Page 124 of Fearless

It had been a bold thing for her to say, given their father/daughter history. So maybe the whiskey hadn’t left her system after all.

His mouth pulled hard to the side in a non-smile. “Well, yeah, that too.” Disgruntled face that she dipped her head to avoid. Then his voice gentled. “You’re finding your way.Yourway, and it has nothing to do with the club, or me...” He frowned savagely. “Or people who ought to know better.” Read: Mercy. He snorted, then the softening came again, such a rare and valuable thing, that Ava hated that she hated what he said next. “I’m proud of you.”

Her smile was thin, but she couldn’t seem to help it. “You wanted me to be different.”From the rest of you, she left unsaid.

“I wanted you to be better,” Ghost corrected. “And you are.”

The backs of her eyes burned. She blinked and stared at her hands.

“I just…” Ghost took a troubled breath. “I wanted you to know that. That you’re doing a good job and I’m proud.”

That was probably her cue to leave, because she wasn’t going to get bigger praise than that. But she felt unsteady. It had been a very long time, she suddenly realized, since she’d sought shelter in the arms and leather-covered chests of any of the Lean Dogs in her life. She missed that. She was rabidly nostalgic for that, and wanted to dive across the table and into her father’s lap so he could tuck her under his chin and promise to put bullets in all her fears.

But she wasn’t a little girl anymore – not that club-attached girl she’d been growing up – and he was proud of that.

“You okay?”

“Fine.” She shoved to her feet so fast her hip caught the edge of the table, and she bit down on a yelp.

Maggie would have called her back, forced her to sit down again and talk about whatever was putting the stricken expression on her face. But Ghost didn’t – he never did – and he let her go.

Thirty

The next morning she woke to the sound of Ghost yelling, “Why the hell’s some guy trying to drop a Lexus in my driveway?”

“That’s Ronnie’s!” Ava called, fumbling down the hall as she tugged her sandal straps into place. She paused to prop a hand against the wall and get the left shoe secured, and heard Dad barking orders at the flatbed driver from the open front door. “Dad! Don’t turn him away! I gotta sign for that!”

“Do you not hear her?” Maggie chimed in. “That’s Ronnie’s.”

“I don’t want some prick car sitting in front of my house,” Ghost said.

Ava heaved a sigh. Morning with the Teagues. Just like old times.

After Ronnie got out of the shower, the car business had been sorted, and offers of breakfast were politely declined, Ava slid into the passenger seat of the Lexus and sighed with relief.

“Sorry about all that,” she said as Ronnie started the engine. “Dad…well, he’s just Dad.”

“I’m figuring that out,” Ronnie said with a wry half-smile. “So where to first?”

“Stella’s for breakfast,” Ava said, buckling her belt, feeling something like excitement at the idea of the day that lay ahead of them. They’d decided to spend some normal quality time, kicking over rocks in town, window shopping, finalizing the details of Ronnie’s apartment. “Then the book store.”

“I should have guessed that, bookworm.”

“Yes, you should.”

As he backed out of the drive, Ava glanced up in the rearview and caught Littlejohn pulling out behind them. He’d been waiting in the drive at first light, steaming paper cup of coffee in one hand, listening to his iPod, unhurried and patient.

Ava shook her head and rolled her eyes.Normalwas a negotiable word, after all.

**

High school had treated a select handful like kings, and all the rest had been churned up in the machine, spat back out with an impressive collection of bruises and scars. Aidan had known one way of life, and because of it, he’d never been one of the kings. He’d had girls, and he’d had his share of notoriety, but his fame was the kind granted to drop-outs, back-talkers, bathroom-smokers, and class-skippers. He hadn’t ever hated school, it was just that it had always felt like such a massive waste of time. Men were dying, his father’s men, in a war of outlaw against outlaw, and kids two desks over had been having meltdowns about who to ask to homecoming. Stupid, all of it. He’d known from the second he was old enough to say the word “bike” that he would be a Dog, like his father. Why the hell had he been spinning his wheels at Knoxville High?

He hadn’t finished, something Maggie had clapped him over the head with a wooden spoon about. But he hadn’t, and still didn’t care. He’d learned enough. He’d learned, on the fringes of a gym class locker room scuffle he’d eventually broken up, that Greg Hoffman was sensitive about his small frame and narrow features.

Greg hadn’t changed much, since that day in the locker room. Still small, his shiny new Carpathians cut swallowed him whole, leaving deep shadows where his shoulders should have filled out the leather. His hair was thin, that blonde that was almost translucent, buzzed close to his head. He hadn’t outgrown his knobby elbows or the faint scattering of pimples along his jaw. He looked about fifteen, and in the back corner booth at Stella’s, he looked scared to death.

Aidan spotted him straight off. First thing in the morning, on a late summer day like this, the patio was crowded and all the window tables were taken, customers waiting out on the sidewalk for a place to open up. Those three back booths by the kitchen weren’t anything to write home about, but that’s where Greg had chosen to sit, his back to the wall, facing the door. Conspicuous. Flying his colors like an idiot.

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