Page 52 of Prodigal Son

He sent her a raised-brow look that said as much, and then sat down. The bartending prospect walked past and a glass of whiskey appeared before Albie unasked-for. Lucky.

“No beer tonight?” he asked. His tone was just this side of bored. It was light, like he didn’t care what her answer was either way, was just trying to make conversation.

She didn’t want it to have an effect on her, but she found it did. Flirtation had never been her weakness; no, she had a competency kink.

“Beer only gets you so far,” she lamented.

He slid his glass over and clinked it against hers. “I’ll drink to that.”

~*~

Fox had joked on more than one occasion that Albie was a monk. He guessed it looked like that from the outside; he didn’t spend time with any of the club groupies; never pulled one of them down into his lap, willing and warm, in the midst of a poker game – partly because he didn’t participate in the poker games. But also because that didn’t interest him – the act of taking what was offered simply because it was there.

He wasn’t a monk, but sex just for the sake of it had never interested him much. The hollow endorphin drop after a casual fling had always outweighed whatever fleeting satisfaction it brought.

He got lonely sometimes, though. He and Walsh had that in common. He’d never been to visit with King in America, but once, after he’d married his Emmie, Walsh had admitted that he hadn’tknownhe was lonely, during those nights that he stared at the ceiling of his little shack, wondering about the restless nostalgia under his skin.

“I wasn’t gonna get married just to have an old lady,”he’d said.“It had to be right.”

“I thought you married her for legal reasons.”

“Yeah, but I already knew. She was it.”

Albie was wired that way, he thought. Sex could be had anywhere; his fantasies, in the vulnerable moments between sleeping and waking, were of a gentle hand on the back of his neck when he sat at his drafting table; of waking up with long hair in his mouth; of companionable silences and steady reliability. Phillip was that way too, he knew. Tommy and Miles were young. And he wouldn’t dare hazard a guess as to the girls – didn’twantto think about Cassandra and boys in any capacity. He thought Fox was the same, but that he’d tried to be different.

A psychiatrist could have explained it to him. All Albie knew for certain was that he didn’t like games, but he did, for reasons as of yet unknown, like the soft smirk lifting the corner of Axelle Thomas’s mouth.

“Why furniture?” she asked. Two whiskeys had eased the tension from her shoulders and softened her face – a face that was, he could see in the low light, naturally soft and feminine, made harsh by the set of her jaw and the quirk of her eyebrows most of the time. “I mean, you’re thisoutlaw biker guy,” she said, tone kindly mocking, “and you’re making, like, chairs for little old ladies to sit in.”

He chuckled, surprised by the lightness in his chest. “What’s wrong with chairs?”

“Just not what I was expecting. I thought maybe, I dunno, custom knives. Or baseball bats wrapped in barbed wire. Wallet chains.”

He actually snorted. “Wallet chains?”

“It’s part of the Biker Outfit, right? Rule One: must have douchey wallet chain.”

“Wow,” he deadpanned. “You sure do like the biker look.”

She rolled her eyes and took another sip of her drink. And her expression softened another fraction, something almost vulnerable in her eyes as she glanced away from him. “You just – well, you all go for a certain look. And it’s ironic, you know? ‘We’re outlaws, we don’t play by the rules.’ And they you all ride the same bikes, and you wear the same kind of clothes, and you act the same way, and drink all the same drinks, and–” Her voice caught, and she looked down into her glass. “You all do bad things,” she said, quietly, and he thought she was more honest than she’d intended. “You’re not different. You’re not some kinda brave rebels. You’re just…”

He wasn’t one to suffer insults lying down. But she wasn’t trying to do that; her throat bobbed as she swallowed, and he knew she was trying to wrap her brain around it. Her father had died, and she wanted to blame someone, and she wanted to understand why the Dogs were – in her mind – the dark, hedonistic entity that they were.

Albie decided something, then.

He drained the last of his whiskey and laid a hand on her arm where it rested on the bar top. He thought she might flinch away, but she only turned toward him, brows notched together in hurt and confusion.

“Come on. I want to show you something.”

Her gaze narrowed. “What?”

“Nothing bad. Just upstairs, come on.”

She hesitated. A long moment. She’d heard stories – God knew how many and how sordid. She didn’t have to trust him, and she must have thought he meant to get her behind a locked door somewhere.

Whether she was brave, or tired of arguing, or tipsy from drink, he didn’t know, but she finally nodded and slid off her stool.

~*~

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