Andi and Niro Page 3

  "I haven't needed to put a puppy down, obviously. But I've lost puppies. No matter how much I tried, no matter how much the vet tried with me. And nothing is quite as bad as a new life being lost. I'm not saying you will ever be okay with it, but you might develop a better process of handling it, that doesn't involve crying on the break room floor. If, of course, that is the path you keep choosing."

  Of course I had to keep choosing it. I had spent so many years of my life working toward it. And, not to mention, spending my parents' money while I did it.

  No, I had to be a vet.

  I just needed some time to prepare myself for the inevitable bad days.

  "I think my old boss was right. I just needed a break between college and my career. I didn't even realize how drained I felt until she'd brought my attention to it."

  "Well, you have all the time you need now," she told me, pulling me into the kitchen, putting the kettle on in a way that was so familiar—I'd spent a lifetime watching her do it for me—but also foreign, since it had been so long since I had been home. It had been ages since anyone other than myself had put the kettle on for me, pulled out a special mug, made me a cup of tea just the way I liked it. Sometimes it was the little things you missed most without even truly realizing it. "Your father and I are happy to have you here as long as you want to be. It is nice to have you all to ourselves again."

  "All to yourselves? You didn't tell everyone?" I asked.

  Navesink Bank, while not a small town per se, sure acted as one. At least in our little community inside of it. No one kept any secrets. Least of all one like this. News of someone's return from college spread like wildfire. You would barely be able to be home for an hour before the doorbell started ringing with your loved ones coming to welcome you back home.

  "We decided to wait," she told me, turning to face me, leaning back against the counter. "In case you weren't in the right place for visitors. Of course, Niro probably told everyone already, though."

  "You told Niro?" I asked, stomach tightening.

  "You didn't?" she shot back, brows knitting. "Really? Your best friend doesn't know?"

  I'd kind of kept our flagging friendship to myself, not wanting everyone else to get involved, to butt their noses in. It would only make things feel more awkward.

  I never kept secrets from my family, not really, but I guess I did sometimes keep from telling them the whole truth.

  "We, ah, we haven't really been close for a while now, Mom," I told her, trying to ignore the twisting feeling in my chest.

  "What? For how long? You two were attached at the hip as babies. And ever since then."

  "I guess adulthood kind of, you know, sent us in different directions. And after he became a patched member of the MC, I guess his life got busy. And my life was busy with school and work and trying to have some sort of social life. It just kind of... fell apart, I guess."

  "You know," my father said from behind me, making me jolt. Turning, I found him leaning against the doorframe, one of my suitcases sitting at his feet, handle still up. "I have wondered about that."

  "You have?" my mother asked.

  "Really, why?" I asked almost at the same time.

  "It's just... Niro isn't the same kid he used to be," he told me, and I didn't know if he was being cryptic to protect Niro, his biker brother now, or to protect me from whatever he believed Niro had become.

  "I mean, I guess, you know, he had to grow up. So did I," I said, shrugging, even if a part of me felt like I had just lost something. The boy who had been such a constant in my life, I guess. A part of me had always believed we would just pick back up some day like nothing had happened. But would that even be possible if he wasn't the same person he'd once been? Would he even want to know me anymore?

  "Yeah, I guess that's true," he said, but the look he gave my mother said otherwise. It was a look I was familiar with. It was one that said We will talk about this later. Alone. It was a look he'd used a lot in my youth, when I proved too sensitive to handle some of their more adult conversations.

  That said, I was an adult now.

  So if he still didn't want to say anything, I felt that might be something worth stressing about.

  At least my tea was nearly done, I decided as my mom turned to put some honey in it. The honey likely came from her own hive.

  She'd never set out to have one, of course. But she'd overheard someone at the grocery store talking about needing to call in an exterminator to kill the hive that had formed in their unused shed, and she'd promptly decided she was the woman for the job. Only she had no plans on killing the very endangered honey bees, but relocating them. To her own backyard. She'd had a hive there ever since. And she stole a small bit of honey every now and again for her own teas or remedies.

  "I'm going to get the rest of your plants in the house," my father said, giving me a forced smile.

  Then he was gone before I could ask any questions.

  "Mom, what is Dad talking about with Niro?" I asked, knowing I was much more likely to get straight answers from her than my father. Not because he didn't want to share with me, but because he was just a quieter, more reserved person. He shared with my mom, and maybe his brother—my Uncle Cyrus—but not really anyone else.

  "I'm not sure," she told me, handing me my tea.

  "But you've been here," I reminded her, shaking my head.

  "Yeah, but you know me, honey," she said, taking the seat across from me, but I knew she wouldn't be there long. She was always on the go. Taking care of animals. Cutting up food for them. Tending to her garden. She loved being outside, not sitting at a table.

  I did know her.

  Which meant that I knew that while she married an outlaw biker, and while she loved the extended family that brought with it, she wasn't like some of the other "old ladies" of the club who liked to be at the clubhouse and involved in all its various dramas. She liked being at home with her animals. So she was often the last to know or notice when something had changed.

