“It’s important, critter,” her brother said.
She turned to him. “I don’t know why. I also don’t know how to answer. Nothing’s between us, I guess. We went out the night he was here, with Chelle and his brother”—she turned to Pop—“because you asked me to. Since then, we’ve been texting back and forth a little. That’s it. Why is it so important?”
In an extremely uncharacteristic move, Pop reached for the middle of the table and started fiddling with the wooden apples in the wooden bowl that formed the centerpiece. Pop was not usually a fidget. At least he had the grace to seem uncomfortable while he was butting into her life in a way he never had before.
“From what Eight Ball says, looks like Zach could be part of setting up this new charter. That means he’ll be around for a while.”
Despite the irritating direction of this conversation, Lyra felt a little rush at that news. It would be okay with her if Zach were around awhile. Their text thread hadn’t left friendly, occasionally flirtatious territory yet, but her brain certainly had. She went to sleep every night thinking about his kisses.
However, Pop wasn’t done. “It’s a bad idea for you to get involved with a Bull, Lyra. Probably any Bull at any time, but specially now, with the charter getting started. He needs to keep his mind on the work. And he won’t stay. His people are in Tulsa. He won’t leave them. I don’t want you hurt—by him or because you got pulled too far into the club.”
“Zach and I aren’t involved. If he comes back to Laughlin, I don’t know if that will change, but, if he does come back, I hope we do get involved, because I like him, and I think he likes me. If he’s only staying for a little while, then we won’t get serious. Either way, you’ve always let me be with whoever I want to be with, and I don’t like you butting into my love life now. Why are you?”
“Because I don’t want drama with your love life fucking up what’s going on with the Bulls. Zach’s a young one, but he’s Rad Jessup’s boy, so he’s probably got more pull than he should.”
“Am I supposed to be impressed about who his father is?”
Pop didn’t like her flippant tone, but Lyra didn’t care. She was climbing up from irritated to angry.
“To the Bulls, he was important. He’s retired now, but Zach’s his oldest son and his legacy.”
“JJ’s his legacy, too, then. You’re not talking about him.”
Her father was not one to roll his eyes. In fact, he didn’t really use body language to express himself, beyond the reflexive and unintentional gestures that were the body expressing itself without permission. Ben Haddon was a preternaturally still man who used his words when he had something to say, and chose those words carefully.
Right now, he simply stared at her long enough for her to get restless and then said, “You know why I’m not talking about JJ.”
She did. She’d spent enough time with the Jessup brothers to know precisely why her father discounted the younger of them. JJ was immature and unserious; therefore, to Pop, he wasn’t worth his time. Zach carried himself like someone much older than his twenty-five years.
“I don’t understand what the problem is. It’s not fair to say ‘drama’ could be a problem. I don’t have drama.” She’d barely had relationships.
As she thought that, she saw where her father would take the conversation.
He went exactly there. “What about Tommy?”
“That was his drama, not mine,” she replied and hoped like hell Pop wouldn’t go further.
He didn’t. He sat there, not moving, considering her. Then he said, “I don’t want you with Zach.”
“And I say it’s not your call.” She clutched her hands together in her lap. Pop had never hit her, not even a spank when she was little, and he’d never made her feel afraid, but he was objectively a scary fucker, and she’d never had cause to push back on him so firmly before. Trying to cool the tone of this exchange, she added, “Pop, I don’t know if Zach and I will get together if he comes back to stay. I don’t know. I do like him, and if he wanted to, so would I. But I don’t see how that’s a problem for this new club.”
“Charter,” Reed corrected.
“Charter, whatever. If we don’t work, we don’t work. No drama. If we do work, how’s that a problem? I don’t see it.”
“She’s right, Pop,” Reed said. “Unless we’re signing on with a buncha monks, relationship shit is part of the equation in any group. It shouldn’t be a problem.”
The way Pop looked at Reed then, Lyra felt like there was still something unsaid at this table, on this topic.
But she didn’t think it had to do with her. She thought the Zach thing was a decoy.
Oh.
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~oOo~
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