by Aubrey Irons
Yoko much?
You’re just so wrapped up in your fucking books and your fucking classes that you just don’t know what it means to be spontaneous.
I scowl into the beer in my hands, my face scrunched up and my brow furrowed as those two assholes’ words tumble through my head.
Fuck Jayson. I can be perfectly spontaneous, thank you very much. Even if I don’t count my spontaneous bout of arson earlier - and I’d rather not - I’m not the complete shut-in bookworm he seems to think I am.
Please, I’ve got it. I can be spontaneous, and fun, and wild, and-
And that’s when I look up and see him just as he steps into the bar.
I’d say he’s gorgeous, but gorgeous doesn’t quite cover it. Gorgeous makes him sound pretty or primped to perfection, and he’s neither of those things.
The man is dark and brooding, like a storm cloud rolling onto a shore. He’s tall and broad-shouldered, and even though the lighting is terrible in this place, I can still see how dark his hair and his eyes are. The dim light of the place only accentuates the deep shadows across his face - the strong, chiseled jaw, the hollows of his cheeks, the way his brow furrows as he scans the room.
He’s across the bar, and when he suddenly looks up, the light catches something fierce and something piercing in his eyes. And mine are hooked on him. My eyes can’t seem to look away as they drink in the storm clouds of his face, the lightning in his eyes.
Those utterly perfect lips.
The tattoo ink on his neck, peeking out of the collar of his tight black t-shirt and leather jacket.
My gut clenches and my throat tightens, and I quickly bring the beer to my lips and swallow. My eyes are wide, following him as he effortlessly pushes his way through the crowd.
The man has bad decisions and wonderful regrets written all over his hardened, beautifully grim face.
And something ignites inside of me.
I reach for the shot in front of me and slam it back, feeling the room spin and lurch as I stumble from the bar stool.
Fuck it.
Fuck this place, fuck this night, and fuck Jayson and Max and fuck not being spontaneous enough.
I lurch through the crowd, realizing people are looking at me funny, realizing I’m sure I look as drunk as I feel but not really caring. I push past the final people between us, and then he’s right in front of me, his head turned as if looking at something in the back of the room.
My heart skips a beat, but I force myself onward. I stagger up to him and grab his leather jacket. He bristles as he whips his head down to look at me, leveling those piercing, haunting dark eyes at mine.
“Uh, hey,” I say it coyly. Or at least, I hope I say it coyly. I hope it doesn’t actually sound as completely stupid to him as it sounds to me as it leaves my mouth.
His eyes narrow at me. He says nothing.
Fuck he’s tall. Tall and big. Broad chest, broad shoulders, biceps bulging under the sleeves of his jacket.
I swallow.
This was a mistake.
No, it wasn’t.
“Yes?” he growls quietly, his thick baritone voice like gravel in my ears.
Fuck that’s hot.
I don’t know why I think it, and this isn’t remotely the kind of man I go for. I go for guys who imitate guys like this - guys who buy their leather jackets at expensive brand name stores, who get meaningless tattoos just to make them look tougher.
This man is the real deal.
He’s dangerous looking and criminally attractive in a way that sets off warning bells. Warning bells that I blatantly ignore.
“Um-”
I’m not actually sure what the plan was, beyond storming my way over here like I had a purpose. But then, that’s the point, right? To be spontaneous?
The point, there is no plan, not anymore. Because I’m saying no to plans.
And I’m saying yes to crazy, stupid ideas. Ideas like getting drunk and burning my ex-boyfriend’s garage down. Or, say, stalking up to random hot guys in bars and kissing them.
Which is exactly what I do next.
He freezes as I yank him down by the t-shirt and mash my lips to his. Freezes, that is, before he comes alive.
I gasp as he responds, his arms slipping around me and pulling me tight to that hard, firm body. My head spins as his perfect, soft lips part, and he growls as his tongue seeks mine hungrily. His stubble tickles my lip, and I find myself opening my mouth for him as he demands entrance.
Holy. Shit.
The crowds disappear, all the bullshit fades away, and the floor drops out beneath me.
It feels like I’m free falling - like I’m not even touching the ground there in his arms as my tongue eagerly seeks his. His hands are strong, one cupping the small of my back and the other firmly on my jaw. And my crazy kiss — my insane and my booze-fueled mistake ends up being the hottest, most toe-curling kiss I’ve ever had in my life.
And just as fast as I yanked him to my lips, he pulls away, leaving me gasping, my lips still moving as if missing his kiss. I open my eyes, cheeks flushed, and I see him smirk.
“I-”
And I’m completely out of the trance, completely out of my element, and completely at a loss of what to say next. Instead, I turn, and without another crazy word or insane action, I make a beeline for the bathroom.
I catch my breath by the sink, panting and running cold water over my hands.
I’m drunk.
I’m too drunk actually.
I cup my hand beneath the faucet, bringing the water to my lips and swishing it around before spitting it out. It tastes terrible, like old copper pipes.
I yank my phone out of my purse, squinting with one eye shut as I swipe it open and thumb my contacts.
I should call one of my sisters.
