8.

People don’t have a problem swimming in the ocean knowing there’s probably a dead body out there somewhere, but they wouldn’t jump in if there was one in the pool.

Dice

D ICE

Once I convinced Tiny’s girlfriend, Amethyst, to give me directions to Cydney’s house, which I found out was within walking distance, I had to convince myself to go talk to her. I did my best thinking when I was on my bike, and luckily, Tiny was up for a long ride. He even invited a few of his new friends from Rojo to join us.

Within just a few minutes of his text, there was a group of bikes outside Amethyst’s house, and as if she’d done it a million times, she greeted them all and invited them in where she played the perfect hostess, serving up sarcasm and steaming cups of coffee.

I had already fallen half in love with the woman after the way she treated Tank and I last night after we invaded her home to stay for a week, but when I watched how she interacted with men who were obviously from all walks of life, I saw the spark there that had warmed Tiny and turned him into her biggest fan.

We rode for over an hour and ended up at a busy diner in the middle of town. I was shocked when the men walked through the dining room like they owned the place and set up shop in a back room where we could relax after a good ride. It didn’t take long for me to realize that the restaurant was owned by a family member of some of the men in our group and the employees were somehow related too.

“If they had a place like this in Vegas, I’d be as big as a house,” I said as I leaned back in my chair and thought about how much I was going to need to exercise to work off this trip. After dinner last night and then breakfast this morning, my body was processing goodness it hadn’t tasted since the last time Debbie cooked for me. Right now, my veins were filled with maple syrup, and I was perfectly okay with that thought. And since I’d just eaten my weight in pancakes, my guess was that I wouldn’t be hungry again for at least a week. “You’re gonna have to watch yourself, Tiny. All this decadent food is going to go straight to your hips.”

“And I’ll let it. Between Amethyst’s family and mine, I’ll never go hungry - that’s for sure.”

“Did you get everything moved in yesterday?” a man asked. I tried my hardest to remember his name but couldn’t place him. All I knew was that he was one of the older generation of Amethyst’s family, even though he didn’t look anything like her.

“We’ve still got to unload the truck,” Tiny explained. “We’ll do that around Amethyst’s schedule so she can tell me where to put what. I don’t want to invade her house and move all her shit around without her input.”

“Good call,” the man said. “I rearranged the living room one time and thought my old lady was going to burn the damn house down.”

“You’ve gotta think about it this way - when she moved in with you, there wasn’t a stick of furniture in the place, so she placed everything exactly where it needed to go.”

“That’s true,” the man allowed.

“I remember skateboarding around your house like it was an indoor park,” Hawk Forrester, a man Tiny had known before he ever moved to Rojo, said. He laughed and nudged the man beside him with his elbow before he asked, “Do you remember that time we made a ramp and jumped our scooters into the pool?”

“Yeah.” The other man laughed and asked, “Wasn’t that the first time one of the girls got injured playing with us?”

“No. The first time one of the girls got hurt was when Squid hit Amethyst in the mouth with a bat,” the man answered.

“Squid? You mean Cydney?” I asked without thinking.

“You know my daughter?” the man asked. Tiny started coughing next to me, spraying the table with water as he reached for a napkin. The look on my face must have given the man an answer because he narrowed his eyes and asked, “How do you know my daughter?”

“Sorry,” Tiny sputtered. Through bouts of coughing and gasping for air, he said, “Still working on the connections here. Didn’t realize . . .”

“You’re the one who . . . Holy shit . . . That’s just . . . Fuck!” Hawk stumbled over his words as he looked from me to the man. I knew in that instant that somehow he had heard the news, which didn’t surprise me considering what Tiny had told me about this close-knit community that included what seemed like hundreds of people who considered not just his girlfriend Amethyst, but also Cydney, as their family.

“What the fuck does that mean?” the man asked as he turned his glare toward Hawk. “You know something I don’t?”

“Yes,” Hawk said with a nod. “And I can’t tell you about it if I want to live a peaceful existence and keep my head attached to my shoulders. Brighten is much meaner than she looks.”

“What is it that he knows?” the man asked, his eyes laser-focused on me now.

I suddenly reverted back to my childhood and blurted out the first thing that came to mind when confronted by a teacher who somehow knew that you had fucked up. “It was an accident.”

“What was an accident?” the man asked in a voice deep and deadly serious as he leaned forward and rested his arms on the table.

“I’m out,” Hawk said before he got up from the table and swiftly left the table. The rest of the men jumped ship soon after, leaving me alone with an angry biker who had murder in his eyes. The only other person left on that side of the table was a man who looked nearly as angry and dangerous as Cydney’s father.

