Better When He's Bold

I slammed the car door and rounded the fender just as Bax came wandering out of his office. I never questioned it when he was here late. These cars, the old muscle cars, the classics in disrepair, meant something to him. He was bringing them all back to life piece by piece, which meant that since I lived upstairs in a converted loft, I had to listen to the sounds of revving engines and clattering tools well into the early hours of the morning sometimes. We shared a fist bump, and Bax ran his hands over the shaved surface of his head.

Physically, we were on opposite sides of the fence. Bax had dark hair, dark eyes, a black star tattooed next to his eye, a hard, unsmiling mouth, and a big, bulky build that was used as a weapon more often than not. He looked like a thug and a criminal but it worked well for him. We were both tall, a few generous inches over six feet, but I was a lot leaner, lankier, and had been born with all the characteristics that made for a perfect fit with my country-club background. I could hold my own, if things ever became physical, but I preferred to talk my way out of a tight spot, figured my brain was always my best weapon, not that this was reflected on the surface. I had wavy blond hair, shot through with gold and honey, that was a little long and shaggy and, more often than not, hanging in my green eyes. I looked like a trust-fund kid on vacation. I knew it, and even though I called the Point home now, I refused to change it. The way I looked made people underestimate me all the time, and since both Bax and I were still in our early twenties, trying to run a city built on the souls of those broken years before we had even been born, I needed every advantage I could get.

Bax shoved the end of a cigarette in his mouth and lifted a black eyebrow up at me.

“You get the cash from the frat dude?”

I nodded and rolled my head around on my shoulders.

“He wasn’t happy about it.” One of the first lessons I had learned was people didn’t gamble because they thought they would win. They gambled because they were compelled to do it. It was an addiction like anything else.

“How not happy?”

I squinted at him through the smoke floating between us.

“He pulled a gun and popped off a few rounds.” In a house full of drunk college kids. What an idiot, and what a total waste of a threat. Getting hardware pulled on me was just a hazard of my job. Unless the gun was pointed at my face, I tended to just ignore it.

“Shit. Glad I asked Dovie not to go.”

I shook my head at him and crossed my arms over my chest. “You asked her not to go because you’re freaked out that she’s going to meet some charming undergrad that can promise her a better life and she’ll drop you on your ass.”

He grunted and flicked his cigarette butt into one of the drains on the floor and rolled his massive shoulders.

“She can always do better.”

I snorted. “Not according to her.” She loved him, scars, his shitty attitude, his rough past, and the fact he hovered really close to the line of being tamed and being wild—she loved every last bit of it. Bax was her perfect, and I was still surprised he didn’t seem to grasp it.

“What happened at the party?”

“I don’t know. I saw Brysen and got distracted. I already had the money, so I thought it was all good, then the idiot starts flashing a piece around and a clusterfuck broke loose.”

I had grabbed Brysen, headed for the back of the house because I couldn’t see the shooter, and everyone else was trying to shove through the front door. I wasn’t going to let anything happen to her, and I got the added bonus of getting to put my hands on her. I felt like a dick for having to bail on her, but the life I had now didn’t line up with sticking around to chat with the cops. I was more of a slink-into-the-shadows kind of guy nowadays.

“You roll into the party packing?”

Ever since I had made the decision to try and pick up where Novak had left off, Bax was on me to be more careful. He might be comfortable carrying a gun around, might be used to blood and gunfire, to fists breaking faces and people quaking in fear when he entered a room, but I was still adjusting to this new life and wasn’t really ready to give that much of myself over to the Point yet.

“No. It was just a bunch of kids. It was fine. He’ll just have to find a new way to pay for his books and beer this semester. He wasn’t really a threat.” People shouldn’t risk what they couldn’t afford to lose. I’d learned that lesson the hard way.

“Everyone is a threat when you have what they want or when they owe you something they don’t want to give. You need to take each and every situation you go into seriously. Kids have killed for less, Race.”