Page 100 of A Real Goode Time
He peered at me, and I could tell he was as far gone as I was. “So…Rhys. You’re with Torie, right? Mama Livvie’s second-to-youngest.”
I shrugged, tipped my head. “Sort of. I’m here with her, yes.”
He laughed. “You’re here, you’re with her, so you’re here with her.” He clapped me on the back, and the teeth-jarring power of it was clearly a family trait. “Bro, just get one thing straight, a’ight? Once you’re in, you don’t leave. Not for good. It’s a thing. Nobody gets into this group and then just vanishes. Doesn’t happen. If Torie brought you, and Mama Livvie approves, you’re in. So, it may be complicated, but shit, dude, it ain’tthatcomplicated.”
“What I was going to ask was, is it always like this?” I gestured at the men.
He frowned, eyeing the bunch—there was an arm-wrestling match going on, with a lot of cheering by the onlookers. “Ehh? This is pretty chill. We’re going easy because this wedding thing is turning into a two-week ordeal, so we gotta pace ourselves.”
“This is chill?”
He nodded. “It gets pretty rowdy sometimes.”
I nodded. “It’s just weird. Nobody has gotten feisty, yet. Where I come from, a party ain’t a party till someone’s got a black eye.”
Bast shook his head, blowing a raspberry. “Hell, no, dude. We’re tight. Plus, there are some dangerous dudes in this group, and none of us want to risk that kind of damage on drunk-ass bullshit.” He gestured at one of the guys—shorter than Bast, resembling him, but with a razor-sharp, lethal air to him. “That’s my brother Zane, an ex-SEAL. He knows more ways to kill you bare-handed than I can count. Bax, the one with the wannabe mohawk, used to be a bare-knuckle prize brawler, and he never lost. So no, we never get like that. And me? Well…look at me. Been a few fellas that have seen the wrong end of my big ol’ fists.” He shook his head. “Nah, fightin’ ain’t our family ethos, if you get me.”
Not in their family ethos.
My heart twinged.
I shoved that down, savagely.
By the time the party started dwindling, and the guys began saying their goodbyes and leaving with their women, I was clobbered. I was able to walk, but I was drunk. I ambled carefully downstairs and found Torie on the couch, her legs across Charlie’s thighs, her head on Lexie’s lap, passed out, with Claire sitting on the other side of Lexie, braiding Torie’s hair into a billion tiny braids.
I felt my heart twinge again, this time it was the sight of Torie with her family. “Looks like somebody overdindulged.” I shook my head. “Thass not the right word. Overindulged.”
Claire snickered, held her cell phone to her mouth and pretended to be talking into a walkie-talkie. “Hello, Pot? This is Kettle. Come in, Pot, over.”
I nodded and leaned heavily against a wall. “Yep. I have a not very good tolerance. Not a drinker-er of heavy alcohols.” I shook my head. “Fuck, I sound stupid even to myself.”
“Don’t worry, you sound plenty stupid to us, too,” Claire said, her voice bright and chipper. “It’s all good, bro. We got your back.”
“Sweet of you to say, but you don’t know me. I got my own back. I’ve had my own back since I was fuckin’…fuckin’ twelve. Ain’t nobody never had my back but me.”
Lexie’s gaze upon me was speculative, sorrowful. “Speaking from experience here, buddy—that is a toxic as fuck way of thinking. Keeps you isolated and lonely, and keeps you from opening yourself to people who can, will, and want to bring you into their lives.” She gestured at the saloon, which was now occupied by Liv and Lucas, Lexie, Charlie, Cassie, Ink, Myles, Crow, Harlow, and Xavier—and shit but I was proud of myself for remembering all those names and faces. “Case in point.”
The twinge in my heart was suddenly like a crack, the way a chip in a windshield turns into a spider web of breaks.
“I’m leavin’ in the mornin’,” I said. “First light.”
Myles laughed. “Yeah, okay, killer. You can barely stand upright, and it’s already damn near first light now.”
Ink, who was even more bearlike than Lucas with his long black hair and thick beard, put a paw on my shoulder—he managed to actually be gentle enough that my teeth didn’t rattle. “Listen up, man. We all, every single one of us, knows where you’re at, right now. None of us got much by way of family outside this group. It’s why we’re as tight as we are. And the thing that binds us is that we chose this as our place, as our home, and chose this group as our family. Every single motherfuckin’ one of us had to decide if we had the balls to make the choice between the lonely road we’d been going down, and a new, scary road full of new people. Trust me, I fuckin’ get it. And I get you can’t just drop your whole life and stay here.”
“It’s more than that,” I said. “It’s…her. Us. It’s tricky.”
“Tricky meanin’ you scared, bro,” Crow said, a small smirk on his lips.
“Yeah, I am,” I admitted. “Known her less’n a week. And suddenly it’s like…it’s like someone else is walkin’ around the world with my actual physical heart in her fuckin’ hands. How the fuck does it happen so fast?”
Crow nodded. “All of us wondered the same thing. And funny part is, a relationship like this?” He gestured at Charlie and then himself. “It’s just a question of getting used to that feeling. Trusting her to carry your heart around.”
“The real funny part of it is,” Lucas put in, “you come to realize she takes a hell of a lot better care of it than you do.”
“I dunno if I’m too drunk to be having this conversation, or just drunk enough that it’s making more sense than I’m comfortable with,” I said.
“Bit of both, I’d guess,” Lucas rumbled. “Come on.”