We lived together ’cause we were best friends and also family. We lived together ’cause we’d both been without family for so long, we honestly couldn’t stand to live on our own.
No one got me like Finnegan “Curtains” Ramsey.
But I had the feelin’ Blue could, one day.
“That sugary shit will rot your teeth out,” I scolded him.
“You buy that bran crap and only eat like once a week, just get the good stuff, and you won’t have to eat all’a mine!”
“Are you two seriously arguin’ over cereal?” Axe-Man asked as he pulled out a chair and sat in it, pullin’ Mei into his lap assoon as he did. He looked at his woman with a weary sigh. “How the fuck do you put up with these two?”
Her smile was sharp in her pretty face. “I always love people who are willing to bleed for me.”
They shared one’a those looks then, one filled with understandin’ and love, that I’d always looked away from uncomfortably before. Now, I felt an echo’a warmth in my chest thinkin’a Blue and the looks we shared.
“She values a good sense of humour,” Loulou added as she draped an arm around my shoulders from over top’a the both behind me. “Boner and Curtains are one of the secrets to the club’s success.”
“Oh yeah?” Zeus asked, appearin’ behind her like an overlarge bracket, movin’ her blonde hair off her neck to press a kiss there. “Thought the secret wasme.”
Loulou shivered but pretended to be unaffected. “No, they can cut any amount of tension with the knife of their hilariousness. I’m pretty sure you’d all have been in way more fights if they hadn’t been there to de-escalate things.”
“Maybe they should be in charge then, huh?” Z growled against her neck.
She squirmed, twistin’ in his hold to look down her nose at him. “Maybe they should be. Youaregetting old.”
Z’s blade-grey eyes narrowed, and a second later, Loulou was yelpin’ as he flung her over his shoulder and stood beside the booth with her legs pinned to his chest.
“Gotta sort this one out, brothers,” he said calmly, squattin’ her ass firmly when she wriggled too much. “Have fun without us.”
“Zeus!” Loulou protested. “I was having fun.”
“You’ll have more fun in a minute,” he promised as he strode out the doors’a Eugene’s, our catcalls and whistles followin’ him out.
Blue appeared beside me with a low whistle of her own and a tray full’a fresh beers for the group. “Well, that was kinda hot.”
“Yeah?” I lassoed a hand around her hips to tug her into my side, a little loose from a few beers and the fuckin’ unreal sex I’d had with my woman in her car ’fore her shift. “I could carry you off caveman style right now.”
“Don’t you dare,” she said, but she was laughin’, and I didn’t think I’d ever seen her so at ease. She was settlin’ into the routine’a her life, bloomin’ under the light’a our relationship like a flower too long without sunshine. It was fuckin’ beautiful to witness. “Eugene already made a comment about tainting his product in the storeroom.”
Laughter rushed from my belly. “I think we both know every bit’a evidence he could’ve found wound up inside ya.”
“Bones!” she hissed, slappin’ at my arm, which only made me laugh harder.
Dane and Bat laughed across from me.
“Bones, eh?” Curtains drawled, lookin’ at Blue with those sharp eyes rovin’ over her the way he did over code, readin’ somethin’ others couldn’t. “You know, it’s Boner, yeah?”
I wedged an elbow into his side in retaliation.
“Yeah, but I think Bones suits him better,” she said softly, not even lookin’ at my best friend, just smilin’ at me.
Curtains snorted softly, finishin’ the rest’a his beer before placin’ the glass a little too firmly on the table.
“What’s your problem?” I demanded.
“Don’t got one.”
“The fuck you do,” I argued. “You do not act like this.”
