Page 3 of The Kings of Kearny

“Yup. Thanks, Krista.” She left a dollar on the bar for me before turning away.

I scooped it up and went to the register. Because Charley was a King, he let his fellow bikers keep running tabs that they didn’t have to pay off until the end of each month. I didn’t see the wisdom in the practice. Some of our customers ran up astronomical bills, buying rounds of shots they couldn’t afford because they didn’t have to pay for them for another two weeks. Most had the mindset that they’d find the money before then, but they rarely did.

Part of me worried that was what Charley wanted. He was one of the founding members of the Kings, along with Daniel King, the president and man the club was named after. I’d seen Daniel pay off the tabs of his bikers when they couldn’t cover them, telling them he knew they’d find a way to settle their debt. It kept them loyal to him, beholden to him in a way that troubled me. I imagined them doing all sorts of illegal shit to pay him back.

“Krista?”

I turned toward the sound of my name.

Jakob rested a leather-clad elbow on the bar top, the ice I’d given him pressed to his cheek. “Can I get an amber ale?”

“Sure.” I poured it out and set it in front of him, careful not to get too close this time.

“Why haven’t you applied to join the Kings?” he asked.

The Kings of Kearny motorcycle club only admitted members with prior military experience. Every single man and woman who wore their leathers had fought for this country. It was part of why the local cops gave them some leeway, and why a lot of people in town put up with their bullshit. Jakob wasn’t the first person to ask me that question, but he was one of the few I wanted to answer.

“I didn’t come to Kearny for the club,” I said. “My grandmother is in a nursing home in town.”

His eyes were steady on mine, that big body still on his barstool. Most people fidgeted when they sat down, but not him. He was like a wolf sighting a deer. This was one of the things that was so appealing about Jakob. When he spoke to you, it felt like you became his entire world. I could only imagine how well that focus might translate to sex.

“Magnolia Hills?” he asked.

I nodded.

“Let us know if you have any trouble with her there,” he said.

A frisson of unease slithered down my spine. “Why? Has there been trouble there?”

He nodded and cut his gaze to the right, away from me, and I swear to God, it felt like the temperature dropped. Like the sun had just disappeared behind a cloud.

“Uh... you care to elaborate on that?” I asked him.

His gaze came back around, and he shook his head. “What time do you get off?”

“I’m closing.”

Beer in hand, he stood from his seat.

I blinked as he started to turn away. “Dude, seriously, you’re just going to—”

Yup, he was. Without a backward glance, he tossed some cash on the counter and disappeared into the crowd.

I shoved my irritation down and got back to work. My gran was the only person I had left in this world. Oh, my parents were still alive, but they were garbage human beings, and if I never saw them again, I’d count it as a blessing.

Gran was my paternal grandmother. She’d taken me in the first time my parents got busted for drugs—Dad for possession, Mom for driving under the influence with me in the back seat—and never gave me back. After their first stint behind bars, my parents skipped town, and now the only time we heard from them was when they needed bail money or briefly attempted to sober up.

Not all addicts are assholes. I knew that many of them were good people with a disease that could lead to them doing terrible things, but my parents didn’t fall into that category. They were rotten even without the drugs or the booze. I’d learned that firsthand during one of Mom’s brushes with sobriety. She hit me for crying. Not a slap or a smack but a full-on punch to the gut. It worked. I stopped crying. Because I couldn’t breathe.

I was four at the time. Gran never left me alone with her again.

To say that my grandmother meant the world to me would be a massive understatement. And Jakob just told me that the cognitive care facility it took me months to get her into might be shady.

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