Page 3 of Faithless
I eventually made it to the bar, coming face-to-face with Bryce, the owner. He was a man in his fifties, hair and beard streaked with gray, and a longtime family friend, practically a fifth father to me. Some of my earliest memories were of him and my dad, Reaper, teaching me to ride a bike and later, a motorcycle.
Bryce peered at me shrewdly, lifting a bushy caterpillar eyebrow at my approach. He could probably smell how drunk I was.
“One more round,” I said, circling my index finger in the air. “On my tab.”
“You’re cut off after this, Rori,” Bryce grunted as he set up the shot glasses on the bartop.
“Yeah, yeah. I get it.”
“How you gettin’ home, young lady?”
“Walkin’,” I answered, throwing a thumb over my shoulder. “I’m crashing on the lovebirds’ couch.” Daren and Lily’s apartment was just a couple blocks from the bar. I’d parked my motorcycle at their place earlier, and we’d all walked over here together.
Bryce seemed satisfied with that and poured our drinks without comment. He hesitated over the fourth shot though, and lifted his head to look around. “Where’s the fourth member of your merry band?”
“Dunno.” I wanted to resist looking around myself, but I had no self-control while drunk. I craned my head to scan over the crowd, head swiveling. I was tall for a woman, just under five foot ten, but it was a busy night, and I couldn’t see Torrance anywhere. He was probably fucking some girl in the bathroom.
Oops. My drunk ass said that out loud, and Bryce gave me a disapproving look. “He better not be getting up to that inmyestablishment,” he grumbled.
“Hey, Daren’s the only one with a leash on him. Don’t look at me.” I had actually been able tonotthink about Torr for an hour or so. But now the mental image of him thrusting into some girl propped up on the bathroom sink turned my stomach.
“You kids kill me.” Bryce shoved the shots toward me, but I caught the smile under his beard. He and his wife didn’t have kids of their own, so he was like an honorary uncle to me, my siblings, and all the other kids in town we grew up with.
“But youloveus.” I gave him my cheekiest smile as I gathered up the shot glasses in my hands. “Thanks, Bryce.”
He waved a hand, shooing me away from the bar as he turned to serve another patron. It took all of my drunken concentration to not only hold the drinks but sidle my way through the crowd back to our table. I went slowly, careful not to spill the precious liquid that numbed both my heartache and general lack of clarity about my life.
I spotted Torrance finally, about halfway back on my journey. A beautiful brunette clung to the sleeve of his leather jacket, brows drawn together and lips frowning like she was upset. Torr seemed to be pulling away, his free hand gesticulating as he talked to her. I couldn’t make out their conversation, but it looked like an argument.
Typical Torr. Breaking hearts and vaginas, sometimes in the same night. A lot of people didn’t understand how he, a capital-P player, and my brother Daren, utterly devoted to one girl since he wasfive, came to be best friends.
The thing was, Torr didn’t hide that finding love was the absolute last thing on his mind. He was at least honest with every girl he hooked up with. His utter lack of commitment wasn’t his best personality trait, sure. But playboy tendencies aside, he actually was a solid friend and a really good guy.
Which made it really, really hard for any woman not to develop feelings for him. My pathetic ass included.
But I would never let myself become one of Torrance Knight’s many flings or one-night stands. So I kept my trap shut and hid it all behind a numbing waterfall of booze. Although, I probably gave myself too much credit. We’d known each other for thirteen years, and in all that time, he’d never looked at me that way. To him, I was nothing but his best buddy’s sister.
Astarte.
The strange word entered my brain out of nowhere, like someone had planted it directly in there. I stopped in my tracks, drawing my gaze to the window where a white dove sat perched on a tree branch outside. It just stared at me with its beady bird eyes, looking ghostly with its white feathers against the night sky.
The fuck?
I closed my eyes and shook my head. Okay, maybe I should have stopped drinking at that last round. But I knew my limits. My parents had allowed me tiny sips of booze since I was a toddler. Right then I felt good-drunk, but not sloppy-drunk. And I’d definitely never drank to the point where I was hallucinating.
“Hey, Ror!” someone yelled through the noise.
I opened my eyes to see Torr coming toward me, the pretty brunette gone. He cut through the crowd like a shark through water, everyone subtly ebbing away to give him room. His towering height certainly gave him that power, but there was also just something abouthimthat made people want to stay out of his way.
He wasn’t scary, but intimating? To those who didn’t know him, absolutely. Torr had a hell of a glow-up in high school, muscles filling out his skinny frame and a cool, detached confidence taking over the haunted skittishness he’d portrayed as a child. Shit, I thought he was mute when I first met him. He didn’t speak for a week, and even when he was safe, he had the demeanor of a wild animal that had been caged and abused.
People used to think Torr and Daren were twins. They both had that quiet, dark-eyed broody thing going on. My brother was a total sweetheart underneath, but Torr was hard to sum up in one word. And that word was definitely notsweet.
I’d known him for years and still found it hard to describe him. In school, he was known for protecting kids from bullies. But he’d beat the bullies so badly, they spent weeks in the hospital. Some of those fights resulted in battery charges and short stints in jail. He had a lot of anger, a lot of violence churning within him. He’d always been a good friend to Daren, Lily, and I, not to mention warm and respectful to our parents. But I still didn’t feel like I reallyknewhim.
And yet, he was the subject of all my dirtiest fantasies.
Fuck my stupid heart. And my vagina.
