I grin. “I always hated going back home at the end of the summer.”
He just nods. “Know the feelin’.” Then, he bends to his food, and I get the sense the conversation is over.
I look at Chance, then. “So what about you? Where you’d grow up?”
He stares at me blankly. “Lotta places, none of ‘em a horse ranch.” Clearly, all I’m going to get.
Silence, then.
The brothers are ignoring us, and everything, it seems, just eating their salads and drinking coffee, not talking, nothing. Just sitting and eating.
“What’s their…um…issue?” I ask, glancing at them.
Chance snorts. “They ain’t friendly till sundown. Best to leave ‘em be.”
“Where am I?”
He blinks at me. “Somewhere you don’t belong.”
“I gathered that.”
“Sin is the nightclub up top.” He flicks an index finger upward. “Hel is below it, where you ran into your friend Oscar.” He gestures around it. “This is where we live, below Hel.”
“You live below the club?”
Chance nods. “Yep.”
“Why?”
His expression shutters. “Reasons you don’t need to know.”
“Why do you let Oscar in, if you know that’s how he is?”
His eyes narrow, darken. “Ain’t up to us. If it was, Rev woulda cut off his hands and his dick and shoved ‘em down his throat already.”
I blanch. “Oh. That’s, um…violent. And…descriptive.”
A plate clatters onto the table in front of me—there are two pieces of what appears to be sprouted whole wheat toast, slices of avocado, a huge pile of scrambled egg whites, as well as some sliced strawberries and bacon.
“Enough questions,” Rev grumbles, sitting beside me—close enough to feel his heat and hard muscle. “Eat.”
“Okay,” I whisper, overwhelmed by his presence and his habit of snapping commands at me. “Thank you.”
Rev just nods. His plate is similar, but no bread and more eggs and avocado. He has a bottle of hot sauce he shakes liberally onto his eggs, until they’re more pink than white.
It’s awkward, eating with a room full of giant, heavily muscled, shirtless, insanely attractive men. Everywhere I look, there are chiseled jawlines and rippling pecs. I force myself to focus on the food, on eating, and on keeping it down.
It’s funny—until I started eating, I would’ve said I felt too nauseated to eat, but now that I’m eating, I’m ravenous. And the more I eat, the better I feel. The sour, achy sensation in my stomach still lingers, and my head is woozy and stuffed with cotton, but otherwise, I feel nearly human again.
Rev is done long before I am, and takes my empty mug and fills it, brings it back. He straddles the bench, now, facing me. “Storytime,” he says across the top of his mug, sipping. “The hell were you doing in Hel?” He shakes his head. “Shit, what the hell were you doing in Sin at all? Don’t seem the type.”
I finish my food before answering. “Well, first, thank you again for the food—it was great, and I feel a lot better. Second, thank you for saving me from Oscar.” I sip my coffee, using it as an excuse to move away from Rev before his heat catches me on fire, and before his mere proximity makes my body turn to goo. “I was with my friend Angel, heading to the bathroom. We got separated and I got swept up in the crowd. Literally, I ran into Oscar, and he just kind of…hauled me with him. I was drunk, and he was Oscar Wendell. I’m not super into rock music, but even I know who he is, and I couldn’t quite believe it was him, and that he was looking at me, talking to me. I’m not a fan girl, okay? But it was a weird moment. And then I was at that weird bank safe door.” I gesture at Kane. “You were there, I remember you.” I indicate the other table with a tilt of my head. “And Si, I remember him, too.”
Rev just slurps. “And?”
I shrug. “Ended up on the other side of the door, and just likethat,” I snap my fingers, “Oscar just…changed. Before he was…intense but seemed friendly enough. Then, on the other side of the door, he was just…” I shiver at the memory. “A predator is the only way I can describe how it felt. And he wouldn’t let me go.”
Rev nods. “That’s his MO. Now, those friends of yours.”