Well, except almost everyone’s gone - off on vacation together. My parents, my sister Ivy and her husband Silas, both my brothers and their respective significant others — Kyle with his fiancée Vivian, and Rowan and his wife, Eva. Everyone’s at the Grand freaking Canyon, like some fucking Chevy Chase movie.
Stella, my oldest sister, is still around, but I can’t bother her with this shit. Actually, I haven’t been able to bother anyone with this shit, which is why I’m in this free fall. I’ve spent two months in a tailspin, panicking about my choices in life, and where I’m going, and wasting my time with Jayson and my bizarre new hobby of Pinterest boarding vacation spots — both of them just time-fillers.
But this is rock bottom.
I mean, I just set a garage on fire.
I laugh out loud, still too drunk to be that embarrassed when a girl comes out of one of the stalls and gives me a strange look. I start to type out a message to Stella but I stop.
She doesn’t need to hear my sob story. I mean, Stella’s the one that dropped out of college and had the kid young, all that shit. I’m the one that stuck to it, made the right choices, picked the right classes, got the right grades, the right friends, the right college, and then the right graduate school. Hell, I still go home on weekends sometimes to have dinner with my parents.
So, there’s a reason Stella’s always saying I’m the “together” one. Hell, everyone says that which is probably half the problem.
But with all the “right choices”, I’ve got nothing to show for it. Nothing except the anxiety of it all weighing me down, the frozen indecision, and the therapist I haven’t called back in two months while I’ve been basically avoiding classes.
I put the phone away, my shoulders slumping.
I should go.
Outside the bathroom, the crowd starts to go nuts, and I cringe as I hear the guitars start to blare.
Shit.
I’m trying not to think about the fact that starting that fire tonight was a crime - like a serious one, I think.
I open the bathroom door a crack and glance out, seeing the tattooed hipsters cheering and jumping around to Jayson and his band’s shitty music. I duck out, but instead o
f heading back into the bar, I veer down the dark hallway to my left.
No way am I leaving through the bar. I can’t face that music —pun unintended.
Instead, I grip the wall with one hand, stumbling on my heels as I slip down the hallway, figuring there has to be a back door.
I try one that’s locked, past another that says men’s room. I jump out of the way as a bearded guy wearing a Red Sox t-shirt jerks the door open, looking at me quizzically as I whirl and stumble further down the hallway.
I round the corner and spot the final door.
This has to be it.
The walls spin slightly as I stumble down the dark hallway, my stomach churning. I’m getting the hell out of here, getting in a cab, and going home. I’m done with the screaming, and the drinking, and the setting fires, and the kissing gorgeous, dangerously sexy strangers in shitty bars.
Tomorrow, I’ll figure out what the hell I’m going to do with the tornado I’ve just let loose on my life.
I grip the doorknob and twist, sighing with relief as it turns.
Thank God.
I push the hair out of my face as I slam it open, and rush out into the-
Not outside.
I stumble through the door, just in time to see the man across the room double over, his shirt suddenly blooming red.
This is all wrong.
My heart catches, my eyes dart around the room, and my blood freezes.
And then everything happens in slow motion.
The man across the room from me falls, and I turn my head to see two other dangerous looking men staring right at me before they turn and start to run out of a side door.
There’s a popping sound, and one of them splays out in slow motion against the wall, blood spattering over a stack of cardboard boxes.
The room spins.
My stomach heaves, I whirl-
And I catch those eyes.
His eyes.
My stranger.
The man I kissed.
The man whose lips I lost myself in.
The one who’s holding a gun - the same gun he’s just used to shoot the man running from the room.
My voice catches, and suddenly, he’s striding towards me, and this time, it’s not sexy dangerous, it’s just fucking terrifying.
“No! Please! I-”
Those powerful arms go around me again, but I’m not falling into him this time. I’m not losing myself in those eyes and opening my lips for his tongue this time.
This time, my scream is catching like ice in my throat as he spins me around and yanks me hard against his chest, his arms wrapping tightly around my throat.
I try and scream, but the sound won’t come. I try and fight, but it’s like I’m drowning in ice water as the fear comes up to wrap its fingers around my heart.
The gun goes to my head.
“Not a fucking sound,” he growls.
His arm tightens around my throat, and he kicks the door shut.
“You just walked into the wrong fucking room, princess.”
Chapter Three
Connor
I frown as I step into the bar, eyes scanning the packed room of hipsters and college kids. It’s been a slow build over the years, but it still throws me off to see a place like the Rusty Duck actually having customers. Let alone ones that are willing to pay five bucks for a shitty beer poured by a salty bartender who hates them, because of irony.
Jesus Christ, kids today.
Back when I was a kid, this place - and really the rest of Southie - was a fuckin’ dump. And I don’t mean a cool dump, I mean a legitimately terrible bar that even scummed out the scumbags.
I have absolutely no idea how the fuck they stayed open all these years, but the recent slow creep of gentrification in this neighborhood has suddenly brought business to their front door.
Fuckin’ hipsters.
I tighten my jaw as I shoulder my way through the crowd, pushing guys with ironic facial hair and girls showing more skin than they should in this neighborhood out of the way.
I hate that the meet is set for this place, tonight of all fucking nights. It’s been damn near eight years, and I’d still just as soon erase this date from the calendar year.
