Page 4 of Brazen Being It

FIVE YEARS LATER

Play stupid games win stupid prizes

It’sthe kind of night that tastes like trouble—sweaty bar, stale beer, too-loud music, neon flickering overhead like a dying pulse. Toon and I are sitting at a high-top near the corner of the room, beers half-drained, our cuts on our backs like a piece of armor.

The place is packed. Friday crowd outside Charlotte. Every table is full, bodies pressed together, women laughing too loud, men trying too hard. The kind of place the Catawba Hellions roll into and immediately own. People shift when we walk in, some because they recognize the patch, others because they can feel it. The weight of who we are. What we stand for. Kings of the Carolinas.

Toon slaps his hand down on the table. “You see the rack on that brunette by the jukebox? Jesus, brother.”

I glance over. Yeah, she’s hot. So is the blonde she’s with. Tight dresses, high heels, lips like candy. Five years ago, I’d already be walking over. Hell, even a year ago. Tonight, I’m just… tired.

“Not feeling it?” Toon asks, eyebrow cocked. Sometimes I swear he does this to fuck a woman out of his system. But he never gives a single clue as to who it is.

I shrug. “They look like the kind that post your ass on the gram after.”

He laughs. “Man, when’d you get so jaded?”

I tip back the bottle. “Around the time I realized having a full rocker doesn’t mean shit if your own family still looks at you sideways.”

Toon’s grin fades. “Axel still riding your ass?”

“He’s cooled down. But I see it. Feel it from him. That doubt. Like he’s waiting for me to fuck up.”

“Shooter too?”

“Shooter’s worse. Says all the right shit, but his eyes are always looking past me. Like I’m still the kid with something to prove.”

Toon leans back, tapping ash from his smoke into an empty shot glass. “Maybe you’re seeing this shit wrong. Maybe they see the change, the way you’ve slowed down. They just don’t know how to tell you.”

“I got the same blood in my veins.”

I take a shot, letting the amber liquid burn all the way down.

“Dads are different man.”

“I don’t want him to be a dad,” I say, jaw tight. “I want him to see me as a Hellion. A brother. Someone who earned their seat.”

Toon nods slow. “I get it.”

He does. Toon is from the Haywood’s Landing chapter, but he’s been in Catawba a few years now most folks forget he ever started somewhere else. He was one of the few that treated me like a man back when I was still wearing the bottom rocker of shame. That counts for something.

“I thought getting patched in would fix it,” I mutter.

“It never does,” he says. “It just gives you more to carry.”

We finish our beers and make our move. While I don’t find chasing tail as fun as it once was, I am a man. Sex is sex and no sex is ever bad sex as long as I can bust a nut.

The women are exactly what they present—flirty, fake, and ready for a night that means nothing in the morning. We slide in smooth. Toon leans into the brunette, his hand already resting on her hip like he owns it. The blonde sizes me up and smiles, dragging her finger along my forearm.

“You’re a Hellion?”

I smirk. “Darlin’, I am the Hellion… for you for tonight.”

She giggles and presses closer. I let her. I let the act take over. The charm. The swagger. The carefully constructed mask of a man who doesn’t give a damn.

But inside, I still hear Axel’s voice. “You’re not ready.” Even now, five years later, full patch on my back, that shit still echoes. When will it stop eating at me?

The night dissolves into shots, music, and the kind of flirtation that’s more about momentum than chemistry. I laugh at the right moments, I touch her in all the places that make her lean in closer, and when we finally pile into a cab and head toward a nearby motel, it’s all on autopilot.

---