Knife & Flesh (The Night Horde SoCal Book 4) (23 page)

He lay there while she combed her fingers through his hair, for a long time. Until he finally felt like he could manage the party, and La Zorra, and all the rest of it.

Neither of them said another word until he stood up and held his hand out for hers. When she took it and let him pull her up, she said, “I love you.”

~oOo~

Juliana wanted to take him home. Connor tried again to get him to leave. But he was getting through the toast. He’d fixated on that marker, and he was going to fucking make it. His mask of calm was in place again, so all he had to do was avoid any new triggers.

Like La Zorra. She had ensconced herself at a side table, where Hoosier, Bart, and Connor kept her company in turns throughout the day. Other associates of hers and theirs stopped at her table to pay their respects. The Queen indeed.

For his part, Trick kept Juliana close and lavished her with PDA, so much so that she started giving him suspicious looks. But he was cleaving to Connor’s idea: demonstrate that he wasn’t available, let Dora see that, and let her keep her distance. No rejection, no implosion of her relationship with the club, no risk to anyone.

Keeping Juliana close, and not getting too far from the bar and its whiskey, Trick got himself through to dinner and his toast.

He’d spent an afternoon writing and memorizing it. When it was time, and he stood, rather than do the knife-on-glass move to get everyone’s attention—it wouldn’t have worked, anyway, the glassware and silverware were plastic—he put his thumb and forefinger in his mouth and whistled.

That got everyone’s attention. As he scanned the scene, all those faces turned to him, expecting—What? Humor? Profundity?—the toast he’d written seemed overblown and full of platitudes, quotes, and clichés. He left the folded paper in his pocket and set what he had memorized to the side of his weary mind.

“Hey. Those of you who don’t know me, I’m Trick, the best man. I’m supposed to give a toast today. I had something prepared, but it’s crap, so I’m just going to talk for a minute, if that’s okay. Not too long, I promise.

“Con’s been my best friend now for nearly a decade. He was my friend before I wore this patch. In fact, he taught me to ride and sponsored me in the club. I was a freaked-out vet when we met, alone in the world, out of sync with life stateside. I came into the bike shop on a whim, looking for something to do, somewhere to be, where I didn’t feel so…just wrong, I guess. Wrong all around. Another vet had told me how riding cleared his head, so I looked into it. Don’t know why I went to the bike shop instead of just to a Harley dealer, but I did. And I found a family there. And a best friend. Never looked back.

“I know Connor about as well as almost anyone. There’s not a lot of women around who could be enough for him. I don’t mean good enough, whatever that means. I mean
enough
—strong enough, smart enough, brave enough, all of it. Maybe that’s true in some way for all of us. We don’t live normal lives. But Con stands out in front, and that’s a different kind of not normal. He found Cordero—or, honestly, she found him—and I think she might be the only woman on the planet who could handle him. What I know of her, I think the reverse is true, too. It’s something special that they found each other. I don’t know if I believe there’s a plan to the universe, but Connor and Cordero make me believe that there’s a rightness to it. I wish them a long, full, happy life together.” He turned to Connor and lifted his glass of whiskey. “I love you, brother. Don’t fuck this up.”

~oOo~

He’d made it through the toast, and his psyche, knowing it had hit its mark, began to flag hard. While everybody was still eating, Trick reached over and picked up Juliana’s hand. She turned from her talk with Bibi, still smiling from whatever they’d been saying.

“Hey,” she said. “Time to go?”

“Yeah. I’m sorry. If you want to stay, that’s okay.”

“Don’t be dumb. I want to be with you. I just need to get my clothes—and yours, too. And say goodbye to some people.”

While she did that, Trick went over to the bar for one last, calming drink.

“You are leaving?” An accented female voice asked him from behind. “I had hoped for a moment tonight.”

Swallowing down the whiskey he’d just ordered, Trick turned to face Dora Vega.

She was a small woman, and beautiful. She was shrewd and intelligent. And she’d made Trick uncomfortable even before she’d made her interest in him known. There was a darkness in her eyes, deeper than color. That darkness wasn’t evil, but it was watchful. And it was willing. The most unsettling thing about Dora Vega was her invulnerable will.

“Sorry, ma’am. The night’s over for me.”

Stepping up to the bar, she nodded at the bartender. “Gin and tonic, please.” Then she turned back to Trick. “I think I’ve told you before to call me Dora, yes?”

He didn’t answer.

“Your woman, she is lovely.”

Still, he had no answer. This time, though, he gave her a little nod. Did one thank somebody who’d complimented the looks of somebody else?

“She
is
your woman?”

“Yes.” For that he had an answer, and he said it firmly.

Her drink had arrived; she sipped at it. “You are a remarkable man, Patrick Stavros. I wonder if a woman like that can see all the ways in which you are. People in our world, we do not mate well with people outside it. What they see as danger, we know as power, yes?”

What she thought she knew of him, he couldn’t say, but the thought that she had dug deeply enough into his life to feel that she
did
know him—he couldn’t entertain it. He pushed his empty glass away. Dredging up the very last traces of calm he had left, Trick turned and faced La Zorra head on. “Power isn’t something I’m drawn to, Dora. I prefer strength.”

Her expression held, showing no sign that she had taken offense at the distinction he’d made or the rebuff implied in it. Trick remained likewise still, his eyes on hers.

Then she smiled and sipped again at her drink. “Your grandfather, he is well? Happy to be back in his home?”

He heard the fiber of threat laced through that innocent query, saw the way her eyes sparked shrewdly, and he clenched his hands into fists at his side. “He’s well, yes. And yes, very happy. We’re both grateful to you for that.”

