Knife & Flesh (The Night Horde SoCal Book 4)

by Susan Fanetti

  But she had, and she’d loved it, and people had loved her, and they really paid attention to her when she sang.

  She liked this place for more than that, though. The casual vibe was the best part. People weren’t constantly judging the people around them; they were just having a good time. The clubs with rope lines sucked—having to audition to go inside a bar to drink and dance. Whose dumb idea had that been?

  The Deck was more fun. She could wear jeans—stylish jeans, of course—and be comfortable and just have a good time. And sing when she wanted.

  On this night, she and Trick were late—maybe the last ones in, though Juliana didn’t know everyone well enough to know if that were true. They had a big block of tables near the stage. It was Saturday night, so there was live music, a classic rock cover band, and it was loud. No karaoke tonight.

  Connor and Pilar’s party was almost louder than the band. When Trick led her to the tables, his hand on her waist, she scanned the rowdy group. Most people seemed familiar, and it was an overwhelmingly male crowd. She could count all the women on one hand: Pilar, Faith, a slender blonde with Asian features, and another Latina woman. The blonde was comfortably wrapped around a guy in a kutte, so Juliana assumed she was one of the Horde women. About half the men wore kuttes.

  The band announced a break just as they reached the tables, and the sound level dropped sharply. She exchanged nods and smiles with the people she knew: Lakota, Sherlock, Demon, Faith, Connor, Pilar—and Bart, whom she’d met earlier, at his house. Riley Chase’s husband. He smiled and lifted his glass as she waved awkwardly.

  Trick introduced her to the people she didn’t know. The blonde was Sid. Her ‘old man’ was Muse. There was Jesse, and Fargo. Keanu. Diaz. And then Trick turned to Pilar, who picked up the introductions of the people not in kuttes. These were her firefighter friends. The other Latina woman was Stephanie. Eric. Ron.

  Juliana’s eyes landed on a face she should have expected to see but somehow hadn’t: Kyle Moore. Surprised, stupidly so, she took a step back. Trick’s hand was still on her waist, and she felt more than saw him turn to give her a sharp look.

  “Julie.” Kyle’s voice was as blank as his expression.

  She tried on a smile and hoped it looked normal. “Hi, Kyle.” Why was she feeling guilty? They’d dated a few weeks, it hadn’t worked out, The End. He was a nice guy. But guilt or something like it had made her chest feel funny, and the way everybody was staring at them, moving back and forth between them, wasn’t making her feel any calmer. Trick’s suddenly rigid arm at her back wasn’t helping, either.

  “You two know each other?” he asked, in that impassive voice that meant he was a riot of emotions.

  “Yeah,” Kyle answered. “Yeah, we do.”

  Juliana turned to Trick. “We used to see each other. A little. Last year.”

  His thoughts played out on his face, and she watched him make sense of it and come to terms with it. Finally, he nodded. “Ah. Right.” Then he turned to Kyle and gave him a friendly, one-sided grin. “Sorry, man.”

  Kyle put his hands up in a gesture that obviously meant no offense taken, and Juliana relaxed.

  When she came face to face with Pilar again, Connor’s ‘old lady’ was grinning like she’d just seen the funniest thing ever.

  Trick looked less amused and still curious, but basically okay. His eyes didn’t have that busy look they got when his face went still. Kyle looked downright hurt.

  How stupid not to realize that Pilar’s firefighter friends, including Kyle, could be at this party for her and Connor. Juliana supposed she’d been lulled by Pilar’s lack of awareness of her connection to Kyle.

  There were several bottles of whiskey and tequila and a half dozen pitchers of beer spread across the tables. Juliana sat down on the empty chair at her side, leaving Trick standing where he was. She grabbed an empty glass from a stack and pulled a pitcher over.

  She needed to be drinking.

  ~oOo~

  “These steps are too high.” Her hands stung and her knees ached, vaguely, and she tried to turn and sit on the step she’d just tripped up.

  She felt Trick’s hands under her arms, and then she was being lifted up.

  “If you hadn’t left your keys at Bart and Riley’s, we could have stayed at your place. C’mon, we’re almost there.”

  “Riley—I met Riley Chase tonight. She’s nice. She’s really, really tiny. I could fit her in my pocket.” That was the funniest thing Juliana thought she’d said in a long time, so she laughed.

  “Yes, Riley is nice and also tiny. Can you stand on your own for a sec while I get my keys back out?”

  “Did you lose your keys, too? Oh—Lucie! I lost Lucie! I have to find Lucie!” She turned and started back down the walkway, trying to remember where she’d left her daughter. What kind of mother lost her daughter? “LUCIE! LUCIE!”

