Shit would be tight in the barracks-style prospect room if they all descended at once. They’d have to bring in cots. Or relegate some of us to the basement bedroom area that was reserved for emergencies now.
Nave, like quite a few of us, had taken off after graduation. When you grew up in such a tight-knit town, it could feel a little stifling. And when you had parents like ours, sometimes there was a bit too much protection. It made it so you couldn’t fuck up, so you couldn’t learn from those fuck-ups and grow as a person.
Sometimes, taking off was the only way to sort of detach from the identity of being a Henchmen kid, and get to be your own person.
From what I could tell, no one really had a lot of contact with Nave since he left—which was a couple years before I did—save for his parents, of course.
So, really, none of us knew what to expect, or what he’d been up to, what he might be like.
But from the sound of the bike rumbling into the front yard, though, it seemed like we were all about to.
Even over the music and the conversation, we all seemed to hear the sound at once, making most of the conversations drop as we waited for the front door to open.
Brooks walked in first. Never having been one for parties, Brooks had offered to be outside to keep an eye on shit while the rest of us talked and drank.
“That’s not gonna put him off at all,” Brooks said with a head shake as we all watched him walk in ahead of the man behind him.
Nave was, well, somehow both exactly what I expected, and not at all, at the same time.
He looked like his parents. Tall and fit like his old man, with dark hair and eyes like the two of them. He got his cleft chin from his mom. And some freckles over the bridge of his nose from her as well.
Normally, that would probably look kind of feminine.
But on the man who was towering in the doorway, taking everyone in, it didn’t.
In fact, everything about this guy’s vibe invited you to even think about commenting on his freckles, because he would enjoy the fuck out of teaching you why you shouldn’t.
The scars on his hands were also pretty telling, too.
Wherever Nave had been, he hadn’t been living some cushy existence. No, he’d been in the life somehow. We just had to learn the specifics of it.
“You too fucking cheap to renovate the place, man?” Nave asked, smirking at Fallon. “Looks the exact same as when I left,” he added.
There had been a lot of updates over the years, but the general layout and shit, yeah, it was all the same. I think, to an extent, it was comfortable that way. It was familiar. It was what both generations of Henchmen knew and loved. Even though the club had grown enough that, yeah, we probably could have used a bigger common area where we could have a dining table, and a roomier kitchen to cook the meals. Hell, we could even make use of a lot more bedrooms.
But there was something nostalgic about it being the same.
“Nice fucking way to talk about your new home,” Fallon shot back. “You look like shit,” he added as he walked closer to shake Nave’s hand.
Admittedly, he did look a bit rough. Tired, at least. With smudges under his eyes.
“I hear you shacked up with someone,” Nave said, shaking his head. “Who the fuck would want to put up with your ass for life?”
“That’d be me,” Danny called, raising a hand at him briefly. “And sometimes, I’m not sure I am going to make it the night, let alone forever.”
“Nice pull,” Nave said, nodding at Danny, then Fallon.
“Thanks. But if you say that again—“
“Yeah, yeah, you’ll have to beat the shit out of me,” Nave said, rolling his eyes.
“Actually, I think Danny would do the honors,” Fallon said.
“In that case…” Nave said, smirking at Danny, getting a chuckle out of Fallon.
“Someone gonna get him a drink?” Fallon called, leading Nave over to the bar where Dezi had scooted behind.
“Nave, Dezi, Dezi, Nave,” Fallon said.
But the two men were already staring each other down in a way that almost seemed to say they weren’t exactly strangers.
How could that be?
“Nave, was it?” Dezi said in a tone I immediately didn’t trust.
“Yep. Vodka is fine,” he said, even though Dezi was already holding the bottle. Like he already knew what Nave drank.
My gaze slipped to Fallon, but I didn’t see the same suspicion on his face that I was feeling.
To my other side was Voss. And not far behind him was Louana.
I was curious to see if I could ask either of them about it later.