Page 3 of Whiskey Shivers

Louie: Sweet, I’ll see you then.

I started the truck and sighed, turning the dial and putting it in reverse, backing carefully out of my spot and heading on down the road in the direction of home. At a stoplight, I pulled up on the passenger side of this expensive-looking Beemer and just happened to look down.

Leaning in the window, a finger along her cheek, her middle finger curled and pressed to her lips, which were tight with disapproval, was little Miss Legare. I guess I’d just missed her. By the vacant and dull look in her blue eyes, she was tuning whoever was in the driver’s seat out. I couldn’t see him from this angle, but I could see plain as day – she wasn’t happy. It sent my heart to pinging off my ribcage in a sensation that was unfamiliar to me.

I didn’t know if I quite liked it, but it certainly was something. Something very real.

It stuck with me the whole drive home and even through me stripping off my coveralls and the clothes I had on underneath them. I put them straight into the wash and straightened, feeling mighty fine now that I had the constricting clothing off. I hated clothes. Had never been a fan. I tended to walk around my place as naked as a jay bird every chance that I got.

I went to the fridge and cracked open a cold beer. I wasstillthinking about Corliss Legare and the look in her blue eyes as she stared vacantly out the window. She’d been completely unaware I was there, which made me think about La Croix and his little Alina. I think I was beginning to understand the old boy’s distant obsession with the redheaded woman up in the apartment window. An obsession he still had today, over a year and some change later, after making her his. Everything about their relationship was unconventional as fuck, but goddamn if they didn’t somehow work. Thick as thieves, those two, and sometimes, just sometimes, I found myself green with fuckin’ envy looking at ‘em.

I went in to take a shower, getting in and living for the tankless water heater that I’d put in. Never-ending hot water on demand – fuck yeah.

I took another drink off my beer and set it in the nook I had in the tiled shower wall that I kept aside for it. I’d tiled it myself. Hell, I did all the work on this place between my day job and all the club goings-on and happenings.

The hot water pulsed against my back at the base of my neck, between the top of my shoulder blades, and I just would not be distracted. The look on her face as she stared out that window unnerved me, damn near haunted me. She was all smiles and sunshine, laughter and light, and it bugged me that she could be such a chameleon and hide whatever she had going on at home.

I found myself feeling voyeuristic, balling my hand into a fist against the ceramic subway tiling of my shower wall, as I leaned under the spray and let it try to pry the new tension taking hold out of my back.

I wondered if the prick driving had ever laid a hand on her.

I didn’t like the thought.

I finished my beer and stepped out of the shower, lookin’ like a boiled crawdad. My stomach growled and I found myself wondering what to do for dinner. I also knew I had to get my ass over to the club. I was excited to get the part for my project out in the garage from Louie.

I was rebuilding a classic 1963 Harley-Davidson FL Duo-Glide. Literally, from the frame on back up. A long while back, we’d dragged this damn thing up out of the swamp while magnet fishing. I’d done the right thing, getting it checked out with the local PD. It’d gone into the water probably sometime in the eighties. The original owner was dead, and the local boys didn’t want the paperwork of hauling it off and were more than happy to let me take it off their hands.

As much as I’d hated cozying up to the pigs over it, I would have hated even more restoring the fuckin’ thing, getting ago fasteraward on it, and getting a set of silver bracelets for all my trouble and a record I did not want for stealing the damned thing. Hell, I amazed myself that I was still out here truckin’ along and keeping my job at the high school – no one any the wiser that I was some kind of rough-around-the-edges criminal, out here livin’ by his own set of laws.

Did I have an arrest record? Yeah, but that didn’t count for shit without a conviction, and I didnothave me one of those.

I suppose it was an eventuality, maybe even an inevitability, when you lived this life – at least for most… but I refused. I knew there was a better way. A smarter way. Just like my daddy’d told me.

I got dressed in more comfortable clothes, shrugging into my jacket, and cut for the short ride over to the club.

It felt good to have the wind in my hair, and yes – riding without a helmet was illegal in Louisiana, but fuck it. The ride was short and the only time the cops came rolling through this neighborhood was when the gangbanging was fired up, which it hadn’t been after we’d moved in. We didn’t have the time or patience for that kind of back-and-forth. Not on our turf.

“Ridin’ risky, ain’t ya?” Axeman asked when I got off my bike.

“What are you, my fuckin’ mother?” I asked him. He gave me this cheesy shit-eating grin that made me snort as he took a drag off the doobie that he’d rolled up for himself.

He held it out, and I wrinkled my nose and gave my head a shake.

“Nah, I’m already hungry. That’d probably edge my ass into hangry with the munchies coming along with it.”

“Crawfish boil goin’ on out back,” he said. “Cypress brought in a haul.”

“My man,” I muttered. “Good deal. I was just tryin’ to figure out what the hell to do for dinner.”

“Well, should be puttin’ it on sooner rather than later,” Axe said, looking at his watch.

“Nice,” I muttered and went on through into the club.

“Hex.” La Croix nodded from one of the leather couches in our living room setup.

Alina was lounging against him, a book in her hands. She looked up over the top of it and said, “Uh-oh, I know that look.”

I raised an eyebrow and slid onto one of the bar stools. “You do, do yah?” I asked.

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