  "So you haven't seen him at all?"

  "I mean, in passing. He always says hi. But then moves on. Almost like..." she started, then trailed off, not wanting to say it.

  But I knew what she didn't want to say.

  "Like he's trying to avoid you."

  "Yes."

  Because of me.

  Was that because he was angry with me?

  Or just done with me?

  Normally, I would say the former is better than the latter, but in all the years I had been close with Niro, he'd never been angry with me.

  I knew, as a whole, he was a sort of rough-around-the-edges guy. I mean, he was raised by an ex-cage-fighting biker with the road name Pagan. Of course he wasn't going to be completely, you know, average. He was a bit darker and standoffish, a little prone to using his fists first with others, kind of grumpy at times.

  But with me, he'd always been gentle and sweet. I could always make him smile.

  Then again, apparently, that was before whatever this change was that my father was talking about.

  "None of the other women have talked about it? His mom?" I asked.

  I loved Kennedy. She was such a success story in life. She worked so hard to open her salon. And now she was starting to franchise it out to other parts of New Jersey. I spent a lot of time at her and Pagan's house when I was little, doing the girly stuff my mom wasn't as known for. It seemed strange to me that Niro would transform into a different sort of person and she wouldn't notice or say something to the other women in their little "girls club."

  "I think when he started to prospect, then got patched in, that she expected him to be a bit different. There is a lot of responsibility that comes with that. And danger," she added, wincing a little, even after all these years of getting used to the danger factor with my father's lifestyle.

  That was true.

  I guess I'd always known that Niro was going to become a biker. He looked up to his father so much. And he had never shown any interest i
n heading off to college when many of us started doing so. Of course he was going to prospect when he was old enough.

  That said, I guess I'd always compartmentalized the idea of the boy I'd spent all my time with growing up somehow becoming a much more hardened arms-dealing biker. Someone with a gun always strapped to his body. Someone who likely had to use that gun a time or two, his fists hundreds of times.

  That was the life he chose, though.

  And of course it changed him.

  If not in a big way, then in many small ways.

  "I'm sure he is still the same old Niro underneath it all," I said, thinking out loud. Hoping out loud. I didn't want to think of a world without my version of Niro in it. It would certainly be an uglier place.

  "Maybe," my mother said, nodding. "But people can and do change, honey," she reminded me. "Some circumstances change people forever."

  She didn't say it, but the words were there, hanging in the air.

  Like with your father.

  Who'd been through something so awful that it had turned him into a different person.

  "But he is different now again," I reminded her. "After he met you."

  "True," she agreed, nodding. "Sometimes some people can come into your life, or back into your life, and remind you of who you are always meant to be. Maybe this is like that. I mean, you were a huge part of his life, Andi. And then one day, apparently, you weren't. I can see how having you back might, you know, fill the hole you left."

  I wasn't so sure.

  I mean, after a certain point, didn't your personality become your personality? Was it even possible to change back?

  I didn't have answers to those kinds of questions. And a part of me didn't even want to consider them. Because there was always a chance that whatever this change was with Niro that my father didn't even want to talk to me about was permanent. That he wasn't the person I used to know. That no matter how much I was around, nothing would change.

  "Let's not get ahead of ourselves, though," my mother said, patting my hand, moving to stand up. "For all we know, your father doesn't know what he's talking about. You would know better than anyone else. And you won't be able to tell until you see him again. So there's no reason to stress about it all right now. How about we go and greet all the animals instead?"

  When left with the choice of contemplating a possibly heartbreaking situation, or spending time with something fluffy or feathery or even scaley, I would choose the animals every time.

  So that was what I did.

  But when I went to bed later that night, I couldn't stop my mind from racing, from replaying old conversations, remembering cherished times.

  And worrying myself sick that the person I'd shared all that with didn't exist anymore.

  I guessed only time would tell.

  Chapter Three

  Niro

  "What the fuck is wrong with you?" Ward growled, grabbing me by the back of my neck, tossing me backward against the cage, making it rattle loud enough to make my teeth ache from it. "Your father was reckless. But you? You have a death wish."

  The adrenaline from the fight waning, I could feel all the places my much larger opponent had landed strikes. My ribs ached. My cheek felt swollen. There was a trickle of blood sliding down my cheek. And my knuckles were all cracked open, a little bloody, but so hardened from the years in this cage that they didn't get all dramatic when I used—or even overused—them anymore.

  I was half his age, but my hands were already looking worse than my father's. My father, who had worked at this illegal underground fighting club for years before he joined up with the Henchmen. My father who had been trained and reined in by the very man standing before me right then.

  Ross Ward.

  Tall and fit, in an expensive suit, he was likely every bit as intimidating now as he had been back then. Even though he'd mostly handed off his business to his son, Jax, at this point.

  He was still around, checking on the books, vetting the fighters.

  And, apparently, scolding me.

  Jax was there too, looking much like his father with no gray in his dark hair, his eyes barely paying me any mind as he sorted some file he had open in his lap and lounged in the leather chairs in one of the many seating areas around the cage.