Tonight is supposed to be a peace talk, but still, there are entirely too many people in this place for this to be happening here. A glance at a neon piece of paper taped to a grungy wall tells me there’s a band playing here tonight - a bunch of young guys who look like they’re trying entirely too hard to look tough.
And it’s not even this place that’s got me annoyed at this fucking sit-down, it’s that I hate meetings in general. I don’t do meetings, and that’s usually more than understood by people who know me.
Fucking Ukrainians.
I keep politics out of my job. The only times I give a shit who’s got a beef with who is if it affects me, or the Dark Saints, or my ability to do a job. Under any normal circumstances, I couldn’t give less of a shit about Anton Boiko - the head of the Ukrainian presence in Boston - having a bone to pick with the nephew of Vadim Petrov, the head of the Russian syndicate. I mean, I understand at a base level that Ukrainians and Russians get along about as famously as my Irish roots and the English, but that’s where my giving a shit about geopolitics ends.
Until it affects my neighborhood, that is. Until Vadim, who the Dark Saints have a truce with, and Anton, who we don’t, start tracking their bullshit blood feud through Southie.
Then it becomes my business real fast.
And seeing as I’m a captain these days, it falls on me to be the one to sit these assholes down and get this shit sorted out.
It’s also on me because of the three head captains, I’m the only one who both parties involved will actually meet with. Liam’s still on the shit-list with Anton after getting in a bar brawl with a couple drunk Ukrainians a few months back, and Damien - well, Damien has a way of putting his dick where it doesn’t belong, and Vadim’s nineteen-year-old niece is pretty much the definition of “where it doesn’t belong.”
So that leaves me. Tonight. Dealing with fucking politics.
I’m no diplomat or smooth talker. Hell, I’m not even much of a talker at all, because not being a talker goes a long way with what I do for the Saints.
I’m the fix-it man. No, I don’t mean leaky sinks or squeaky doors. I’m the guy you call when you need a mess taken care of. I’m the guy that gets rid of the evidence, who cleans up the bodies, who makes the problem go away.
And somehow, it’s on me to negotiate this peace agreement.
Wonderful.
Of course, we couldn’t have this meeting at a quiet, out of the way place. No, we’re at a goddamn rock show. Yes, this place was picked for it being neutral ground - the fact that it’s on the edge of Saints’ territory and not actually affiliated with us. But still. Someplace that wasn’t full of people might be a better setting.
I push my way towards the bar to grab a drink while I wait for Mikhail, the Russian representative, to show up. After that, we can head to the back room to have this stupid meeting with Anton’s guys.
I frown as this bubbly blonde girl with pink streaks in her hair careens into me, giggling as she spills beer all over my boot.
“Oh my God, I love your jacket!” she gushes.
Run along, little girl.
“Where did you get it?”
I frown. “A store.”
She laughs. “Which store, sill-”
“Excuse me, I’m meeting someone.”
I physically push her aside, ignoring the huffing sound she makes as I stalk towards the bar.
And that’s when I spot her.
Her.
She’s gorgeous, in this fragile, delicate way.
Tiny.
Young.
My eyes narrow across the dark room at her, feeling my pulse quicken and my jaw tighten as I take her in. She’s out of place, and innocent-looking in a way that places like this devour.
Blood thunders in
my ear as I drink her in.
Dark hair cascading over her shoulders, curves in the very best places, and soft, pouty lips that brush against the mouth of the lucky fucking beer bottle in her hand. She’s got the leather jacket, the tiny, flirty skirt, and the biker-style boots, but she’s not the kind of girl that comes to places like this, I can tell just by looking at her.
And I am very good at reading people like this.
The thing is, she’s trying too hard, like she’s attempting to impress someone, even though I can’t imagine a single dipshit here she should be wasting her time trying to impress.
Someone knocks into me from behind, and I growl as I whirl.
“Hey bro.” The blonde kid is making I’m sure what he thinks is his best “tough guy” face. And I’m sure he thinks having two friends giving me the same look behind him is intimidating.
It’s not.
“Can I help you?”
“How about an apology?”
“For?”
I give him a once-over, my face neutral but grinning on the inside at his skinny hipster jeans and the tattoo of a fucking owl on his forearm, which I’m sure literally means nothing.
This should be interesting.
“For pushing my girl, buddy. She asked you a simple question. No one asked you to put your hands on her.”
I level my gaze at him. “That was me asking her to move. Trust me, if I put my hands on her, she’d have a hard time forgetting it.”
His eyes narrow at me, his lip curling.
Oh, this should definitely be fun.
“You looking for some trouble, buddy?” He spits.
“Why, have you seen any?”
He bristles, clearly realizing I don’t consider him a threat.
“Bro, there are three of us, just so you fuckin’ know.”
I smile. “Great. Now go find two more and we’ll call it an even fight.”
He laughs. “You want me to find two guys to fight for you?”
“For you.”
He scowls, and even though I wish I could keep this up, this isn’t the night for getting into it with hipster college douchebags. This is a work night.
I’m turning, deciding to ignore him and his little friends, when I feel the hand on me.