Page 23 of Her Brother's Keeper

She pursed her lips and nodded, her dark eyes flitting to the side, off my face, to the little guttering candle at the edge of our table.

“You’re not a little girl, you’re notmylittle girl, that’s for sure. We’re friends before anything else, but I sometimes wonder things I shouldn’t.” I swallowed hard and didn’t say anything else. I just watched those luminous dark eyes return to my face, searching it with one of the gravest expressions I’d ever seen someone wear for a full minute.

“Me too,” she said softly, and I felt my spine turn liquid with relief. I hadn’t scared her, and she hadn’t scared me, butnow what?It definitely felt like some sort of line had been drawn in the sand and crossed; like we’d turned a corner of some kind, but into what?

“Thank you for dinner,” she murmured and the spell was temporarily broken. I nodded and could pretend nothing had happened or that nothing was amiss if she could.

“I figured we could go to the club, watch the ball drop on the big screen, what do you think?”

“Am I old enough?” she asked and I had to laugh.

“Not a nightclub, Angel.Theclub, as in the MC.”

“Oh! You’re sure they won’t mind?”

“You’re my guest, why would they mind?” I stood and helped her into her coat, and figured I wasn’t going to get an answer when she finally said softly…

“I’m just a kid.”

I smiled but tried not to laugh, figuring that would just make things worse… “What did I just tell you, Angel?” I asked, voice low and somewhat chiding.

“That you don’t see me as a kid, I know, but your friends – they might.”

“I love my brothers and sisters at the club, but fuck ‘em if they do.”

Her eyes widened and I captured her hand, tugging her along toward the stairs and the eventual exit. We hit the street and a wall of cold and I heard Maren gasp. I turned and tucked her under my arm as we made our way up the block to my cage, the lights flashing as I hit the button on my key.

“I hate the cold, why can’t it be summer again?” she said as I opened her door for her.

“You think you’re cold, I come from a land that has no winter!” I laid my cut across her lap and shut the door on her before she could say anything, mostly because I wanted to get the damn cage started and some heat going.

“I didn’t think of that, I thought it snowed in parts of Arizona though.”

“It does up around Flagstaff sometimes, but I was down in a small border town…”

We chatted some while I drove us to the club and around back to spare her from going through the bar. When we pulled up on the track, there were a bunch of the guys standing around the fire pit, a bright blaze going in it, beers in hand. I got out of the cage and Maren slipped out on her own before I could grab her door for her.

“Hey, Jailbait!” my retarded, half lit, twin crowed and I think I saw Maren flinch slightly.

“Hi Rush,” she called out softly.

“What you two doing here?” Dragon asked and sucked on his cigarette, the coal glowing in the dark. He stood behind the fire, and the flames licking up, casting shadow and throwing shade made his coal dark eyes darker somehow. Hell, it made the man look like the devil him-fucking-self.

“Nowhere else to go really, thought it’d be nice to bring in the New Year around my brothers,” I clasped hands with Reaver and we drew in for one of our classic manly hugs.

“Well get on up close to the fire, girl! Afore you freeze to death,” Archer muttered.

Maren stepped up in between Archer and Trig and held her hands out to the heat. Trig stepped aside for me to take my place beside her. Archer sucked on a joint and passed it in front of Maren to me, but she took it, and a drag. Dragon laughed and Maren passed it to me raising her eyebrows. I smiled and took a hit.

“Huh,” Archer said, “I didn’t figure a nice girl like you for a toker.”

“My dad had it, for his cancer,” she said; voice strained from holding her breath, she let it out in a plume of fragrant smoke and water vapor from her breath as it hit the cold air. “He'd have me light it up for him and let me take a hit every once in a while.” She looked up at Archer, huddling in on herself, her hands pushed deep into her pockets. “Sorry if I wasn’t supposed to.”

Arch was typical Arch; he just gave a one-shouldered shrug and said, “I ain’t your daddy.”

Maren blushed hard and Rush took pity on her; before I could open my mouth he said, “Translation: He don’t give a fuck, you’re adulting just fine; you do you.”

“Ah,” Maren said back as if Rush had just explained everything, and maybe he had.

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