Page 32 of Coast

“Feel better?”

“Actually, I feel foggier than before,” I admitted.

“Yeah, get that. I feel like I function better with four hours than eight.”

“Why don’t you sleep?” I asked. “I mean… single mom, baby, various life stresses,” I said, waving toward Lainey, then myself. “What about you?”

“Carried over from my childhood, I guess. No one really notices it around here since we’re all up most of the night.”

He was being deliberately vague. He didn’t want to open up. And there was no reason some part of me really, really wanted to pry.

“So, this is your… clubhouse?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m sorry, but what does that mean?”

“Biker clubs have a clubhouse,” he explained.

“Right. I noticed the bikes on the way in. So, you all live here?”

“Some of us do. The older members have moved on to their own places. They pop by here and there to hang out or work or whatever, but it’s just the four of us—no, six now—living here.”

“And you just… party all the time?”

“A good part of the time.”

“And you mentioned work.”

“Yeah, we work for the club.”

Normal people elaborated on that question. Coast not doing so made me think that whatever “work” he did for his biker club was maybe not all above board.

My mind flashed back to his casual carrying of a gun in that alley.

That certainly felt like someone who did, you know, illegal things.

I probably should have been panicking to be in a clubhouse full of criminals. But, well, these so-called criminals had treated me better than anyone else had in years.

“What did you do before Lainey made you need to do gig work?”

That was a tricky question.

But I could give him a partial truth.

“I was a dancer.”

“Like on a pole or in a tutu?”

The way he said that made it sound like he would feel the same way about me regardless of which answer I gave. Which was incredibly endearing.

I obviously didn’t know Coast well, but he seemed to be completely without judgment.

“Tutu. Sort of. I’ve been a ballet dancer pretty much my whole life. And I… managed to make a living out of it for a while.”

The particulars of that, I certainly didn’t want to get into.

“Were you any good?”

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