I take the drink and tip it his way with a grin before downing half the cool beverage.

“Who you here with?” I ask, looking around the yard for more Devil’s Breed cuts.

“My old lady,” Horse says with a grin. “Left the others behind tonight. Half the bastards don’t trust this lot anyway, so I’m hard pressed to get the assholes to front.”

“Why do you come then?” Nomad or not, it’s unusual to see a biker out on his own amongst a crowd that’s seems more foe than friend given the stares he’s getting. Or is that because of me?

“What can I say?” Horse looks around the yard at the mix of people enjoying the hospitalities. “They have good grit.” His expression falls and his eyes glaze over as he stares out into nothing.

“You goin’ to introduce me to your lady, then?” I give him a gentle nudge with my elbow to snap him out of wherever he’s gone.

“When she gets back from the john, sure.” Horse shakes his head with a chuckle—about what, I’m not exactly sure. He reaches into the drum to get himself a drink. “You’ve never told me why it is I don’t see you with anyone,” he points out, tapping the top of his bottle into my chest before opening it. “Why’s a pretty boy like you always showin’ up on his own to the Lion?”

I shrug, wondering if things would be any different if I wasn’t undercover. I’ve never had trouble finding a woman when I need one, but none of them ever stay. And certainly none of them leave on good enough terms for me to be able to call up for a night out. “Haven’t found a woman who sticks yet.”

Horse makes a knowing grunt, and throws the hand holding his bottle out to gesture towards the house. “Here comes mine now.”

I cut my gaze across the back yard to see a blonde woman in what appears to be her forties crossing the lawn toward us, a huge smile on her face. She looks every bit the part, decked out in black leather pants and with an off-the-shoulder leopard-print top underneath her leather vest. She throws her arms around Horse’s neck, giving him a kiss and providing me with a clear view of the property patch claiming her as his.

“Bronson, this is my old lady, Molly.”

I ignore the niggling feeling of dishonesty hearing Horse use the name Ty decided would be best for me, and nod in her direction. “Nice to meet you, ma’am.” Theory was, going by my actual name was too risky, so Ty thought it best to choose a name that sounds similar, saving me the hassle of trying to remember what I answer to. Bronson, Bronx, there’s barely anything between them, but enough to keep my anonymity.

I hate it.

Molly laughs and slaps a hand against my chest. “Please. I’m no ma’am. I’m not well behaved enough to be treated so ‘properly’.”

“Got your hands full with this one, have you, Horse?” I tease.

He smiles down at his lady. “In the best way.”

A broken piece of my heart jabs painfully in my chest watching the adoration they have for each other. Playing pretend is one thing, getting smashed on coke is apparently becoming another, but I’m still the same guy at heart—a guy longing for that companionship that everybody but me has. All I want out of life is to be enough for someone to want to call their own.

Yeah, I’m a closet romantic.

I take another swig of my beer, awkwardly seeking distraction from the couple in front of me who seem to have forgotten they’re not alone as they tangle tongues again. Tipping my head right back, I drain the last of the bottle, cursing the fact the buzz from the line I did before walking in here is already waning. I bring my head down and look around for somewhere to get comfortable while I people watch and try to figure out who Eddie is—if he’s even here.

Tossing the empty bottle in a nearby bin, I take up another drink from the drum and head over to a dark corner of the yard, passing through the smoke drifting away from the fire. A woman laughs loudly to my left, slapping her friend on the arm as she throws her head back with mirth. I find myself smiling, her amusement infectious despite the fact I have no idea what they’re even talking about. Her laughter fades as I pass, along with my smile while I make myself at home on a discarded tire. I crack the top off the beer with the sharp edge of the framing for the wooden fence behind me, and stretch my legs out, crossing my booted feet at the ankles.

The two girls I spotted earlier continue to dance by the fire as I roll the bitter beer across my tongue and swallow. They’re lost to the music as they weave their bodies around each other—hands wandering and eyes full of empty promise. I cast my gaze around the circle, checking out the faces that stare into the flames as they drown their sorrows. None of them raise any suspicion, or seem the type to be in control of an up-and-coming drug crew. The whole place appears kind of subdued, a mix of young and old, here to get wasted and forget the trials of another week for a few hours. A part of me doubts Eddie would even show at something so mundane.

Everything about the place brings a kind of comfort laced with regret, memories from teenage years I lost not so long ago surfacing at the familiar sights. It was at a house party like this that I killed my first. And it was alone like this that I first sat and thought about the fact that my life would never be the same as I tried in vain to rub the blood from my hands onto my jeans.

Everything’s so simple when you look back on it. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, so I’m told, but to me it’s simply the reincarnation of my nightmares. Thinking back on the nights that followed, where I made wrong choice after wrong choice and changed the path of my life irrevocably does nothing but leave me with a hollow ache in my chest. Regret can be poisonous, and when you consume enough of it and let it seep through your bones, it can be a kind of living death.

Which is why most of the time it’s easier just to pretend to live—to do what everybody expects of you and be who they want you to be. It’s less of a drain on your soul than trying each day to right your wrongs.

A young skinhead takes up position on the tire beside me, breaking me from my solo musings as he pulls a pouch of tobacco out and proceeds to roll a smoke. He twists the end and lights it, the smell telling me the mix in his pouch is a little more than what you’d get over the counter at your friendly Seven Eleven. Holding the smoke in his lungs for a beat, he lets its out slowly through his nostrils while turning to look me over at the same time, resulting in a cloud over his face.

“You here alone?”

I eye the kid up, wary of the cool tone he’s used to ask the question. He’s young, green, and there’s no way this skinner could be a man with a reputation for brutality like Eddie. “Nah. Just having a bit of quiet.”

He nods. “Yeah, me too.” The kid casts his gaze over the back yard, watching the other partygoers for a while before speaking again. “It’s kind of funny, yeah? I mean, we come here to be social, but here we are hiding out in the shadows to get time alone.”

“Doesn’t say much for our chosen company, does it?” I run my gaze over the back yard again, trying to spot where his ‘company’ is. If the kid’s a skinner, then that means there should be more neo-Nazi assholes here, which in turn means one thing—Eddie’s right-hand man, Easy.

He laughs, waving his cigarette my way. “You’re on to something there.”

“Don’t like the people you’re here with?” I ask, coaxing him in to giving up something about his group.

He takes the bait. “Most days they don’t bother me, but places like this they’ve always got to start a fucking pissing contest, prove who’s the bigger guy, you know? I just want to drink and get high, unwind, not start that shit.”

“Tell them that, then. Do your own thing instead.”

The kid snorts. “Yeah, and get kicked out of our fucking house. I like having a roof over my head, thank you.”