Page 64 of Rule the Night (Blackwell Butchers #1)
REMY
The biker bar technically called Screamin’ Syd’s was known by every biker in a two-hundred-mile radius as simply Syd’s.
Members of the Blades and Barbarians MCs hung out there on the regular, and it had become a destination for bikers from other towns looking for a scenic ride with good food and beer at the end of it.
Bram was polishing off a Snickers when we rolled up on a Wednesday afternoon, and I frowned at him as we got out of the Hummer.
“Maeve’s desserts would be better for you than that processed shit.”
He threw the wrapper in the trash on our way inside. “Mind your own business.”
“I’m just saying.” Stubborn motherfucker.
“Well, don’t,” he said, as the door swung shut behind us.
We stepped into a dingy interior with concrete floors and a well-worn bar to one side.
Booths were lined up on the wall opposite the bar, and a handful of tables sat in the center of the room.
There were no TVs, thank fucking god, because lately I couldn’t even pump gas without being smacked in the face with ads on tiny screens.
The place pretty quiet other than the heavy metal playing from speakers mounted near the ceilings.
I lifted a hand in greeting to Honey, a friendly blonde waitress who was an unofficial member of the Blades, then promptly tripped over a chair someone hadn’t pushed in at one of the tables.
“For fuck’s sake,” Bram muttered when I stumbled.
“You okay there, sugar?” Honey asked.
She didn’t seem at all alarmed by my near collision with the floor. Then again, I’d been to Syd’s plenty of times so this wasn’t her first rodeo with me and a chair.
Or a glass. Or a plate of food.
“I’m good."
We took a seat while I tried to salvage my dignity and she put a hand on my shoulder. “Burgers and brew, handsome?”
She didn’t even look at Bram, which wasn’t surprising. No one looked at Bram, and I’d gotten used to feeling like I was walking next to a fucking ghost.
I used to think it was because of his scar, but now I knew it was something else: looking at Bram meant acknowledging he existed, and for most people, knowing someone like Bram existed in the world was just too fucking terrifying.
“You know it,” I told Honey.
“Be right back.”
She sauntered off, and while I’d considered the merits of banging her in the past — she was nice and had curves for days — the truth was, I wasn’t even a little bit tempted now, and I knew it was because of Maeve.
Not good.
“We need to stop at the Orpheum after this,” Bram said.
Honey dropped off our beers on her way to another table.
“Cool.” I lifted my beer to my lips. “What’s up?”
“Next Hunt’s only a month away. Have to start prepping.”
My stomach sunk. Maeve had been with us eight weeks, and I’d started to feel like a silent clock was ticking down on the time we had left with her, which was weird as fuck. She might not have been from Southside, but she was still a Hunt girl.
We’d already broken rules — fucking her, giving her presents — but letting her go was the biggest rule of all.
“A month is a long time,” I said.
He stared me down the way only Bram could, like he could see into my fucking soul, like he was about to suck it out with a straw through my asshole. “Not that long.”
“We could take a break.” I couldn’t imagine chasing another girl through the tunnels.
Couldn’t imagine bringing another girl home.
“We’ll need someone else to cook when she leaves,” Bram said.
This was one of the ways Bram tried to keep his distance from Maeve: not using her name.
And it meant he was in every bit as much trouble as Poe and I.
“‘The lady doth protest too much, methinks.’”
Bram scowled. “What the fuck are you on about?”
“Shakespeare,” I said. “You try to ignore her because you like her.”
I used the word “try” because no matter how much Bram acted like a dick toward Maeve, I knew it was a front. When Bram didn’t care about something, that something had no power over him.
He could name it, confront it.
Maeve had power over him. I didn’t know what it was, but she had power over me too, so who was I to judge? On the other hand, I wasn’t the one pretending it wasn’t true.
“Bullshit. She’s just a Hunt girl.”
“Bullshit. She’s Maeve.”
He leaned back, tipped his bottle to his lips, and stared at me through narrowed eyes.
Honey stopped by with our burgers and set them down in front of us, extending her arm toward Bram so she didn’t have to get too close. It would have been weird if it hadn’t been familiar, but I’d seen people do all kinds of things to avoid getting close to Bram.
“You’re in dangerous territory,” Bram said, when Honey left. He didn’t make a move to eat his food.
“So are you.”
“Fuck you, Remy.”
“Fuck you back, bro.” There was nothing heated about the exchange. It was just a conversation.
He picked up his burger. “Wishing things were different doesn’t make them different.”
“I know that. I’m not a baby.”
Sometimes Bram thought he’d cornered the market on life lessons on account of the rough deal he’d been dealt with his parents’ death. And yeah, I hadn’t suffered the way he had, the way Poe had, but that didn't mean I didn’t understand how the world worked.
“She just wants something from us,” he said.
“That help you sleep at night?” I asked before biting into my burger.
“Fuck you again,” he said.
“Back at you.” I hesitated. “I know how we can find out if she just wants something from us.”
I already knew it wasn’t true, but sometimes you had to play Bram’s game.
“How?”
“We can take care of her problem.”
“She lost.”
“Obviously. But we could do it anyway. Then you’ll know.”
“What makes you think I want to know?”
My mistake. It was always a mistake to insinuate that Bram wanted something. First of all, it was rarely true. Second, Bram saw wanting something as weakness, a chink in the armor he’d spent the last ten years forging around his psyche, his life.
I shrugged. “Just a hunch.”
“She lost,” he said again. And I knew from the set of his jaw that that was the end of it. He wasn’t going to budge on helping Maeve, not because he didn’t want to, but because if he did, it meant I was right.
He did want something. And that something was Maeve.