  Trick grabbed her arm. “Hey—hey. Shhh, Jules. It’s okay. She’s safe. She’s at Bart and Riley’s, remember?”

  She’d met Riley Chase. The movie star. And TV star. Juliana loved Hades High and had the complete series on Blu-ray. “I met Riley Chase!”

  Trick sighed, and the world went wonky, and then she was draped over his arms. “Let’s get you into bed. You, my love, are a lightweight.”

  As he walked her into his apartment, she laughed and threw her arms around his neck. “You said love.”

  He stopped walking. She thought he was staring at her, but his face kept moving around too much and being blurry to be sure.

  Feeling absolutely euphoric, as light as air, and a teensy bit dizzy, she laid her head on his shoulder. “You’re my love, too.”

  ~oOo~

  “Oh my God, I’m so sorry,” Juliana groaned and sat back, away from the toilet. Still holding her hair, Trick put down the lid and flushed.

  “It’s fine, honey.” Releasing her hair, he handed her a wad of toilet paper, and she used it to blow her nose and wipe her face. Then she dropped it in the toilet and flushed again.

  God, she felt like roadkill. Old roadkill.

  “It’s not fine. It’s gross. I can’t believe I got so drunk.”

  “The booze was flowing. Everybody got drunk. It was the plan. That’s why the bus picked us up.”

  She racked her brain, trying to make the night clear up in her head. She remembered having a really good time. Really good. Being loud. Sitting on Trick’s lap, making out. Trying to do more and having him set her aside.

  “You didn’t get drunk, though. Did you?”

  “No. Not too much.”

  “Why not?”

  He shrugged. “I had plenty on Friday. And you started drinking hard and fast. Everybody was getting wrecked. Thought it might be good to keep a level head. The Deck gets rowdy, and it was the wrong night for a brawl.” Laughing, he added, “We were the rowdiest tonight, though. Takes a lot to have Troy come over and ask us to settle down.”

  “Troy?”

  “Owner.”

  “Ah.” She burped, which tasted disgusting. “I need…um, do you have an extra toothbrush?”

  “I do. It’s a new head to my sonic. You ever used one?”

  “No, but how hard can it be to use a toothbrush?”

  With a sly grin, he stood and held out his hands. She took them and let him help her up.

  Standing was one of the hardest things she’d ever done in her life. The room became a centrifuge, and she would have fallen but for Trick’s arm around her waist. “Easy. I got ya.”

  “I’m really sorry. I keep puking on you.”

  “You didn’t puke on me this time, and it’s okay. Honest. I puked at your house, too, remember. It’s becoming our thing.”

  “We need a better thing.”

  After she brushed her teeth—and Trick laughed when his dental torture device scared the hell out her—he helped her back to bed and went to get her a glass of water. While he was gone, she lay in his bed and looked around. He had so many books. On the little, two-shelf bo
okcase at the side she was on was a pen and an open paperback, face down. She lifted up onto her elbows and, when the room settled again, read the cover: Hatred and Forgiveness, by Julia Kristeva.

  Already intimidated, she picked up the book, careful to preserve Trick’s place. She’d been assigned an essay by Kristeva in a philosophy class, and she hadn’t been able to understand much of it. Even after the class discussion, she hadn’t been much clearer. There had been a lot of talk of ‘abjection,’ she remembered that, but though she understood the word abjection, she hadn’t gotten a good grasp of what Kristeva meant by it. She’d skipped that essay option on the final.

  Juliana considered herself smart. She had a 3.7 GPA, even going to school around the challenges of work and life. But the thinkers Trick read and often quoted puzzled her—the ones she’d even heard of. And she was a philosophy minor.

  Holding his place, she flipped through the pages before it. He’d underlined passages and made notes in the margins in places. She ran her fingers over his handwriting—bold and heavy, an artist’s hand, the letters carved into the paper. She couldn’t keep up with a brain like his. He never seemed to stop thinking.

  “Have you read Kristeva?”

  She looked up to find him standing in the doorway, a clear glass of water in one hand and a bottle of aspirin or something in the other. There was a box of something under his arm, but she couldn’t figure out what it was.

  He wore only a dark pair of boxer briefs, the waistband seated below the wedge of his hip muscles. God, he was such a sight. Even in her gross, weakened, woozy state, she could appreciate how incredibly good he looked.

  Turning her attention back to his question, she answered, “I tried once. Just an essay, for a class. We didn’t spend much time on it. I couldn’t really get my head around her.”

