BORDEN 2 (11 page)

Emma

Two hours later, Borden and Hector still hadn’t appeared, and by then I was a little unbalanced and giggling my ass off. Who knew that Hawke and Graeme would make the best drinking buddies?

Hawke was purposely working on one beer, meanwhile Graeme said, “Screw it, I work every fucking day, hour on the hour. I deserve this.”

I gasped. “Did you just swear, Graeme?!”

“He fucking did,” Hawke said, giving him a hard slap on the back. “Down that sucker. This is Operation Get Graeme Smashed and we’re going to fucking nuke it ‘til his mouth makes a pirate blush.”

Graeme did. He drank his beers like it was water. By beer number four, he got up and turned the stereo on, cranking it up to a radio station with horrible country music.

“No!” I shouted, jumping off my stool and running to the stereo. “Not the hillbilly stuff. Anything but the hillbilly stuff!”

But Graeme blocked the way, shaking his head at me solemnly. “This is my jam, Emma. Do not be a party pooper.”

I died. Fucking died. Laughter poured out of me as I exclaimed, “
I’m
the party pooper?”

“Yes, you’re pooing on my party.”

This guy.

I heard Hawke choke on a sip of his beer. “Leave it on, Emma. This is good shit.”

“You like country music too?” I gaped at him, although I knew he was full of shit. “You’re meant to be a metal head! I’m surrounded by hard ass criminals who like the beat of banjos and fiddles instead of screeching voices singing about death and turmoil?”

“We have enough death and turmoil in our lives as it is,” he replied.

Shrugging to myself, I returned to my beer, letting Graeme have his country music. I was taking reserved sips, making sure the bottle would last so I didn’t get carried away. Remembering my younger days, I was capable of drinking an absurd amount in a short period of time. Now I was a lightweight and I needed to keep it to a minimum. Part of me kind of wanted to just get shitfaced so I had an excuse to dodge going to Granny’s house.

Oh, God, I was going to Granny’s house!

Even if I wasn’t, I had to be modest about where I was. It was still work hours and if I wasn’t fucking Borden, he’d probably fire me for my actions.
Wait…

“Is Borden going to get pissed at us for this?” I asked them.

“Probably,” Graeme answered.

Hawke took another sip. “Borden gets pissed at everything. Why should it matter?”

I shrugged. “Good point.”

We lingered around the main bar. I couldn’t later recall what we talked about. It was mostly small talk. Pointless conversations. Drifting from random facts to dirty jokes, the latter of which Hawke seemed to have an endless supply of. He was currently on to his hundredth joke. They were tasteless and crude, just the way I liked them.

“What’s the difference between a drug dealer and a hooker?” he asked, looking between Graeme and me with this straight face that made him even more laughable.

I gasped and jumped up and down. “Oh, oh, I actually know this one! A hooker can wash her crack and resell it.”

Hawke laughed. “What the fuck? Where did you hear that?”

“Oh, come on! I’ve been around.”

Graeme shook his head, flaring his nostrils. “Disgusting.”

“I talked about Santa’s ball sack before that and suddenly this one is disgusting?” Hawke retorted.

“Graeme’s got sensitive ears,” I said, smiling.

“More like pussy ears.”

Graeme exhaled. “You’re shit drinking companions, the both of you.”

He sulked off to the other side of the bar, his ear right next to the music. We watched him relax in his own little zone, his eyes closing shut, his lips moving knowingly to the lyrics of every song.

“Does Graeme do this a lot?” I asked Hawke.

He nodded. “He used to before you came along. Would knock off work and spend hours at the bar.”

“He doesn’t have a wife or…husband?”

Hawke chuckled. “Nah, he lost his wife years ago.”

My eyes widened. “How’d she die?”

“She didn’t die. She ran away with his partner, and he quit law enforcement a week later.”

Whoa. What?
“He was a cop?”

Hawke took another swig of beer. “Yep. One of the best.”

“How’d he end up working for Borden?”

“I don’t know. Borden went to him and offered him the job. Maybe he was tired of walking the line and wanted to look after number one. Or maybe the pay was too good to knock down, even for a copper.”

I didn’t say anything for some moments. I continued to watch Graeme lose himself to his shit music, and then I turned and faced Hawke.

“What about you?” I wondered aloud, searching his face. “How did you end up with Borden?”

His lips pressed tightly, and then he took another drink of his beer. His adam’s apple bobbed, and it made me stare at it for some time before my eyes wandered to his upper body. He was big guy, Hawke. Almost as big as Borden. He paused his sip when he caught me staring, and I casually looked away.

“What about me?” he then asked, his voice low.

“How did you end up with Borden?” I forced out.

He glimpsed at his scarred up hand. I looked there too, at the middle finger missing. Now that I was openly staring at it, I could see how fucked up it looked. It was definitely not a clean cut, like he’d accidentally sliced it or something. No, it looked uneven, the scar tissue thick, trailing up his arm.