I realized then that the men I’d just met weren’t the only ones to abandon me - my friends, my brothers, Tiny and Tank had disappeared too.

I finally found my balls, which were hidden with fear and tucked up close to my body, and said, “I’d like for you to know that I did as she asked to the letter, even though every instinct in me said to follow her to the ends of the earth because she was different than any woman I’d ever met before.”

“What did she ask you to do?” the other man asked.

“She made it very clear that she didn’t want to have contact with me after she left Vegas, and I’ve been kicking myself ever since because, even though I thought that was what I wanted at first, I knew I was letting magic slip through my fingers by letting her go.”

The men sat there, unblinking, for what seemed like an hour before the man on the right said, “It sounds like you’re telling me that Squid took the ‘what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas’ saying to heart and had a . . . Fuck, this is hard to say . . . a one-night stand with you.”

I slowly nodded and watched both men’s eyes narrow as if I had just led their precious Squid down the dark and dangerous path to sin and debauchery.

“I’m trying very hard to remind myself that my daughter is more than thirty years old and leading a very successful and independent life where she makes her own decisions and life choices, but that’s difficult because when I think of my little girl, she’s still got pigtails and a goofy little grin.”

“Fuck it. You’re gonna kill me anyway, so why not just put it all out there? Cydney’s pregnant.”

I heard a man behind me gasp and another whisper, “Holy shit!” right before Cydney’s father hissed, “Say again?”

“As far as last meals go, those pancakes would rival anything I’ve ever had, so I can at least die with that goodness in my life. I’m going to just put everything on the table and let the chips fall where they may. I had a one-night stand with your daughter in Las Vegas a month ago, and I haven’t been able to stop thinking of her since then. I had no idea how to find her or her last name even. I just happened to run into her when I brought a truck full of my friend’s shit from Vegas to Rojo because he moved in with what just so happens to be Cydney’s childhood friend and closest confidant. Now, I know she’s somewhere in this town, carrying my baby and thinking she’s going to be alone in this, which very well may be the best scenario for her and the kid because I have no fucking idea how to be a father or a husband. I had absolutely no one in my life as a child that served as role models for either of those things. I can’t tell you that I’m head over heels for your daughter because I barely know her, but I do know she’s smart, funny, beautiful, quirky, and one of the most unique women I have ever encountered in my life. I can’t tell you that I’ll be a good father to her child because I have no fucking clue how to do that. What I can tell you is that I want to get to know Cydney in a way I’ve never known another woman and by her side through every mountain she’s going to climb and obstacle she’s going to face with this new life we’ve created. Even though I never imagined myself having a child, I’ll fight tooth and nail to be part of its life now that I know one is on the way.”

“What should I know about you that might change my mind and force me to rethink your imminent and very painful death?”

“I had a shit childhood. My father was a degenerate gambler who would do anything to fund his next game because that was always the one that was going to hit it big. I never knew my mother. Hell, I’m not even sure what my mother’s last name was or if she even married my father. I learned from a young age to appreciate things like a warm place to sleep, a decent meal, and clothes that fit because I didn’t get any of those things consistently until I was old enough to steal them for myself. I killed a man in the heat of the moment to protect people who should have wanted me dead and spent years in prison paying for that crime. I put every cent my father left me onto a number with the highest odds of losing and turned it into a fortune before I dumped his ashes into the fountain of his favorite casino. Since then, I have made a name for myself as a complete hard-ass who is at the top of the game in my chosen field. I’ve got multiple businesses, a multitude of employees who depend on me, friends who I would kill and die for, and a family of people who love me even though I have no idea why. Even though I live in Vegas, I have absolutely refused to gamble on anything until right now. I’m rolling the dice and betting it all to see if you’ll let me live and try to make a life with your daughter or if you’ll kill me in a horribly painful way and toss me out in a field somewhere to let the buzzards pick my bones.”

Suddenly, a man sat down in the chair to my right, and before I could look at him, I realized that there was another man taking the chair to my left. I could feel the room closing in behind me and knew without a doubt that it was more men, most definitely friends and brothers of the man staring at me with the coldest eyes I’d ever seen in my life.

The man on my right asked, “Are we killing him today? Let me know because I’ve got my grandkids here and we’re expected back at my house in about an hour.”

“I’m good for at least three hours, but then my grandkids are going to invade. I need to be home so my old lady doesn’t start plotting my death.”

