Page 31 of Freak
“No sweat.” He cast a glance over at the bar, where a previously abundant breakfast spread had been reduced to crumbs. “Damn. You pigs ate up the whole breakfast while you watched me work? Really feelin’ the love over here.”
“I’ll make you somethin’, hon,” Candy said, hopping off her man’s lap. “Eggs and toast do ya?”
Sitting at the end of the bar, Kellen brayed a laugh. “Mel’s been eatin’everythingMiss Abigail’s got to offer, Candy. He don’t want your sad ol’ runny eggs and burnt toast.”
It wasn’t especially unusual for Kell to say something that cut the volume on the whole Hall, but this one landed with a strange thud. Mel’s hackles went up; what he’d said about Abigail seemed way out of bounds, but he couldn’t say exactly why.Wasit a sexual inuendo, or was Mel both so damn horny for her and so fucking protective of her that he was seeing filth where there was only insensitivity? On the other hand, Kellen was more than half likely to say something shitty just to get a rise out of people. He was like one of those troublesome teenage assholes who courted negative attention because he never got the positive kind.
Across the Hall, Dub was on his feet, too, ready to take up for Candy. She had hold of his arm, trying to calm him down.
Kellen just sat there like a kid who’d tossed an M-80 down a storm drain and was waiting to see what would happen.
Badge moved toward him, but pulled up when Isaac got to Kellen first. Isaac hooked one of his big old hands on Kellen’s shoulder, his long fingers and thumb over his neck and throat like a silent threat, and leaned down to say something in Kell’s ear.
Whatever he said drained Kell’s blood straight out of his face. He made a stiff nod, and Isaac’s threatening grip became a brotherly pat.
“Sorry, fellas,” Kellen said, with something approximating good grace. “Bad joke. Didn’t mean to disrespect anybody.”
Badger looked to Double A and then to Mel, his eyes asking if the issue was over.
Mel glanced at Dub, who was already looking his way. They shared a shrug and a nod, and the issue was over.
In the usual way of the Horde, everything went back to normal right away. Grudges between brothers might linger in their hearts, but in the Hall, their home, when an issue was over, it was fucking over. Badger was big on getting shit aired out, and if you said you were satisfied, you didn’t go back on it.
Sadly, Candy no longer seemed inclined to fix him any breakfast, and Mel wasn’t going to risk getting a rolled-up paper across his nose if he asked, so he slumped over to the bar and scrounged up half of a cruller from the back of a box. He stuck it in his mouth and went behind the bar to refresh his coffee.
Kellen sat in the same place, at the end of the bar. “Hey, you get my message?” he asked quietly.
“Yeah. What’s up?” He dipped the bit of half-used cruller into his coffee and shoved the dripping mess into his mouth. That would have to do.
Kellen glanced around and dropped his voice more as he leaned in. “I said not here.”
Mel stopped and gave the man a hard look. “The fuck is up, Kell? You’re actin’ weird—and straight up? For you, that’s saying somethin’.”
Kell’s face shrank in on itself. “Fuck off.”
Unaffected, Mel shrugged. “Look, if you got something you need to tell me, tell me. Not interested in any cloak-and-dagger shit, bro.”
“I’m tryin’ tohelpyou,” Kellen said—and that pulled Mel up short.
“Huh? What help do I need?”
He was sincerely confused and sincerely asking. Mel wasn’t a complicated guy. He had no secrets, no dark traumas haunting him, and he didn’t pull sketchy shit unless said sketchy shit was assigned to him by his president. He could not imagine what help Kellen thought he needed, much less what Kell thought he could do to help—especially nothing that had to be whispered about in private.
Again, Kellen looked around. He was starting to act as a suspicious as some dude in a trench coat and fedora, lurking in the shadows.
“You know what? Never mind. You’re on your fuckin’ own.”
With that, Kellen hopped off the stool and stormed from the clubhouse.
“He’s actin’ weirder than usual,” Len said, coming around back to fill his coffee, too.
“Yeah,” Mel answered, still focused on the door Kellen had pushed through.
“What was all that?”
Turning to Len, who’d stepped back into the SAA role while Tommy worked his way back to full power, Mel said, “I got no idea, but I think it’s worth keeping our eyes open.”
Len’s gaze sharpened to a knifepoint. “What’d he say?”
