“What?” James asked, and coughed.
“We have a highly trained, black ops spy in the room, boys.” Ghost reached into the cabinet, palm held up for her to take, and Ava slid her little fingers against his and let him tow her out into the room, standing up with her head angled down toward the ground, long tangled hair falling across her face on either side, hiding her blush. Ghost set his hand on the top of her head as he straightened beside her.
“You want to tell us what you were doing in here?” he asked in that scary-calm voice of his. Mom was all about yelling and fit-pitching. Her disciplinary style was loud. But Daddy…Daddy just got quiet. One glance was usually enough to send grown men running. Ava had never tested him beyond “the look.” Not before, anyway; she was afraid she just had.
“I’m sorry,” she said to the toes of her sneakers. “I just…”
“Just what?” Ghost’s fingers tickled at her scalp.
Her fascination with the delicate carvings of the table and buffet seemed foolish now, considering she knew she should never have been in here in the first place. Besides, while the furniture was glorious, and the focal point of her staring, it wasn’t her main attraction to the room.
“I just like being in here,” she said in a miserable voice. “I’m sorry. I won’t come in again.”
“Hey, sweetheart,” James said, and she lifted her head. “You understand why you can’t be in here, right?”
She nodded, only dimly aware of what he was saying. Her gaze had been drawn away from his friendly, craggy face to the next chair over, to the stranger whose voice so captivated her ears.
He was tall; so much of him sprouted up above the glossy tabletop, his reflection in it seeming to lengthen him further. His arms were long, quite long, and rounded at the tops with muscle, bared by his sleeveless shirt, browned from the sun and dusted with coarse dark hair below the elbows. His hands seemed too large for comprehension, too large for his body, even, like he still needed to grow into them. And grow into them he would, most likely, because he was young, she noted, as her eyes traveled up his tan throat to his face. Older than Aidan, but younger than her father and James. He was old enough to wear the club colors. And his face…she was enchanted.
His nose was a little too large and sharp, his jaw narrow, his lips thin. His eyes were dark and deep-set, staring at her with rapt attention from beneath straight, black brows. His hair was black and fell in silky, straight hanks across his ears and forehead. His eyelashes, she noted when he blinked, were long and black and curled.
He was beautiful, in the way that a Doberman was beautiful: better looked at through a fence.
“Because we talk about club business in here,” James was telling her, “and we don’t want you to know any of that, because we want to keep you safe, right?”
Ava forced her eyes to the MC president, and nodded. “Yes, sir.” Though she didn’t understand, and never had. It was all so vague, this idea of club business and keeping safe.
And then, because she couldn’t seem to help herself, her eyes returned to the stranger.
One corner of his mouth lifted in a small smile. His eyes, black in this dim interior light, sparkled.
Her chest tightened and she didn’t understand why.
“Ava,” Ghost said. “This is Mercy. He’s gonna be hanging around for a few weeks.”
Mercy.
“Hi, Ava,” he said, giving her a little two-fingered wave across the table.
“Hi,” she said, and felt her cheeks grow hot.
That was the moment, she would later reflect, when she first became achingly aware of her gender.
**
Present Day
“Is it always like this?” Ronnie asked. He had to lean in close, until their shoulders bumped into one another, to be heard above the roar of the music.
Ava sipped her red Solo cup of Budweiser and scanned the clubhouse parking lot set before them like a carnival. Makeshift steel tent poles mounted in buckets of Quikrete supported the dozens of interlacing strands of colored Christmas lights that draped the parking lot in brilliant, festive hues. White lights had been used beneath the porch canopy and around the potted evergreens. The effect was dazzling: brilliant pinpricks of red, blue, green, yellow, and white catching on jewelry, on amber beer bottles, on glittering motorcycles, in the slick convex curves of eyes. The air seemed filled with fireflies.
Outside, a portable stereo system blasted Jackyl. Beer-stocked galvanized tubs of ice were stationed at convenient intervals, chips and salsa and other munchies set out on gingham-draped outdoor dining tables. Dogs talked, laughed, and milled about, drinking and admiring one another’s bikes. Rottie was working the keg, filling cups; he’d winked at Ava when he’d handed her hers, a fast, questioning glance sent Ronnie’s way.Can your college boy handle this?his eyes had asked.
I hope, she’d said with an eyebrow shrug.
“Only for big blowout parties like this one,” she answered. “It’s usually more low key than this.”
“You should have seen the ones they had when we were in high school,” Leah said. “Nowthosewere crazy.” She twirled the beer around in her Solo cup. “My parents forbid me to come to another one, actually.” She shrugged. “Oops.”