The man on my right leaned forward and looked at the man on my left before he suggested, “I’ll call Terra and tell her to hook up with Summer to take care of the kids because something big has come up that we can’t miss. They’ll understand.”

“No, they won’t,” the man on my left argued. He sighed before he said, “It’s up to you, Grady. What’s the plan?”

“I’ve got all day,” a man behind me said. I could hear laughter in his voice when he added, “I just had the backhoe serviced, so we can use it if you want.”

“You have no idea how wonderful my Squid is, do you?”

I shook my head in answer to Cydney’s father’s question and then said, “I knew from the first time we spoke that she was different than any woman I’d ever met, but I know that there are layers to her that will take me years to fully discover, if she’s even willing to give me a chance to try.”

“My wife was a single mother when I met her, and from the second I saw Cydney, I knew she was going to change my life, and she has. She made me a dad, and that’s my favorite title in the entire world next to husband.”

“I’m not sure I’m worthy of either title, but I’m going to do my dead level-best to be.”

Cydney’s father exhaled loudly before he said, “We’ll reserve the killing for later if we need it. Right now, the boy’s got work to do, so we should let him get to it.”

“Well, shit. There goes my afternoon plans,” the man behind me said sadly.

“It’s okay, Clem. I’m sure we’ll find something else to entertain us,” another man said. “Let’s go take a ride and see what sort of trouble we can get into on our own. Jamie’s got a new project out at the shop if you want to come take a look at it.”

“Let’s do it,” the man I assumed was Clem said before I felt the men move away from my back.

Of course, that left me with the intimidating men on my right and left, and the two in front of me.

“My name is Grady,” Cydney’s dad said as he extended his hand across the table. Before I had a chance to take it, he added, “Treat my daughter with the respect and loyalty that she deserves, and I’ll be your biggest ally. Treat her with anything else, and I’ll become your worst nightmare.”

I shook his hand and the man next to him extended his. “I’m Stoffer, Squid’s uncle, and let me say that if you think we’re intimidating, which you should, when you meet our wives, you’ll understand that what we can do to you would be quick and painful but what those two could come up with would give a grown man cause to tuck tail and run to the far end of the planet.”

“He uses such pretty words, doesn’t he?” the man on my right asked as I shook Stoffer’s hand.

The man nudged me with his shoulder before he said, “I’m Kale, and that’s my brother Bird. Our wives are sweet and innocent, but we’re not, so keep that in mind.”

Grady leaned back in his chair, his eyes never leaving mine, as he said, “Now, tell me what you’re going to do to win my daughter’s heart while keeping her mind free of any sort of stress or heartbreak and understanding that my first grandchild will be the light of my life just like Squid was from the second I met her.”

“Well, first, I guess I should probably tell her a little about myself and my history and explain that I’m not just some bum from Vegas who is looking for a handout.”

“That’s a good start,” Kale said. “And while you’re at it, you might also want to tell her that you’re a complete asshole to be around.”

“What makes you say that?” I asked.

“I’ve been watching your television show since it started, and if I had to work with you, I would have killed you by the third episode.”

“You know who I am?” I asked.

“We knew who you were when we walked into Amethyst’s and saw you sitting at the kitchen table,” Stoffer informed me. “What we didn’t know was that you were already acquainted with Squid or were a club brother to Tiny, who abandoned your ass at the first sign of trouble, or that you’d been in prison.”

“He didn’t abandon me,” I argued, defending my friend. “He’s been watching this whole thing play out from over there with our buddy Tank. I’d hate to think Tiny would have to choose sides against his old lady’s family, but if he did, I know where he’d land, and that’s right beside me, protecting my back.”

“Just like you’d do for him?” Stoffer asked. When I nodded, he scoffed and looked at Grady as he said, “Well, at least the guy’s got a sense of loyalty to go along with his dumbass idea that any one of them would make it out of here alive if push came to shove.”

“It says something that Lout’s gonna let Tiny live,” Grady said, mentioning the man I’d heard Tiny talk about a few times already. “Let me give you some insight into my daughter. My Squid is a contradiction in everything. She’s strong and capable . . .”

“Sweet and ruthless.”

“Funny and uptight at the same time.”

“She gives the best hugs but can hit hard too,” Hawk said as he took a chair at the table next to Grady.

“She’s a shark in the boardroom but a total pushover with kids.”

“Her friends rely on her, but she always doubts herself.”

“She’s put together and falling apart at the same time.”

Tiny was back, and he added, “She’s as mean as a snake.”

“But she’s a total sweetheart.”

