he pushed to his feet out of the recliner he’d claimed to wander the shelves along the walls with me and Dante to pick out the night’s offerings.
We had a neat little pile of DVD and Blu-Ray discs on the corner of the entertainment hutch at the back of the room by the time the rest of the kids started piling in.
“Eedee!” Harmony threw her arms around me with a squeal of delight and I hugged her back with just as much enthusiasm.
“I missed you!” I declared, and she grinned.
“Missed you too! You pick the movies?”
“Yup, we’re all ready to go.”
“Awesome!”
“Alright, alright! Settle down in here!” Dray boomed and his son, Stephen, ducked around him and went to post up on one end of the couch.
“What have we got over here?” he asked and with that, the fun got to begin.
5
Sage…
“You good, bro?” I looked up and over at Dray and nodded.
“Yeah, man. Why?”
“Rev said maybe I need to check in with you a little more. Holiday coming up and all.” His dark eyes like burning coals raked over my face, searching out my expression. I kept it pretty neutral.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“He shouldn’t have bothered you.” I gave a one-shouldered shrug. “I’m fine.”
He put a hand on my shoulder and gave it a squeeze, a frown crushing his brow and says, “Don’t ever think that any one of my guys coming to me and expressing concern over another is ever ‘bothering me.’ Don’t get it twisted, Smoke. We’re a fuckin’ family here.”
I nodded, feeling thoroughly chastened, the first stirrings of shame making me itch.
“My bad,” I said and nodded, unable to bring myself to look at my president.
“What about Eden?” he asked me and I did look up sharply at that.
“What about her?” I asked, brow wrinkling with a need to know just what he was getting at.
“Come sit down with me.” He jerked his head in the direction of the tables out in the common room. “The rest of you fuck off and mind your business,” he said with a grin.
Slice and Disney turned away and started talking bikes, and I shook my head but took my beer with me as Dray guided me over to a far table by the window. The lights out in the parking lot were shining through the stained-glass mosaic of the club’s logo and I got a big dose of nostalgia. Looking at that window made the room feel more like a chapel than anything else. I think that’s why we still held it in here. We had every opportunity to build a new meeting room out off the back, but instead, we’d expanded the media room for the kids and the women to keep them out of our business we continued to conduct in here.
“It’s time to stop pretending, Sage,” Dray said kindly once we’d sat down. The use of my legal name caught me off guard.
“Stop pretending about what?” I asked slowly.
“Eedee,” he said simply. “You know that girl’s been absolutely mad about you since she was something like six years old.”
I shook my head and looked at the bottle between my hands, peeling back the label.
“It’s not like that,” I said. “Eden’s just a kid.”
Dray snapped his fingers, and I looked up sharply.
“Time to stop pretending,” he said with a little more vehemence. “She’s not a little girl anymore. Just like Maren was no more a child when she got with Nox.”
I flinched at that and scowled. Dray leaned back in his seat.
“That’s it, isn’t it?” he asked.
“That’s what?” I demanded, knowing pretty much exactly what he was fuckin’ talking about but wanting to deny it anyway.