I was just promising myself I’d leave after this last, cheap Coors when I heard the heavy footfalls of a pair of boots approaching our table. I shifted my gaze and caught Ash out of the corner of my eye, ambling through the sparse copse of patrons with more swagger than usual. Damn, maybe he really was getting laid.
“There he is,” I said, as Ash pulled out his chair. He sat, and I asked him, “How’s the syphilis?”
“Fuck you,” Ash answered. Witty—I’d expected nothing less. He grabbed the wrist of a cute chick wearing an employee t-shirt stretched tight over her double-D tits, stopping her dead in her tracks. “Hey, babe, you mind grabbin’ me some whiskey? On the rocks.”
Now, if I’d done that to a girl, she would’ve screamed bloody goddamn murder and probably hit me. Caused a whole scene and got me thrown out of the bar. But not Ash. When he manhandled a woman, she got all giggly and goo-goo-eyed and practically spat out her number like an ATM receipt. This particular chick was no exception.
She smiled wide, her glossy lips parting over perfect, white teeth. “Sure thing, handsome. Any kind in particular?”
“Surprise me,” Ash said, flashing her a wolfish grin. The blonde tittered and scampered away on her too-tall pumps, hips swinging, a spring in her step.
I snorted. “Whatever they’ve got layin’ around, huh?” Ash answered with a shrug, like nothing in the world could bother him tonight. That pissed me off even more. He’d left us hanging for a good hour, and now he had the audacity to be unflappable? Fuck him. I took a pull from my bottle. “Well, you always were a man of discerning tastes.”
“At least I have some,” he replied, following Wyatt’s gaze to the TV screen in the corner. “Real men drink liquor, Reid. Not Coors. And whatever the hell this is.” He turned Wyatt’s bottle around so he could see the label. “Pabst?”
Wyatt, in the first display of giving a shit I’d seen from him tonight, pulled his beer away from Ash’s grasp. “Fuck you. I like PBR just fine.”
Ash held up his hands disarmingly. “No skin off of my nose, bro. I’m just saying that if I didn’t know any better, I’d have to check your ID right now to make sure you weren’t a stack of toddlers sneaking in here dressed up in their daddy’s wife-beater and jeans. You know who drinks PBR?” Without waiting for an answer, Ash continued, “Hipsters. And nobody over the age of four.”
“It’s cheap and it gets the job done. And anyway, how the fuck do you imagine a stack of toddlers are gonna sneak in here wearing a wife-beater? They’d need a trench coat or some shit, at least.”
The waitress returned and set Ash’s tumbler down in front of him. He thanked her with a wink, then said, “I call out your manhood, and you’re worried about the realistic quality of the costume a pack of hypothetical toddlers are wearing? Damn, Wyatt. That’s fascinating.”
“You know what’s not fascinating?” I said, setting my beer down hard enough to make the girl at the next table over jump in her seat. “This conversation. Which we could’ve been having an hour ago, if you gave a rat’s ass about wasting my time.”
“C’mon, Reid,” Ash said, grinning and spreading his arms wide. “This is family night. You and your friends can play with your Hot Wheels anytime.”
“Fuck you,” I sneered.
Ash shook his head and took a drink. “Well, now that we’ve all got our fuck you’s out of the way, we can talk about the important things.” He eyed Wyatt hard. “Like how baby bro is well on his way to becoming a grade-A fuck-up.”
Wyatt sucked his teeth. “Come on, you said you wouldn’t harp on this shit.”
I frowned. “Why? What did you do now?”
When Wyatt didn’t answer me, Ash continued, “Some of the Bright Falls Beasts’ prospects got busted a couple weeks ago for startin’ shit with one of their rival clubs—and in broad fuckin’ daylight, too. This genius…” Here, he pointed at Wyatt. “…got picked up with the rest of them.”
“Fuck’s sakes, Wyatt,” I said, narrowing my eyes. “Are you trying to put targets on all our backs again?”