  Being the one who had to deal with me on a daily basis, Jax had long since given up telling me to take it easy, to save it for fight nights.

  He knew the words fell on unhearing ears, so he saved his voice.

  "We're sparring," I said, shrugging as I rolled my neck, feeling a satisfying crack.

  "You're intentionally ramming your face into a brick wall over and over," Ross Ward shot back, shaking his head. "At this rate, you're not going to be able to fight this weekend."

  "I'll be fighting."

  "Not if you break your hands."

  "Eh, even then."

  "I get it. Your father left a wild legacy, kid. Fighting with broken shit all the time. In his fucking jeans. Smiling through the blood filling his mouth. But you don't have shit to prove."

  "Not trying to prove anything."

  "Then what—" he started to ask, getting cut off by his son.

  "He likes the pain," Jax said, snapping the folder shut as he unfolded from his chair, walking over in his gray slacks and black button-up, his jacket still tossed over the back of his chair.

  "Well, how the fuck am I supposed to reason with that?" Ross asked, snorting.

  "You don't. You let him do his thing, and pray the medical bills aren't that bad," Jax said, smirking.

  The club paid for the stitches, for the knocked-out teeth, for the broken ribs. They couldn't technically give us health coverage, seeing as their club wasn't supposed to even exist, but they could cover the damages.

  "Though, last time, he had one of his brothers stitch him together with a fucking sewing needle and some vodka tossed on as an antiseptic, so all things considered, he's been a pretty model fighter."

  I remembered that. Finn, my fellow biker brother, the son of the president of our MC, had been pissed that I'd forced him into it. He'd always been a little less into the violence, more into the research, the details, the books, and the brotherhood.

  But, in the end, he'd caved, cursing me out the entire time. The younger brother to the future president, he sometimes felt the need to prove himself in little ways, even if it wasn't something in his wheelhouse. Like doing battlefield surgery even though he looked green the whole time, just so he could brag about it over drinks later, get some respect from the others.

  My scar was jagged as fuck, but he still complimented his handiwork whenever he got the chance.

  "He does bring in the money," Ross admitted, torn between wanting to be a sort of uncle figure to me, given his friendship to my father, and being the owner of a business that profited off of my blood-thirst, off my recklessness.

  That said, he knew that my father knew where I was, what I was doing, and had no problems with it. So he really had no leg to stand on to try to step in and put a stop to it.

  "And when we pair him with anyone smaller," Jax said to his father, "he hurts them and then they can't fight. So let him ram himself into the brick wall that is Ig," he said, nodding toward Igor Jr., the son of a fighter my father used to fight back in the day, who was sweaty and a little bruised, but otherwise unharmed. "Then he will fight someone his size for the fight."

  "Are you still not going to tell me who I am fighting?" I asked, a little annoyed at all the secrecy. I couldn't imagine why it would need to be kept on the down-low. I knew all the fighters. Or, at least, I thought I did. Maybe there was someone new in town.

  "Nope," Jax said, getting a sideways look from his father, but ignoring it. "Hard to be so fucking cocky when you don't know if you can win or not, huh?" he asked, smirking.

  "I can always win," I told him, shrugging, leaning down to slide my feet back into my boots, then grabbing my leather cut off the mat outside of the cage. "Ig, same time next week?" I asked,
looking up at him.

  "I got nothing better to do," he agreed, nodding.

  "You gonna save room for my brothers?" I asked, looking at Jax. Sometimes the clubhouse parties could get a little redundant. They were always looking for something to do to get out for a little while. And while a cage fight wasn't the best place to meet women, typically, they had a good time, then called up some of the clubwhores to meet us back at the clubhouse.

  "What? Like the Fire Marshall is going to come and tell us we're at capacity? It's gonna be a busy night. Tell them to come early if they want good spots. That's the best I can do."

  "Right," I agreed, grabbing a bottle of water as I made my way across the floor, pushing through the doors, then heading upstairs.

  The club was in the basement of an old school and, according to most people of Navesink Bank, didn't actually exist. Only a select few—mainly the criminal sort, or the very rich, or a combination of the two—knew it existed. And they were who showed up and placed bets on which one of us would win.

  I always had pretty good odds.

  Because I almost never lost.

  But if there was a new fighter in town that was being kept a secret from me, Jax was right, I wasn't sure how cocky I could feel about it. If he was being a dick in keeping him secret, I had to imagine he was good. Good enough to beat me.

  Losing was part of fighting.

  You'd think it would get easier.

  It didn't.

  I didn't want it to.

  I fought because I liked that it was a challenge, because it was unpredictable. If I accepted a possible loss before I even started, I would never put so much into winning.

  I didn't need the money that came from a win. Hell, I didn't even need the money that came from a loss. I made enough as a biker, and helping around at one of the many—and growing—legitimate businesses the Henchmen had going.

  I didn't even have many living costs since I was currently shacking up at the Henchmen compound. I had no need yet for my own place, so I didn't bother. It made more sense to stay at the clubhouse so I could pull my guard shifts when I needed to, then just walk inside, go to my room, and pass out.