Cydney’s traits - both good and bad - were coming at me from all directions. It gave me insight into her and also insight into the men of her life. I found out what they considered important and assumed that was also what she’d find important in life too.

“I want to know all of those parts of her, but I can’t guarantee that we’ll fit together,” I said honestly while I looked her father in the eye.

“Make it work. I can tell you from experience that there’s a whole lot of flexibility that goes into a long relationship. Sometimes you have to bend so hard that you think you might snap, but you don’t because you’ve got a woman and a family relying on you. You put your chin down and face whatever you’ve got to face. The one thing I can say is that if you’re going to be worthy of my daughter, you’ll need to understand that no matter what fancy shit you’ve got going on with your television star bullshit, she and your kid have to come first.”

“Absolutely. I was happy with my life before they put it all on television, and I’ll be even happier when they stop.”

“Then why do you do it?”

“I used to eat the scraps from plates the dishwasher brought back into the kitchen at the casino because I had no money and no idea where my father was, as if he’d part with enough money to buy me a fucking meal anyway. His addictions, and there were many, ruled his life. I have made it my mission to never let anything like that rule mine. My only goal was to have a home that I could call mine, a comfortable bed to sleep in, and food in the kitchen. I can live without everything else but have always wanted to make sure that those three things are never something I am without again. The money I get from the show, along with the notoriety that brings customers into my shop, helps me do that.”

“Those three things are the stepping stones that lead to being a provider for a family,” Grady said sagely. “That’s the foundation, but you’ll have to build on that to keep my daughter happy.”

“I’ve never had to do that before, but I’ve never backed down from a challenge.”

“What did you go to prison for?” Kale asked.

“I killed a man in the heat of the moment, and I’m not even sorry about it,” I said sincerely. “At the time, I thought he was my friend, but when I realized what sort of dark shit was in his head, I ended him before he could ruin innocent lives. I paid the price for that and a few other things I’d done before, but I’m not ashamed of it.”

“Squid’s got a problem that she has to work hard to live with so it doesn’t rule her,” Grady informed me. “She gets in her head about things and then can’t get out. I can guarantee you she’s doing that right now because she doesn’t like things being out of her control. She starts overthinking about what could be and loses sight of what’s going on right now.”

“What do you mean?”

“She lets her mind run wild and panics until she works herself up into a state that makes her forget to breathe. She’s worked hard to learn how to talk herself off the ledge, but if you’re in her life, it will be up to you to help her keep her balance.”

I nodded my head and thought about the crazed look in Cydney’s eyes when she saw me standing in the doorway yesterday and then asked, “Is it just when she’s emotional about something? Even though I only hung out with her for about a day, I never saw any of that.”

“If I remember correctly, her plan for that Vegas trip was to unwind and disconnect. You saw the Cydney that was trying her hardest to give her brain a little time and space to chill out,” Grady explained. “She’s got a brilliant business mind when she’s got something to focus on - spreadsheets and data are her thing. But at the edges of that sort of organizational stuff are fucking facts about shit that make no difference in the world along with questions that make you wonder if she’s playing with a full deck.”

A man behind me laughed, and I realized that Grady was looking over my shoulder. Finally, the man said, “That’s my Squid. She gets that from me, you know.”

“Hank, this is Dice, Tiny’s friend and the father of my future grandchild,” Grady said with an evil grin. “Dice, meet Hank, the nicest and most stable influence in Cydney’s life.”

Laughter erupted around the table, and the second it started to fade, Hank said, “I didn’t realize Squid was dating anyone or planning to have kids.”

“She wasn’t,” Grady said, the look on his face morphing to anger and a little bit of murderous rage. “This guy knocked her up, and now he’s wondering if he’s going to stick around.”

“Well, shit. I didn’t plan on killing anyone today, but I’m an open-minded guy and more than willing to change my plans.”

If this was the nicest and most stable influence, then I was in for quite an adventure. However, from what little I knew about Cydney, every single bit of it would be worth it just to have a little more time with her.

“Save the killing for later,” Grady ordered. “Right now, I’m going with him to Squid’s so I can take her pulse on the situation and see how she wants to proceed.”

“You’re no fun, Grady,” Hank mumbled as I stood up and turned around to face him. His slow smile was a little terrifying, especially when I saw that the friend standing next to him was smiling in the same way. “Hi there, young ‘un.”

“Hello, sir.”

“Did you know that the chance of pregnancy from a one-night stand is about twenty percent?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Well, now you do. That’s about the same odds as you living a long life if you don’t make my Squid and her Squidlet happy.”

“I understand.”

“I guess time will tell.”