“I didn’t do nothin’ wrong,” he insisted, fingers curled so tight around his beer his knuckles had turned white. Kid always did have a temper, and Ash knew just what buttons to press to make him go nuclear. From what I could see, he was dangerously close to entering in the launch codes now. “I was just hangin’ around when shit happened to go south. That’s all.”
Ash and I exchanged looks. Maybe Wyatt was a grown-ass man—barely—but damn if he didn’t still act like the kid who used to get the worst of our father’s belt. You’d think that would’ve made Wyatt want to distance himself from the kind of shit dear old Dad used to get into, but for years now, Ash and I had spent practically every waking moment making sure our youngest brother didn’t follow in Pops’ footsteps.
It made no fucking sense. I’d always figured since Wyatt was so young when Dad went away, we’d gotten him out of that life of crime early enough to make a difference. If anything, it should’ve been me and Ash who had a hard time adjusting to life outside the criminal underbelly, but in comparison to Wyatt, we were adjusting fine. I shook my head, mystified, and not for the first time. Why Wyatt was so keen to self-destruct was something I’d probably never figure out.
Wyatt broke the silence when he muttered, “They’re not even gonna charge me with anything, okay? Lay off.” But that wasn’t good enough for Ash, who had a way of making us both furious with his whole “surrogate father” act.
We’d even made it into a drinking game, once. So whenever Ash leaned forward and pointed a finger at Wyatt, scowling, his chest puffed out, Wyatt and I both knocked back our beers in tandem and settled in for another one of Ash’s signature lectures.
“I get it, Wyatt. It’s not exactly easy to get by in a shithole like Bright Falls. Especially if the living you’re trying to make is an honest one. I understand the allure of a job where you can make the kind of money Dad used to pull in, where if you keep your nose to the grindstone, you don’t have to answer to anyone but yourself.”
Begrudgingly, I nodded in agreement. Ash was right. Once upon a time, that was exactly what had drawn us all into Dad’s little schemes. That, and it was the family business. We were the Brody Bunch: me, Ash, Wyatt, and Pops. The most notorious bad-asses this side of the Rio Grande. Only the cartels down in Mexico rivaled the cruelty of Pops’ MC, or its scope. The Bright Falls Beasts had catered to the dark desires of damn near the whole west coast, with chapters thriving from Arizona to Mon-fuckin’-tana, plus a few smaller ones settling into Oregon and Washington. Pops was damn near responsible for an empire.
But you know what empires do best, don’t you?
They fall.
We were just lucky that when it all came crashing down, we didn’t get caught in the crossfire—the shootout between the founding chapter of the Beasts and the Feds. The one that could’ve made Waco and Ruby Ridge look like the stuff of after-school specials, by comparison.
I was fourteen when it all went down. Wyatt was just eleven. Ash had been eighteen for a whole three days. Out of all of us, he had the most to lose. His family. His future. His freedom.
That didn’t stop him from fighting tooth and claw for us, though. He even managed to get custody so we wouldn’t end up bouncing around between foster homes. We might not have made out so good, if he hadn’t. Wyatt and I could’ve been separated, and as much as I wanted to knock him upside his head right now, it would’ve been a disaster. We were family. Blood. It was ride or die with us. And if this little intervention was any indication, it still was.
I just wished we could get through to him. Maybe it was because he was too young to really remember how bad things were, or to really understand what we all could’ve lost ‘cause of Pops’ lust for money and blood, but whatever it was, it was obvious Ash and I were going to have to nip it in the bud. Now.
“When are you gonna get it through your head that Pops wasn’t some kind of outlaw hero?” I asked Wyatt, keeping my voice l
ow. Nobody needed to know our business but us, and that went double for anything having to do with our father. “He was a goddamn drug dealer, Wyatt. A murderer. A psycho.”
“You talk about him like he worked some corner for some low-level gangbangers,” Wyatt hissed in reply. “He ran a fucking empire, Reid. Like Escobar, or…”
“Plenty of assholes have run empires,” Ash interjected sternly. “Hitler, for example.”
