Days were still slow for guys like Dezi.
And he liked to spend that extra time on his hands having fun.
I couldn’t blame him, but I was a pretty dedicated physical trainer when he demanded it of me. So, despite all the bitching and moaning, he was going to go to the gym with me and sweat out all the shit he’d put in his system the night before.
“This might be that last round of L.I.T.s talking,” Dezi said, leaning his head against the window. “But you seem to be heading in the wrong direction, man.”
“Our gym doesn’t open for another hour yet,” I told him, meaning the one owned by Cash and a couple of the club old ladies. I preferred to workout there, having the option of not only regular gym equipment, but speed and punching bags as well. And the ring for some fighting.
The club hadn’t known a hell of a lot of peace since I joined up. I didn’t want to let my fighting skills get rusty. We never knew what kind of problem was right around the corner.
“The only other gym in town is owned by Shane Mallick.”
“Yeah, and?” I asked, not seeing the problem.
“It’s disloyal, man,” Dezi claimed.
“Disloyal to who?”
“To Valen, man. You know him and Jase Mallick have that rivalry going on.”
“Rivalry,” I scoffed. “They both liked the same girl a decade or something ago.”
“Nah, Zaddy. Jase was dating her. Valen stole her. It’s some shit. We gotta be respectful.”
“Of the decade-old shit?” I asked, shaking my head. “It’s not Jase’s gym. And Shane Mallick has always been someone our club has considered an ally from what I hear. It’s fine.”
And the only option.
Because, quite frankly, I didn’t want to go to the self-defense gym with Dezi.
I damn sure didn’t want to get into a ring with him.
Sure, the man was a food-obsessed teddy bear a fair chunk of the time. But the man could flip a switch like no one I’d ever seen. If you’d ever seen him in a fight, you’d think the man didn’t feel pain with the way he took his hits and kept coming back for more. He was a relentless fighter. And while I was fine to fight when a situation called for it, I wasn’t someone who enjoyed it like Dezi did.
So the normal gym was the plan.
Whether he liked it or not.
“Hey, look at that, Zadds,” Dezi declared a couple minutes later as we made our way toward the front doors of the gym. “There is someone in the club more dedicated to their physical fitness than even you,” he said as he nodded his chin at the man coming out of the doors.
He was a new addition to the club, still squarely stuck in the prospect phase along with Valen, who was a legacy.
Dezi and I, we officially got our patches just a week or so after they blew into town.
Voss had saved Valen in a fight somewhere down in Louisiana. And, for some reason, all Voss wanted in return was to get a chance to prospect with the club.
Voss was tall and a stocky kind of strong that said he absolutely spent a good chunk of time in the gym, lifting heavy. He had a full blond beard and matching hair, but he kept it shaved up the sides, giving him a Viking appearance.
When Dezi first met Voss, he’d referred to him as grumpy-faced, and, well, that wasn’t an inaccurate description. Part of it was the half-shaved head and all the ink, but he also had a stern, prominent brow that set his light blue eyes in shadow.
Grumpy-voiced, too, Dezi had observed when Voss’s mouth opened, and little more than a growling sound came out.
“Voss,” I greeted, nodding at him. “I thought the gym opened at six,” I said, though he’d clearly been there long enough to work up a heavy sweat.
“Twenty-four, seven, if you’re willing to pay for it,” he said, shrugging, flashing his key at us.
You didn’t exactly make much as a prospect. Really, Fallon was generous to pay us at all before we were patched. Most clubs I’d been in over the years expected you to offer your time to them with nothing in return. It was always a tense, uncertain few months—or years—when you were expected to give full-time work without an income.
So Voss having the kind of money he would need to bribe someone like Shane Mallick into letting him have a key to the gym to come and go as he pleased sort of re-wrote the narrative I had about him being a poor, scrappy junkyard dog before he’d made his way up to Navesink Bank.
We hadn’t really gotten a chance to get to know the guy yet.
He and Valen took to the town damn near every night, partying, drinking, hooking up. And while Dezi and I went out a lot as well, let’s just say that Voss and Dezi were oil and water. So we would often spend time at the same bars and clubs, but separate from one another.
Which was weird since the club was all about brotherhood.
I was giving him the benefit of the doubt since he didn’t come from a club-type background. I figured he would come around eventually. Besides, Brooks ruled over his prospects with an iron fist. They didn’t get away with shit. He worked them day and night to instill a sense of duty and loyalty. So we didn’t get a lot of time to sit around and talk at the clubhouse most days either.
If he lasted, the brotherhood would come.
Well, maybe not so much between Voss and Dezi who were sharing similar “the fuck are you looking at” glares.
“Never see you here,” Voss said, giving Dezi what could only be considered a disrespectful once-over, like he was silently saying that Dezi could use to be at the gym more.
“It comes in phases,” Dezi said, chin lifting, getting pissed already. “I like to get my workouts with female partners, not strapped to a machine.”
“Mmhmm,” Voss rumbled at him. “Got two of those workouts in last night before I came here,” he added, clapping a hand on Dezi’s shoulder hard enough to make Dezi go back a step.
Luckily, though, Voss kept moving.
Because, quite frankly, the two were going to come to blows eventually. And I didn’t want to have to be the one who got between them.
“Take it out on the treadmill,” I suggested as Dezi turned back to look at me with a muscle ticking in his jaw.
“That why you work out so much, Zaddy?” Dezi asked, eyes shining. “To avoid slamming your fists into our faces?”
“Nah, Dez. Just your face,” I told him, getting a chuckle out of him as we headed toward the doors.
We’d only made it through maybe half an hour of our workout when suddenly Voss was back, moving toward me at the free weights with a head jerk.
“What’s up?”
“You aren’t answering your phones.”
“Shit. Yeah. Left them in the car,” I admitted. No one was usually up early enough to bother me before I finished my workout. “Something happening?” I asked, setting down my weights and looking around for Dezi.
Who was supposed to be on the rowing machine.
But was chatting up the pretty blonde at the juice bar instead.
Really, you couldn’t take the man anywhere that women were present if you expected him to stay on task and be focused.
“No. But there’s someone at the club asking for you.”
“Asking for me?” I asked, taken aback.
See, the thing is, I didn’t have people. I’d been raised by my grandparents when my mother and father decided being parents didn’t suit them. They’d been old grandparents to start with, so they’d passed the year after I finished high school. Which left me alone in the world at nineteen.