Grey (Storm's Soldiers MC Book 2) by Paige Notaro Page B

gloom. Whatever Vaughn’s reasons for wearing that symbol, he had never mentioned it in his time with me. It didn’t matter in the context of us.
    Not that there was an ‘us’ anymore.
    The grey cloud hadn’t lifted off my head by the time I slouched into work that evening. The bar was busy for a Sunday night, but I could only crawl around. Even then, I messed up more than one order.
    “You trying to get free drinks or something?” Jeannie asked after I came back for a redo on my third screw-up. “All you need to do is ask if you want something to drink.”
    “I don’t want free drinks,” I told her, slipping a dark lager back on the bar. “You know I don’t like porters anyway.”
    “I’m starting to realize my knowledge of your tastes may not be right.”
    I stared at the empty corner booth by the pool tables. “Well, I’m starting to think the problem is my tastes.”
    “Mmm.” She handed me the correct drink and gave my grip a squeeze. “So that’s what up.”
    “Girl, you don’t even know the half of it.”
    “Aw, I’m sorry, honey,” she shrugged. “But I did tell you that guy was trouble.”
    “Yeah…”
    “Well, live and learn right? You can tell me all about it after we close up.”
    Jeannie’s face stood plain and eager. She almost never went out with us on account of having a kid and all. This was quite the offer. Only, my story was almost too embarrassing to share.
    “Maybe,” I said.
    “Sure, let me know.”
    I handed off the fixed drink with my apologies and let myself sink into the bustle. Word of my condition spread quickly through the staff and Marissa and Kiera both offered sympathy hugs when we linked up at the bar.
    My creeping guilt came back at this tenderness. I shouldn’t need this show of support. Even if I did, this misery had built up on the back of my foolishness and ignorance. Sure, I wasn’t caught up on my racist symbols, but god knows the other signs were there.
    His head was shaved. He was a literal skinhead and I had just taken his bare scalp as another rough part of him to run over me.
    After we closed up at night, all three of the girls hung back. I didn’t want to leave them hanging, so I let them tug me out to another bar where we sat around a tall pitcher and four mugs.
    “He didn’t hit you, did he?” was one of Marissa’s first questions.
    “No, no,” I said. “Nothing like that. We just got into a fight.”
    “Fight?” Jeannie asked, dabbling at her beer. “I heard you guys were in a fuckbuddy situation. What’s there to fight about in that?”
    “That’s how those always end up,” Kara said, shaking her head. “One of them always wants to do more than fuck.”
    “It wasn’t me,” I said. “I was fine the way things used to be.”
    Kara didn’t seem wholly convinced, but she gave me the benefit of the doubt. “So then what happened?”
    “It turns out things weren’t what they seemed.”
    Marissa patted me on the back and huddled in. “Well, you had fun, right? You broke your dry spell. Now you can move on to something better.”
    It was all true, but the idea of moving on just made me feel worse than any thought that had come before.
     

CHAPTER TWO
    Vaughn
    It was noon, and I was already piss drunk. A few guys laughed over by the bar, and some others mingled in tables further away, but their presence barely registered.
    I hung in a dim corner of the Iron Crossroads, alone in the shadows with a bottle of cheap shit and my thoughts. My mind wasn’t the finest of companions in the best of times, but I couldn’t share my truths with anyone else. The whiskey helped keep the internal dialogue to a minimum.
    I wanted to be angry. Fuck, I deserved to be pissed. Things were spinning smooth right up until the end. There would have been no issue if it weren’t for timing. A little bit earlier and my shirt would have still been on. A little bit later and we wouldn’t have been in plain sight.
    But no, the devil had come knocking