Wyatt was seething. The muscle in his jaw pulsed. He looked about ready to hit something, or someone. Maybe flip the table. I pulled my beer off it, just in case. “Dad was not Hitler.”
Ash shrugged. “Stalin, then.”
“Okay, okay,” I said, holding up my hands disarmingly. “That’s enough hyperbole. Wyatt, I get what you’re saying. I do. Pops worked hard to get where he did, and he was a powerful man, but he wasn’t a good man, and therein lies the problem. Look where he ended up. Is that what you want for your life?” Petulantly, Wyatt refused to answer. I growled. “Well, it’s sure as hell not what me and Ash want for you.”
“Whatever,” Wyatt said at last, and that was the end of that. For now, anyway. I got the distinct impression that this shit was gonna come up over and over, just like it had for the past few years.
I shot Ash a glance over the table, then shifted my gaze pointedly to Wyatt, encouraging our eldest brother to give it a shot. To say something, anything that would get our favorite asshole to listen to reason. As much as I hated to admit it, Ash was pretty good at that stuff. He’d had to be; he was our guardian.
But he just shrugged. Held his hands out, palms up. He had nothing to offer. Fuck. And here I was, hoping we could fix this shit once and for all. Now all that was left to do was to finish our drinks in awkward silence. The only alternative was for one of us to strangle Wyatt into unconsciousness and hope the ensuing brain damage would change his mind in our favor.
I glanced at him again and saw he wasn’t looking at the TV anymore. He wasn’t looking at me or Ash, either. Wyatt had turned his attention to something over my left shoulder, but he was doing it furtively, turning his eyes in a way that was just a little too casual to actually be casual.
I turned my head and looked. It wasn’t often something could distract Wyatt from a temper tantrum. And then I realized he wasn’t staring at something. He was staring at someone.
And she was goddamn beautiful.
Her big, doe-like eyes were the first thing I noticed about her. Fettered by thick lashes, they were wide and round, like she’d never been in a bar before and was utterly amazed by the idea that people drank beer and watched sports sometimes. Then I noticed her strawberry-blonde hair, the perfect fucking shade, peeking out from underneath a gasp of white frill that looked like some kind of bonnet—what the hell was that about? I frowned as I took in the rest of her get-up. This chick looked like she’d walked out of some kind of Colonial Times reenactment, or some shit. Christ, her dress went all the way down to her ankles. But I could tell from the way she carried herself that she had a pair of absolutely killer legs underneath that full skirt. Probably a set of hips that would kill a man with their sway, too.
I gave Wyatt a sideways glance, but he wasn’t paying any attention to me. He was still staring at the girl. I felt a twinge of annoyance. That boy was chasing cars. He’d have no idea what to do with her if he ever caught her.
But me? Well, that was a different story. And maybe one-upping Wyatt on this would show him who was boss.
I was just turning to check her out again when Ash said, “So, I see you two have finally noticed we’re not the only ones in the room.”
“Finally?” I said, slinging an arm over the back of my chair. Ash regarded me with a smirk. Of course. He’d known they were there all along. That was what Ash did best—noticed women.
“Yeah,” Wyatt said slowly, his ears a little red. He seemed embarrassed to have been caught. “Wonder what those clothes are all about. What’s their story?”
“ ‘Their’?” I repeated, scrunching up my face. Before I could question further, Ash cut in.
“Uh, yeah, Reid. There’s three chicks over there.” He cocked an eyebrow at me. “Didn’t you see ‘em?”
I whirled probably a little too fast for my own good. Holy shit, he was right. There were three of them over there, but somehow I’d only noticed her. What the hell was wrong with me? She wasn’t even the only one wearing a weird dress. Right next to her was a shorter, younger-looking girl with hair the color of fresh-plucked straw, tucked up under the same kind of bonnet that looked like it belonged in a museum. She wasn’t quite as wide-eyed as the girl I’d set eyes on, but she had a pretty pair—a shade of blue bordering on aquamarine. She was rocking on the balls of her feet, hands moving as she talked, clearly excited about something. I realized that she was the one Wyatt had singled out, not the girl who’d caught my eye, and lowered my hackles.