“Well. Good night, then, Trick.” She held out her hand. It took him a beat to unfurl his fist, but then he took her hand in his to shake. She lingered, just enough to be noticeable, before she pulled away.

He watched her, his heart pounding, as she walked back to her table. Out of the evening gloom, two of her suited men fell in behind her.

From his periphery, he saw Juliana approaching, both of their backpacks in her hands. “Who was that?”

“We need to go.” He took her arm, meaning to head to where his bike and her car were parked, but she shook his hand off.

“Trick, who is she? You look angry. Or freaked again—are you okay?”

He had nothing left. Nothing. “
I
need to go,” he revised, and then walked off toward his bike alone.

Trick left her behind, marching off so quickly toward his bike that even at a trot, Juliana couldn’t keep up. By the time she had their packs in the back seat, he’d started his bike and pulled away.

But she was not going to let him get away, not if she could help it. So she slid into her Nissan and followed after him.

She’d been worried about him all afternoon, since his anxiety attack—and she knew that was what it had been—shortly after they’d arrived at the park. He’d kept telling her that he was okay, but his face and body had that strange, full stillness it got when he was most stressed. They’d only been together a little while, but she knew that about him, and she’d been worried.

Moreover, he’d been loath to leave her side, and that wasn’t like him. He was usually affectionate, but he’d had a hand on her almost constantly, and he’d kissed and hugged and sometimes practically pawed at her.

When she’d tried to get him to leave, and again when she’d heard Connor trying to do the same, he’d said that he wasn’t bailing on the toast. So after the toast had been accomplished and he’d leaned over to her, she’d known he was ready to go—and so had she been.

Except for her concern about Trick, Juliana had enjoyed the day. His family had accepted her readily, and she liked the easy, casual camaraderie everywhere. Almost everywhere, at least. There had been a few tables that sometimes seemed closed off from the party in some way. Club business associates, Trick had said.

The woman who had so upset him as they’d left had been sitting all afternoon and evening at one of those tables. Until she’d gone up to the bar to talk to Trick.

Was that woman an ex?

Whoever she was, she’d really upset him—so much that Juliana was now chasing after him as he fled to the apartment. She’d been worried about him when they’d been sitting between the tents and throughout the day. Now she was afraid.

He’d lost her on the way, and seeing his bike parked where it belonged, in front of his truck in his space, Juliana let some tension ease off her shoulders. At least he’d come home. But he’d gotten so far ahead of her that he was nowhere to be seen. She parked and collected their bags.

Past her own apartment and straight up to the second floor she went. The two front windows of his apartment blazed light over the walkway. She didn’t knock; she simply tried the knob and, finding the door unlocked, went in.

Trick stood in the kitchen, already into the whiskey. He drank often, but she had yet to see him drunk. Or maybe it was simply that he remained quiet even when he was drunk. Watching him take the empty glass from his mouth and immediately pour a refill, and thinking about his drinking through the reception, though, she wondered if he might not be self-medicating.

“Trick.” She sat the backpacks on the floor, near the chair at his dining table over which he’d draped his kutte, and she stepped to the kitchen.

“You should stay away.” He poured the whiskey in his glass down his throat in one move.

“Why?”

Instead of answering, he picked up the bottle for another pour. Juliana came to him and put her hand around the neck of the bottle. “Trick, I’m not leaving.”

He stared at her hand around the bottle, and Juliana watched the emotions churn under that stoic exterior. His jaw clenched and unclenched, making his beard seem to roll on his cheeks. His eyes glittered and flared as they stayed fixed on her hand. “You need to get away.”

“No.”

His eyes came up and met hers. “What about Lucie?”

“I don’t know what the hell is going on, Trick. But I think about Lucie every second of every day. What Lucie needs of you is your love. She needs to know that you will take care of her. She needs to be able to trust you, that you will do everything you can to keep her safe and make her happy. That’s what I need, too. Love and trust. Nothing else matters.”

A harsh breath that wasn’t quite a scoff, then: “If you knew the things I’ve done.” He set the whiskey bottle down. “What about security? I thought that was important.”

It was. Or it had been. The things she wanted for her and Lucie were the same, but the details, the picture of what that looked like, had changed since she’d met Trick. She wanted what she’d seen today. There was security in that, stability, in all those people calling each other family and meaning it. The vision she’d had before had been of her and her daughter. No one else, just they two alone. When her parents had been taken away, she’d stopped thinking about family as something she could have. She’d never even thought of Mark as her family, not really. Only her daughter.

But now, she could feel the chance to be part of a big family, something real and encompassing. People who’d be there for her and Lucie.

And a man like Trick at her side. She wasn’t afraid of ‘the things’ he’d done. Whatever they were, she trusted that he’d needed to do them.

She stepped close, between Trick and the counter, and pushed her hands around his waist. “I’m defining security differently now. Lucie and I are secure with you.”

He pushed her away. “You’re not.”

Resolute, she lifted her hands and threaded them into his hair, knowing that that touch soothed him. Indeed, he closed his eyes and sighed shakily.

“You can talk to me. Whatever you need to say to find some peace, you can say it to me.”

His eyes still closed, he shook his head.

“Trick—” she stopped short when his hands came up and grabbed her wrists to pull them away. His eyes opened and fired with blue light.

“I can’t. I can’t say it to you or anybody. That’s not how this works.”

“How what works?”

“My life.”

“Okay.” It was all she could think of to say. She had no control over what he could say, and she knew she didn’t know enough to argue about it.

“Okay? Okay what?”

She turned her arms, twisting them out of his hold. “Okay. You can’t talk. I understand. I’m sorry. Whatever you
can
say, though, you can say to me. Anything.” Stepping even closer, pressing her body to his, she slid her arms over his shoulders and put her hands back in his thick hair. “I can still give you some peace.”