Page 12 of The Deals We Make

I had no idea of my place in the world. Momma was so worried I was gonna end up shot by a cop that she was teaching me to put my palms on the dash of the car when I was eight years old. But she didn’t tell me shit about how to handle my best friend making reckless decisions that required my cleanup.

Calista has no idea just what it took to walk into that clubhouse and ask for the president. To tell him I saw some chat on the dark web that someone was gonna try and hack the club for kicks. I played it down. Said that it wasn’t a robbery, it was a game. A hackathon, of sorts.

She’ll never know how nervous I felt in the face of the club.

How I worried that Calista was smarter than me and I wouldn’t be able to stop her.

That she’d figure out it was me trying to block her.

That the club would kill me for not being able to stop it. Or worse, assume I was the one doing the hacking.

She has no concept of the sacrifices I made for her.

As her car pulls away, I realize Calista is still carrying a bit of my heart with her that I never realized she took. She was my first real friend. Her imprint is on every part of my childhood. But I loop back to my original question.

If I could do it all over again, would I?

And the truth is, I don’t know.

While Camelot didn’t really give me a choice about joining, I’m proud of the man I’ve become.

My reward was four times the money I was making hacking to become a brother and use my skills in a different way. Camelot backed me up, lawyered me up, and killed to save my life.

And Calista no longer deserves the little piece of my heart she’s carrying. So, I seal up what’s left and decide that she no longer deserves a moment of my time.

Saint is waving at me, with a dramatic shrug and a loud, “What the fuck are you waiting for?”

Family is family.

Brothers are brothers.

And Calista Moray is just a girl I once knew.

4

CALISTA

Asbury Park is the perfect microcosm of life.

Everything changes, but nothing changes.

Same boardwalk, different bars.

New roads, same traffic problems.

And Tiberius Williams is no exception. He’s the boy I once knew, and yet…

I feel like I’ve stepped back in time. And it’s warped with memories of moments I thought I’d buried.

I attempt to clear my thoughts by looking up at my old family home in the daylight; it’s the same, but different too. Someone painted the trim a pale eggshell blue. The stairs are the same, but the metal railing is new. I think about how hot the old one felt beneath my hand the sunny day I ran out of there, my heart racing in fear that the bikers would come back for me.

Mom’s more sensitive shrubs were flowering at the time, but now they are tightly wrapped in burlap.

I see the cameras surrounding Tiberius’s parents’ property. Or maybe I should call himVex, as the patch on his coat said. Separate the boy I once knew from the man he became.

And not think about the way his hands made me feel all over again.

Or the way I could have drowned myself in those expressive brown eyes that always moved something deep within. I hate that he could remind me of the girl who once loved her utterly clueless best friend.