“You swear,” he said. “All the time. You say ‘damn’ when things don’t go well.”

“And I put a quarter in the swear jar every time.” Good thing he had never heard her when she hung out with Zane and Jagger. They’d given her an entirely new vocabulary of swearwords that had taken a long time to shake after she became a mother and adopted a more conservative outlook—one that apparently made Connie think she was wedding material.

And yet sometimes the rebel in her broke free—the rebel Zane had fed with his own kind of wild.

What would Zane think about her dating Viper? Or would he even care?

FIVE

Before you start, get comfortable with your tools. You never know what you will need, and when.

—SINNER’S TRIBE MOTORCYCLE REPAIR MANUAL

Zane knew Jagger would find him.

No way would his best friend let this one slide. But he was grateful Jagger had, at least, given him a few days to get himself together after seeing Evie. Too bad he’d used that time to fall apart instead.

“I heard this has become your new home.” Jagger pulled out a chair at Zane’s table and waved his hand vaguely at the room in front of him, encompassing the full expanse of Rider’s Bar. The Sinners owned several legitimate businesses in Conundrum, including bars, strip clubs, nightclubs, trucking companies, and shops, all convenient for laundering money, hiding shipments of stolen goods, and turning over a profit for the club. Some members worked on the legitimate side. Others, like Zane, Jagger, and most of the Sinner executive board, handled the sale and supply of illegal arms.

“What of it?” He raised his voice over Foghat’s “Slow Ride.” One thing about Rider’s Bar, they always played good tunes. Too bad they couldn’t do something about the smell. Usually, Zane didn’t notice the thick yeasty scent of beer overlying the more pungent aroma of cigarette smoke, but tonight his belly roiled with every whiff.

“How many have you had, brother?” Jagger settled himself in the chair and pushed aside the collection of bottles Zane had asked Sherry to leave behind. Once a house mama at the Sinner’s Tribe clubhouse, Sherry had been thrown out of the MC after Axle used their relationship to steal guns from the club. At the urging of the executive board, and because Sherry had been physically coerced, Jagger had partially forgiven her betrayal and agreed to let her work at Rider’s Bar. Sherry had accepted her dismissal with good grace, but everyone knew she was just putting in time, hoping Jagger would let her back into the club.

“Sherry’s counting. Not me.” He stared at the sea of bottles, unable to meet Jagger’s gaze. This was not a conversation he wanted to have, and especially when he couldn’t think straight. Jagger had a way of cutting through the bullshit and right now the bullshit was the only thing keeping his heart from spilling out of his chest.

“She says you’re not fit to ride.”

“Sherry doesn’t know dick all about me.”

“Apparently, neither do I.” Jagger leaned back in his chair, folded his arms behind his head. “All these years, you’ve been going on about the woman who betrayed you and ripped out your heart, and you never told me it was Evie.”

“She tell you that?”

“Nope. But you just did.” Any other man would have smirked, but Jagger wasn’t the smirking type. He just laid it on the line.

“Didn’t matter.” Zane drained his bottle and shoved it across the table as the bitter taste of beer lingered on his tongue. Usually he went for the harder stuff, whiskey or rye, bourbon if Cade, the club treasurer was pouring, but when Sherry had come to take his order, he’d asked for beer—Corona—the kind he’d dropped on the kitchen floor of Jagger’s house after he saw Evie in his best friend’s arms.

“I’d say from the bottle count on the table it matters a hell of a lot.”

“Fuck off, Jag. I’m not in the mood.” Zane lifted a new bottle and Jagger grabbed his wrist.

“Fair warning. We had an executive board meeting scheduled for this afternoon. When you didn’t show up, I postponed the meeting and sent Shooter to hunt you down. The meeting is being reconvened right here at your table. You got ten minutes to sober the fuck up and do your job, so you might want to reach for the water I told Sherry to bring you instead of that bottle.”

They locked gazes, and tension hung in the air between them. “Get your fucking hand off me.”

Jagger released his wrist, and Zane tipped the bottle into his mouth. The vile taste of warm beer spread across his tongue. But damned if he would let Jagger tell him what to do.

“Wrong choice, brother.”

Zane snorted. “My life has just been one wrong choice after another. At least I’m consistent.”

“What happened between you and Evie that night of the party when you two ran off and left me playing vids on my own?” Jagger cut to the chase; he wasn’t a man who had time to waste. As president of the MC, he had over one hundred men depending on him, a multitude of businesses to run, and politics to handle. Although the executive board helped spread the load, in the end, he was the man in charge. And he loved it. Zane had never been interested in leadership, but he did enjoy his position as vice president and Jagger’s right-hand man. Power from the shadows. That was him.

“You mean the part before her dad tried to kill me and I became a wanted man? Nothin’.” He took another swig from the bottle and thudded it on the table. If Jagger kept this up, he’d be forced to leave and he didn’t know if he’d be able to stand, much less walk a straight line through the bar.

“Does it have something to do with Mark?”

“Jag.” He barked the name, cutting Jagger off. He couldn’t talk about Evie and the thought of her married to that no-good piece of slime made his stomach twist. Anyone who spent their study breaks getting drunk under the bleachers wasn’t good enough for Evie. In his eyes, no one had been good enough for her, and he’d made sure every guy in Stanton High School knew the score.

Lucky for Jag, the executive board made a timely arrival. Sparky and Gunner pulled up some extra tables. T-Rex and Tank, the junior patch members-at-large, brought chairs. Dax followed them in with Cade and Shaggy on his heels.

After Sherry served their drinks, Jagger gave the floor to Cade for the treasurer’s report. Tall, blond, and nicknamed “Thor” by the sweet butts for his resemblance to an actor who played the character in the movies, Cade had enjoyed the fringe benefits of being a biker—a new woman in his bed every night—until he met Arianne’s best friend, Dawn. Now the club’s notorious manwhore had an old lady, two adopted daughters, and a baby on the way. Zane had taken up the mantle of “Brother Least Likely Ever to Get Hitched” that Cade had passed down to him, and he expected to keep it until the day he died.

Cade reported that the war with the Jacks had drained their finances, and although the Sinners had some robust long-term holdings, they needed short-term gains to pay salaries and keep their businesses afloat—gains that were usually financed through the arms deals that the Jacks now sought to take over.

Dax, the club torturer, and father of five boys, offered to hire out his services to other MCs to bring in some extra cash. Lean and dark, relished his victim’s screams. Not many of the brothers could stomach Dax’s “work,” but Zane didn’t have a problem watching Dax use his psychology background to inveigle information from those who had been deemed a danger to the club. And when the psychology failed, and the tools came out, well, Zane had screamed louder the night after he got his mother’s name tattooed on his arm, and his dad cut it off with a rusty blade.

The whiskey went down smooth, with only the slightest burn, and for the first time since he’d seen Evie in Big Bill’s shop, Zane felt a flicker of warmth in his chest. He slumped back in his chair and prayed the meeting would be over soon so he could go back to the clubhouse and crash.