Page 5 of Between Brothers

“Stained glass,” she said softly. “It’s um, sort of a hobby of mine.” She rapidly changed the subject. “Do you know what you want to drink?”

Cell smiled at me, giving me a wink while Hayley was overly absorbed in her notepad all of a sudden, a light pink flush creeping across her chest, up her neck and settling across the bridge of her nose. She was fucking adorable when she blushed and it made my heart skip out of rhythm when I saw it.

“Coke,” Cell answered her and she looked up over her pad.

“What about him?” she asked.

“Water,” I said and she visibly startled.

“More than a year you been coming in here and I think that’s the first time I’ve ever heard you talk,” she said. I smiled and kind of ducked my head in a half assed nod, shy myself when it came to it. She smiled back at me and it was like color was breathed back into my life.

“Water it is,” she said softly with a charmed little half smile and went to go get our drinks.

“Way to go.” Cell said dryly. “Only took you something like what? Eighteen months to stop bein’ a fuckin’ retard and actually open your mouth at her?” He shook his head. “Jesus Christ, Blue. You’re killin’ me.” His smile said he was totally making fun of me and I scowled.

“Shut up,” I grumbled at him before she could head this way. Duracell just smirked at me and I rolled my eyes. He could be so fucking immature sometimes, but honestly, that could be part of his charm.

“Right, know what you want to eat?” Hayley tapped her pen against her pad.

“Give us another minute, baby,” Cell said, but his look was fixed on me.

“Sure thing.” She breezed away to see to some of the other guys in the place and I picked up a menu to block Cell’s view of me, hiding like a bitch and actually taking my time figuring out what I wanted to put in my face.

I decided on a burger and fries; it just sounded really good for some reason. Hayley came back and I did my usual point at what I wanted and Cell, shaking his head and laughing, finished ordering it for me how I liked with ranch for my fries. For me, that shit was like the new ketchup. I couldn’t get enough.

She wrote it all down in her waitressing shorthand like she usually did and took the menus, trailing off to drop them by the register and to put our order in behind the counter. I admired the lean, long line of her body and the perfect curve of her ass in those jeans as she clipped the paper on the carousel on this side and spun it so it faced the kitchen. The night cook plucked it off on his side and squinted, reading it off back to her. They exchanged a nod and he got to work. When I looked back at Cell he had a soft grin plastered to his face, his eyes sparkling with amusement.

“You finally get up the balls to actually speak to her and the first thing in over a year that you can fuckin’ think to say is your drinkorder?” Tears were starting to form in the corners of his eyes as he really started to lose his shit and I just sank down in the booth, feelin’ about seven inches tall. Fuck, I hated when he did this to me. It wasn’t easy for me, talking to people. I got tongue-tied real easy and always said the stupidest shit.

“You’re a dick,” I said softly and shifted in my booth seat.

“Yeah, and you love it. I do ninety percent of the shit you won’t.” He had me there, he was also in one of his crueler moods where he wouldn’t shut the fuck up and stop making fun of me or reminding me of just how much shit he did for me.

“What’re you on your period or some shit?” he demanded when I shifted uneasily again.

I shook my head, scowling darkly while I thought to myself, maybe. I didn’t know what my problem was. I was on edge, that’s for sure. Just every little thing was getting to me right now. I felt agitated, and irritated, my knee bouncing up and down under the table at a rapid pace.

We sat in silence, waiting on our food when Hayley came back with two plates. She set mine down and that’s when I noticed it. It was a purely reflexive action, my hand flashing out, coming up under her arm, closing on it to cradle it, my other hand taking hers and uncurling it so I could see better what I thought I’d seen.

A thin, pale, indentation ran from the middle of her palm up the inside of her wrist, anywhere from four to six inches long. I blinked and smoothed over it with my thumb. Looking up at her, even if I could speak, I couldn’t think of a damn thing to say. She swallowed hard looking scared and I didn’t want to dothat to her so I immediately let her go with a soft, “Sorry.”

She turned on her heel and walked away sharply, but I’d seen it, in her eyes, the darkness there. The same darkness I held in me. I cocked my head to the side and watched her ghost around the diner, her walls rising to the occasion, but there was no judgment here, only curiosity.

“Put it in your face,” Cell urged and I turned back. He was watching me evenly, that look that said he knew what was up and that I needed to eat. I nodded and picked up a fry, dunking it in my ranch, doing what I was told and putting it in my face, chewing thoughtfully.

“You eat lunch today?” he asked and I blinked, and had to think about it. He shook his head, “You have to think about it, the answer is ‘no’. You’ve gotta eat, man. You can’t be forgetting that shit.”

I let him lecture me. It was one of the ways I knew that he fuckin’ cared. If he didn’t care, he wouldn’t say anything about it; but on this, he was right. If I forgot to eat, I tended to get the kind of hungry that gave me a harder time keeping certain demons in check. It wasn’t considered very ‘tough’ of a biker to have anxiety, but that was a bullshit citizen stereotype and they didn’t know me.

The truth was, I had plenty to be anxious about; prison hadn’t helped any on that front, either. While I thrived on structure, that was only half the story on the inside. Sure, your meal times, when you worked, when you slept, where you went, when you showered – all of it was structured, but you also didn’t know who you were gonna piss off lookin’ at them funny, even if you weren’t looking at them at all. You never knew when the next assault from that rival crew or gang was going to come. You never knew who was gonna try and make you their bitch next… There were a lot of variables you didn’t know and those were the ones that were important. Constantly looking over your shoulder, when you got out? It was a practice you kept on with.

It was easier, being here, with the chapter we were with now. It wasn’t just me and Cell against the world anymore. We had a family, men who were with us and who would legit watch our back. That helped, but it wasn’t the end all of be all’s. Plus it had been Cell and me against the world for so long we had a tendency to forget it wasn’t just all us all the time and that the club would be there to back us up if we needed it.

“Hey, you listening to me, motherfucker?” Cell demanded and I looked up. I held up a hand flat and waffled it back and forth in that way that said ‘kind of, sort of.’ Cell shook his head, “I wouldn’t ride your ass about this shit if it wasn’t important,” he said and I softened a little. It was probably the closest thing I would ever hear out of him that even remotely resembled ‘I care about you’ and it just plain had to be enough. I had to take what I could get where he was concerned.

I met his eyes with mine and gave a grave nod. Leaning back he said, “Good; glad we had this talk,” his tone dripping with sarcasm. I huffed a bit of a laugh and finished my food, watching Hayley move around the diner refilling coffee and serving the few patrons present, including a couple of sheriff’s deputies that’d come in after us.

They talked to her, a few tables down, and she looked up and our way. She turned back to them and smiled, murmuring something I couldn’t hear, the piped in music and the clatter of utensils drowning out her voice, which was sort of quiet to begin with.

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