I wouldn’t complain.
I’d been to places where communal showers—without stalls—were the norm. And places where squatting over a hole in the ground was as close as you came to a toilet.
So I was just glad for indoor plumbing and a door.
Even if I was going to be sharing them with guys.
“Louana,” a voice said, making me step out of the bathroom to find the tall, handsome Black man from the common area standing there.
“Brooks, right?” I clarified.
“Yep.”
“You’re in charge.”
“Of you all, yeah,” he confirmed.
“Do you need something from me?” I asked.
“I need you not to start shit,” he said, giving me a knowing look, despite never having seen me before. “I won’t pretend to know you or your motivations for being here, but I get that there is history that might be impacting your decision to be here.”
“I was never going to start shit. Or, at least, not with anyone but Valen,” I conceded. “I’m not going to give you a hard time.”
“Look,” he said, moving inward, making sure we were alone. “There is a lot of Legacy here. Guys who skate by because they know they are getting in, even if they don’t work for it. I’m doing my best to make sure everyone earns it. And it’s fucking important to work for it. Makes you appreciate it more.”
“I agree. And I plan to work.”
“Even if you don’t plan on patching in?” he asked, reading me a little too well.
“Yes, even if. I will pull my own weight. I will pull half of theirs,” I said, waving toward the abandoned beds, “if that is what you need from me.”
At that, his gaze held mine for a long moment before he nodded. “Okay then,” he said, turning, then walking away.
I didn’t know the man.
But I was immediately sure of two things.
He was not an easy man to impress.
And I was pretty confident that he approved of me.
Which was good.
Because I was planning on starting shit with Valen under his nose.
If he ever got back from his ride, that is.
Because several hours later, after I put away my shit, cleaned the kitchen, and had Seth drive me back to my parents’ place to switch out my car for my bike, he still hadn’t gotten back.
In fact, it wasn’t until I was starting to doze off after a long day that I finally heard footsteps coming toward the prospect room.
CHAPTER FIVE
Valen
“So, that’s what you’ve been running from,” Voss said when we finally stopped driving around almost two hours later.
I’d driven us all the way to the fucking bottom of Jersey. Which might have been the only reason I ended up stopping and not driving through the whole damn night.
“What?” I asked, cracking my neck as I stared out at the crashing waves.
It was a bit early in the season and late in the day for the beach, but some vacationers were still clinging to the last few minutes of sunlight before they headed back to their rental houses to hop into the outdoor showers to rinse away the sweat and sand and sunblock before hitting the town for shopping or eating or playing at the arcade.
Despite growing up close to the beach, my parents brought us down to Cape Mey for vacation fairly regularly over the years. We would share a house with a couple of the other Henchmen families, leaving most of us kids crammed into one bedroom—or two when we got older and our parents sectioned us off by gender.
I had great memories of those days. My old man would wake us up when it was still dark out and make us walk down to the pier to watch the sun rise. Then we’d spend long hours playing in the water and sand before going home to shower, change, grab some food, then head out onto the town.
The parents would take turns watching us each night so the other parents could go off and do adult shit while we went to the arcade, spending insane amounts of money to slowly but surely build up huge amounts of tickets that we would trade in at the end of the trip for some trinkets to bring home with us.
Those were good times.
It felt kind of strange to be back as an adult without my family. Stranger still to find that it was where I was going to have to finally have this talk with Voss.
We’d started out our friendship tentatively, two strange men who were wary of each other and our motivations and connections. Slowly but surely, though, information about our pasts started to trickle out.
He knew about the club and my friends. About the crazy shit that went down in Navesink Bank. Even about my family.
He didn’t know about Louana.
Because I never talked about her.
I tried like hell not to even think about her, in fact.
I’d thought I’d done a relatively good job, too. Time and distance made shit like that easier.
Sure, she came to mind when I knew I was going to be coming back to Navesink Bank in a permanent way, but I always figured it would only ever have to be a passing by on the street sort of thing. Navesink Bank wasn’t exactly a small town, even if certain parts of it were pretty close-knit.
So, yeah, there hadn’t been a real reason to talk to Voss about her.
It was supposed to be ancient history.
But when ancient history suddenly unearthed itself, I guess you had to finally stop pretending that it didn’t happen.
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “I traveled because I always wanted to travel.”
To that, I just got a noncommittal grunting noise. I knew Voss well enough at this point to know that was his way of disagreeing with me without actually having to say those words.
“She’s pretty,” he said.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “She always was.”
“And she wants your blood.”
It wasn’t a question, but I felt compelled to answer anyway.
“Yeah, seems like it.”
“She gonna get it?” he asked, glancing over at me.
“That’s a complicated question. If you’re asking me if she is capable, well, her dad is literally a vigilante serial killer. Her Ma once kidnapped her old man. She spent her entire adolescence in a self-defense gym. If she wants to hurt you, you’re getting hurt.”
“Your town is fucked, man,” he said, shaking his head.
“Yeah, it’s got a complicated history for sure. Keeps shit interesting.”
“You earn her bloodthirst?” he asked.
To that, I took a deep breath, looking out at the waves once again, finding them a little more violent than a moment before. Much like the shit going on in my head, I guess.
“That’s a yeah,” Voss said, letting out a snort. “What’d you do?”
“Like our town, it’s a little complicated. But it boils down to her dating another guy in the town. Jase Mallick.”
“Mallick,” Voss repeated. “The loansharks?”
“Yeah, but back then, Jase wasn’t in the family business yet. He was just a guy who had locked down Louana.”
“Let me guess, you couldn’t keep your hands off what was his.”
“She wasn’t his. I mean, she was, but Lulu wasn’t ever a cheater. She got clear of him before she let me move in.”