Rome. Jay Crownover

hands that were making bad things happen in my foggy brain to let me go, when a heavy hand fell on my shoulder from behind. I was a trained soldier, but more than that, I was a man who had a brother born and bred into trouble. I knew what trouble looked like from a million miles away. I knew what trouble felt like, what it moved like, how it sounded, and yet I had kept right on drinking and ignored all the signs as it built up around me. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Brite frown at whoever was standing behind me, and even in my stupor of bourbon and beer I knew this wasn’t going to be good.

      Sighing under my breath, I shook off the talons that had me seeing blood spilling out of a young soldier’s throat onto the desert sand and turned around so that I was leaning back on the bar with my elbows. It shouldn’t have surprised me to see that almost the entire back poolroom of bikers was now gathered around me and the bar area. The guy with his paw on my shoulder was a scrawny little fella and I felt my boozy brain register that he wasn’t wearing the club’s colors, which meant he was either a hang-around or a prospect, and I was the lucky bastard he had picked to try and prove his worth with. Sometimes it sucked being a big-ass dude.

      “Can I help you?”

      The redhead was long gone and Brite was making his way around the end of the long bar. The old guys stayed posted up and ignored the brewing hurricane like only lifelong drunks were capable of doing.

      “You trying to start something with my girl, GI Joe?”

      It was boring and so predictable that I had to roll my eyes. I had been in enough shithole places in the world to know that a bar brawl was a bar brawl, but throw in a wannabe biker and it could get really foul.

      “No. I was trying to get drunk, and she interrupted me.”

      I don’t think they were expecting that because a couple of titters ran through the group. Scrawny puffed up his chest and reached out a finger to poke me in mine. Normally I could just walk away from this kind of thing. I was typically a levelheaded kind of guy. I didn’t fight unless it was in defense of something I really and truly believed in, or in defense of someone I loved, but today was the wrong day to goad a reaction out of me.

      I swatted the guy’s hand away and did a quick survey of the room. I didn’t see any visible hardware, but bikers were known for stashing knives in hard-to-see places, and Brite seemed like a cool enough guy. I didn’t want to trash his place if I could help it.

      “Look, dude, you don’t want to do this, and I really don’t want to do this. We both know you sent the chick over here to try and start shit, so just leave it at that. I’ll bounce, and you and your buddies can go back to smoking up and shooting pool. Nobody has to bleed or look stupid. Okay?”

      In hindsight, trying to drunkenly reason with a bunch of bikers probably was bound to have a low success rate. Between one blink and the next I had a bottle broken over my head and found myself in a serious choke hold. Scrawny Guy looked like he wanted to kill me and the rest of his crew was just hanging back waiting to see what he could do. I didn’t really want to hurt the guy, but the bottle over the head had taken a nice chunk of skin off with it and a river of red was steadily flowing into my eyes. Just like with the red nail polish on the tramp’s fingers, the sight of my own blood took me to another place and time, and it wasn’t me struggling with a stupid, show-off biker, it was me battling for life, for freedom, for the security of my family and friends at home. Just like that, the poor kid had no idea what hit him.

      I already had a distinct size advantage on the guy; throw in the fact that I was a soldier who’d been battle-hardened and trained by the country’s best, and it got nasty and bloody fast. It didn’t matter that the numbers were so obviously skewed in the biker’s favor, I was getting out of the bar in one piece no matter what I had to do to make that happen.

      Bar stools were broken. Glasses went flying. Heads banged against the floor. I think at one point I heard someone crying, and somehow when it was all over I was hunched over with my hands on my knees, blood now dripping not only from my lacerated head but also my hands, and a nasty knife slice across my ribs. The bikers had scattered, for the most part, and I wasn’t surprised to see Brite holding a baseball bat and glaring at me.

      “What the hell was that?”

      I would have laughed, but I think the knife cut in my side was worse than I’d originally thought.

      “A really shitty ‘thanks for your service’?” My humor was not appreciated, as the older man swore at me and pulled me painfully into a standing position.

      “Doesn’t look like that little punk is gonna get patched in anytime soon.”

      I got a critical once-over and was met with a sigh.

      “You need a doctor.”

      It wasn’t a question.

      I tried to wipe the blood off my face with the back of my hand but just ended up smearing it all across my face while my side steadily leaked onto the floor.

      “I rode in. Don’t think I can handle the bike right now.”

      He shook his head at me and put two fingers in his mouth and let out an earsplitting whistle.

      “Everybody drink up and get out. Consider this last call.”

      A few diehards grumbled, but it only took five minutes before Brite was locking the front door, hauling me out the back door, and shoving me into the battered cab of an old Chevy pickup truck.

      I rested my head back against the seat and gave the older man a rueful grin.

      “I’ll pay for any damage to the bar. I’m sorry about that.”

      He snorted in response and gave me a narrow-eyed look. “Try not to bleed out before we get to the emergency room, son.”

      Like I had a choice.

      “The Sons of Sorrow hang out in the bar all the time. The old-timers are a good group of guys. A bunch of them are ex-military and get what my bar is all about, so I don’t usually gripe about them coming in. It’s all the younger kids trying to make a name who stir shit up. It wasn’t the first time blood has been spilled on that floor and I doubt it’ll be the last. You come see me when you sober up and get all sewed back together and we’ll talk about what you can do to repay me for the damages. Gotta tell you, you’re one hell of a fighter, son.”

      I would have shrugged but the slice on my ribs was starting to burn and I was having a hard time ignoring the sticky, warm blood oozing between my fingers, so I just grunted in acknowledgment.

      “I’m really not. I hate fighting, I did it for a living for too many years, but the only way to come out alive is to be better at it than the other guy.”

      I closed my eyes and silently prayed we didn’t hit any more red lights. My vision was starting to blur around the edges.

      Brite’s voice was gruff as we pulled into the parking lot of the emergency room. “That’s a damn shame, son.”

      I didn’t have a response because he was right. It was a shame.

      I didn’t get admitted right away. I guess a knife wound and a split-open scalp took a backseat to fingers blown off by fireworks on the Fourth. I didn’t want to keep Brite waiting, so I called Nash and left a garbled message that I was going to need a ride at some point in the night. I knew I should have called Rule or Shaw, but I just wasn’t up to dealing with that headache right now. And I knew Nash would come with no questions asked even if I had been a royal ass earlier in the day.

      “I gotta leave my bike at your bar tonight. I would appreciate it if you kept an eye on it for me in case Scrawny is a sore loser.”

      Brite nodded and again I saw that flash of white buried in that massive beard. “Well, I would say it was nice to meet you, Rome Archer, but of all the things I’ve been in this life, a liar has never been one of them.”

      We shook hands and I promised that I would touch base with him when I was in more functioning order.

      I had to wait longer