“I got my reasons,” he finally murmured.

“You could have been a biker.”

“Could have.”

“And you chose Borden instead.”

He nodded slowly, his mouth remaining shut.

I cocked my head to the side, my loosened mind filled with questions. “You’re loyal to him, right?”

He looked back at me, his eyes filled with confusion. “You don’t think I am?”

“That first meeting with Hector, it got pretty intense.”

I saw the realization dawning. “You thought I’d protect my brother instead?”

I shrugged. “Would you have?”

“No.”

And that was all he was going to say on the matter. I don’t know why I believed him, but I did. Even though I didn’t trust my judgment anymore after Blythe, there was something so concrete about Hawke and his devotion to Borden.

“Why don’t you like me?” I then asked him curiously.

His lips twitched. “I don’t dislike you, Emma.”

“You’ve been an asshole to me.”

“Like Borden said before, I’m an asshole to everybody.”

“But you’re particularly mean to me. I’ve been with Borden for so long now, and he cares for me deeply. Wouldn’t you warm up to me because of him?”

His brown eyes shot to mine. “It’s because you’re with Borden I couldn’t warm up to you.”

“Why?”

“You could have been fooling him.”

I raised a brow. “I never wanted to be around him in the first place, Hawke.”

“You’re lying. I saw it that first night at the club when I dragged you to him. I saw the way you stared at him.”

“I was scared of him.”

“You were curious of him too.” He watched me carefully, reading the truth on my face. “Anyway, I saw what was happening. I didn’t want him to be distracted. I thought you’d be a phase. He never cared about girls, Emma. We’d send him an escort to his apartment all the time, and she’d come running back down ten minutes later, cursing him off. Some of them thought he was gay. Said nothing they tried to do got his dick twitching. Then you come along and suddenly he’s doing anything to get to you. It was a first.”

I felt my cheeks heat. “Yeah, well, now he’s in some room with a whole heap of women.”

“And you’re being a fucking idiot for worrying about it.”

“I’m just a girl. I can’t help myself.”

“Of all the things you should be stressing over being with a guy like him, it’s girls sauntering around him in the nude that’s done it? Come on, little one. Haven’t you ever stayed up nights wondering what the fuck you’re doing living in our world?”

“Yes,” I answered truthfully, feeling myself drawn into this conversation. I really needed to have it with somebody. Blythe would never understand, and Graeme never wanted to talk about it. “I used to stay up every night thinking about it. I question my sanity all the time. I wonder how I can love someone so crazy, and then I remember some of the things I used to do growing up. Things I’m not proud of, choices I made I don’t really regret, and I realize that maybe we’re all a little crazy too.”

“Borden’s killed people.”

“I know.”

“And you still love him?”

I nodded, looking into his solemn brown eyes. “Yes. Does that make me wrong?”

He didn’t respond for a moment, and then he chuckled. “Darling, what the fuck do I know about right and wrong? I grew up a biker, in a biker-infested culture, blood and gore all around me all the fucking time before I got thrown in prison for my own personal crimes. I’m not the right person to ask that question to.”

“I still want to know your opinion,” I pressed.

He paused, surprised by my urgency. “Yeah,” he finally said. “It’s wrong.” I looked down, frowning, when he added, “But sometimes wrong isn’t so bad. Sometimes it’s what a person needs. Sometimes two wrongs make a right.”

“But that’s not the way the saying goes.”

“Fuck the saying. It’s the truth.”

I felt my heart swell a little. He was talking to me like he genuinely cared about our conversation. I never knew I could go from hating somebody to wanting nothing more than to befriend them in a blink of an eye. I needed the hard truth. Maybe Graeme didn’t want me to hear it, but I could tell Hawke gave it straight all the time, regardless of who he was talking to.

“I’m sorry for being a dick to you,” Hawke added, contritely. “It’s how I am when I try to build boundaries.”

“Why do you need to build boundaries with me? If you were like this, we’d have gotten along so well right from the start.”

His smile vanished and he just stared at me. That stare spoke of a lot of things I didn’t want to say out loud for his own sake.

“What in the holy fuck!” screamed a familiar voice. We turned our heads and watched Linda reappear, her hands on her hips, glowering at us. “Would you turn down the goddamn volume? You realize the rest of us are working while you guys are drinking away like irresponsible shitheads? I’m in the process of hiring another bartender after Sonja decided to leave me fucking high and dry and I can’t fucking
HEAR ANYTHING
with that annoying shit on the stereo!”

But Graeme only turned to the stereo and cranked the music up even louder, drowning out the rest of the words coming out of her mouth. Her face reddened in anger. She flipped him off and angrily stormed out. We burst out laughing. Hell yeah! It was good to put her in her place. I stood on my stool and applauded Graeme for his efforts.