  “Yeah, she’s hard. It takes me a long time to read her stuff, but I like a lot of what she says about how we react to what we project of ourselves onto other people.” He came into the room and set the glass and pills down. The box was saltine crackers.

  “What?”

  He took the book from her and closed it, folding the corner of his page over before he did so. “Probably not the best time to talk French psycho-philosophy with you. How’s your head?”

  “Hurts. But I’m not dumb.”

  “I know that. I didn’t say you were. Your brain is one of the hottest things about you.” He shook out a couple of pills and held them out with the glass. “Here. Take these.”

  “What are they?”

  “Just aspirin.” As she swallowed the pills, he opened the crackers and handed her a couple. “And these, for your tummy.”

  She smiled at his use of the word ‘tummy.’ “Grease would be better.”

  “We’ll do grease in the morning. Crackers for now.”

  “You’re letting me eat crackers in your bed?”

  “Looks like it.”

  She thought about where his book had been sitting. “And you gave me your side of the bed, too, didn’t you?”

  “Nope. I usually sleep in the middle.” He took the empty glass from her. “You want to try to sleep more?”

  Nibbling her crackers, she nodded, and he came around to the other side of the bed and slid back in. He turned off the light and settled in close to her, on his back. She brushed the crumbs from her hands onto the floor and turned to lay her head on his chest.

  “You really are a good people, Patrick.”

  He flinched. “Don’t call me that.”

  Surprised, she lifted her head so she could see his face. The quick movement made the room tilt, and he put his hand on her head and gently pushed her back to his chest. “Don’t make a deal out of it. Just don’t call me that. Please.”

  “Okay. I’m sorry.”

  He didn’t say anything, but she could tell by the way his body moved that he’d shaken his head, dismissing her apology.

  Maybe a minute later, his voice very low, he asked, “Is there something I need to know about Kyle Moore? He was not happy tonight.”

  That sparked a memory from earlier in the evening. Kyle had caught up with her as she was coming back from the bathroom. He’d had some pointed questions for her, and, if her sense of time was correct, he’d left almost right after.

  She’d already been having trouble walking a straight line by then, so she was probably not as careful with his feelings as she should have been. Damn.

  “We dated for a couple of months. About that long. He’s a nice guy. Really nice. But I broke it off when he wanted to get serious. I told him his job was too dangerous, and he wasn’t around enough, and I wanted a more stable life than that for Lucie.”

  “And now you’re with me.”

  “Yeah. He finds that…well, the word he used was ‘bullshit,’ but I think his point was that it was ironic. Or hypocritical. Take your pick.”

  Trick was quiet, and finally Juliana braved the tilt-a-whirl in her head and looked at him. “It’s different with you. Maybe it shouldn’t be—I mean, he’s a fireman, and you’re…”

  When she let the sentence die, he finished it for her. “An outlaw.”

  “Yeah. On paper, it looks like I have things out of whack. I have a voice in my head all the time trying to tell me I have things out of whack. But I didn’t feel for him what I feel for you. He never even met Lucie. I never felt close enough to something serious with him to let him meet her. You met her without me, and you treat her like how you feel about her has nothing to do with me. I don’t know if that has anything to do at all with how I feel, or even if it makes sense. But what I feel for you feels…important.”

  His eyes held hers, and his hand came up to cup her face. “I love you, Juliana.”

  She covered his hand with her own. “That is important. I love you, too.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Standing at Connor’s side near the altar, Trick looked around. He was a little disappointed. The Catholic church was a modern build, probably in the Seventies, and didn’t have the sense of history and gravitas he thought a place of worship should have. He could name a handful of buildings without religious purpose where he’d feel a stronger sense of spirituality.

  But the abstract stained glass behind the altar captured his attention. The sun shone through and cast a kaleidoscope of light over the altar and the crucifix suspended above it.

  His family hadn’t been particularly religious during his life, so he didn’t have a sense of religious history for himself. Even at thirty-four years old, he was still searching for that sense of meaning. He wasn’t an atheist; he hadn’t made up his mind enough for that—and he wanted not to be. Either despite of or because of his experiences, and his deep reading in philosophy, he wanted something greater than himself to believe in. He just hadn’t yet found any such thing he could trust.

  Connor fidgeted at his side, dragging the collar of his dress shirt away from his neck. “Fuck, I’m choking,” he muttered. They were both wearing black suits, white shirts, and grey ties. Connor had a white rose in his lapel. Trick’s was a pale orange hue, a little darker than peach.