The third chick looked like she actually belonged here, but when coupled with the other two, stuck out like a sore thumb. Her hair was bonnet-free and a darker shade than the first two, maybe dyed, for all I knew. Styled in soft waves, very modern-looking, the kind of girl I’d expect to see here. She had green eyes that flashed whenever they caught in the light and was wearing a pair of skinny jeans she looked like she’d been poured into. Ash’s eyes were trained on her alone. So predictable, going for the easy prey.
Some of us were better than that. Some of us liked a challenge, the thrill of the chase. In my mind, Ash’s player status was completely undeserved. He always took the easy way out. Maybe I hadn’t stuck my dick in as many women as he had, but then again, I had standards.
“I think they might be Amish,” Ash said to Wyatt while I was checking out the lineup. “I’ve seen a few buggies on the outskirts of town. They’ve got a village there. Usually I only see men.”
“Wonder what the hell they’re doin’ here,” Wyatt murmured.
“Yeah, thought they were, like… insular, or some shit. Isolationist,” I said. I didn’t know much about the Amish, but I at least knew that.
“They are,” Ash said. “Normally. But here they are.” He finished off his whiskey. “Why don’t we go ask them?”
I snorted. “What, just like that? Aren’t they über-religious, or something? They’re not gonna fall for some cheesy pick-up line like ‘What’s a girl like you doing in a place like this?’ Do they even speak English?”
“Good question.” Ash rose. “I think I’m gonna find out.”
“You’re serious?” Wyatt said, turning to him. “Reid’s right. Girls like that, they’re… out of our league. Shit, they’re playing a whole different game.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “Speak for yourself.”
“That’s not what I meant,” Wyatt hissed back. “But look at ‘em. Except for the tall one, they look like goddamn nuns. We’d be barkin’ up the wrong tree.”
“Maybe you two losers would be,” Ash said, smoothing his hair. “But not me. I don’t strike out.”
“That’s because you don’t swing for the stands,” I sneered, “or the curve balls. You take the low, slow pitch every time.”
“What’s wrong, Reid?” Ash asked, a grin splitting his face. “You afraid of a little competition? Does it piss you off that I could walk over there, right now, and have all three girls eating out of the palm of my hand, just like that?” He snapped his fingers dangerously close to my face. Dangerously, because if he’d left them there a second longer I would have broken them.
“Fuck off,” I said, also rising from my seat. “There’s a lot of words I’d use to describe you, Ash, but ‘competition’ isn’t one of them.” I’d seen my brother do some crazy shit when it came to women, but getting all three of them into bed, especially two church mice? Bullshit. Wasn’t gonna happen.
“Oh, really?” Ash said. “Don’t suppose you’d care to bet on it?”
“On what?” Wyatt asked, turning his attention to us again. “On all three of them?”
&
nbsp; “Nah, that’d be way too hard for you two,” Ash answered. “We’ll go for one each. Whoever gets one of those three girls into bed first, wins.”
This was absurd. “Wins what?” I asked him.
Ash shrugged. “Respect. Bragging rights. Shit, if it’s you, Reid, I won’t call you a pussy for a whole year. How’s that sound? If you don’t, though, it’s all I’m gonna call you. Same goes for if you don’t take the bet.”
I glowered at him. “You can’t possibly be serious.”
“I’m dead serious. Pussy.”
I ran a hand through my hair and looked back at the girls at the bar. For a moment, I couldn’t decide what I wanted more: the one with the strawberry-blonde hair, or to pick up my chair and crack it over Ash’s skull. Only one of those wouldn’t land me in jail… probably.
“Whatever,” I said, both a dismissal and sign of acceptance. “I call dibs on the one with the freckles.”
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