Page 3 of Fire
Grave nods. “But he’s been working from the inside for the last five years to take the Reivers down, and now he’s teamed up with Johnny Devon.”
Interesting. The son of Hawk Devon, Digger’s co-founder in starting the Reivers, is also looking to destroy his father’s legacy.
I whistle. “That’s a pretty big project for two angry sons who want to piss off their fathers.”
“It’s not just them. They’ve got a group of talented friends helping out, and my old boss, who now runs a private black ops company, and I are joining the fight.”
“Why get involved in this?” I look at him, holding his boyfriend in his arms. “You got out. Why risk everything you have now to settle old scores?”
“Jack’s—” Dream says, referring to his boyfriend’s real name, which I haven’t gotten the hang of using quite yet. “—time with the Reivers haunts him. He deserves the chance to finally get closure so we can move on with our lives together.”
Haunted. I know that feeling. But is there ever any moving on with your life after the things we witnessed? The things we did?
Grave and Dream share a long look between them, and then he returns his attention to me. “I want to see them burn, and I want you to help me light the fucking fire.”
I take a step back and put my hands up. “I’m not your guy for this.”
“But your history with the Rei?—”
“My history with them is exactly why you don’t want me anywhere near this.”
“Explain,” Grave demands. “You were an indispensable part of my crew. I always wanted you at my back.”
I shake my head. “I swore to myself if I lived through the culling, I was done with hurting anyone ever again. I don’t have the fight left in me anymore.”
“Bullshit.” He mimics my words to him earlier back to me.
“Jack, honey,” Dream says, rubbing his boyfriend’s chest soothingly. “You can’t make him go against what’s best for him.”
He looks down at Dream. “If I thought running away from his past was best for him, I wouldn’t have shown up at his studio tonight. He’s one of two men who’ve ever survived a culling.” He shakes his head in amazement. “You don’t know what kind of strength and determination it takes to have survived what he did. Hell, I’m not sure that I could have made it out if it had been me in that cage.”
I shake my head. “The man you knew died in the cage that night. He was sick for a long time before that. You saw how I was before you left. I was barely holding it together. The last shootout we were in together, I got myself shot so I wouldn’t have to hurt anybody.”
“That shootout was with a bunch of twenty-year-old security guards who were way in over their heads trying to play hero and fight the Reivers. You saved their lives that night.” He turns to Dream. “I’m gonna take Luca into the private party room and talk for a bit.”
Dream pops over to the bar, fills a pitcher of beer and several shot glasses full of tequila, and puts them on a tray. He hands the tray to Grave. “Don’t let him bully you,” he tells me before kissing Grave on the cheek and returning to the bar to wait on a just-seated table.
I follow Grave to a small, private room obviously set up to host small events and meetings. He hands me a shot, and the night’s events have me downing it without even pausing to toast.
“If you think you can get me drunk enough to change my mind, you’re wrong.”
Grave lets out a low chuckle. “Luca, you know me well enough to know I’m never wrong.”
I shoot him the finger and take the second shot.
Not one to ever be left behind, Grave gulps his two shots like he’s drinking water and targets me with an intense stare that used to cause anyone he pinned it on to tremble and immediately scramble to follow his orders.
I stay silent and don’t break his gaze, but I’m not as immune to that look as I’d like. “Look, I’d be useless to you in this fight. I gave up fighting. It’s the only way I could corner up with my past.”
“That’s not quite true,” he says. “What about Vidor?”
“You’ve been keeping tabs on me?” I say, surprised he knows about what happened in Vidor. I’d been traveling through Texas on my way back from a yoga retreat in Austin when I came across a broken-down car with two scared kids who the local shitheads were hassling because they happened to be trans.
“Enough to know that you’re still good in a fight.”
“I didn’t have a choice. Those kids didn’t have anyone else to fight for them.”
“And neither does he,” Grave says, pulling out his phone and showing me a picture of a young, dark-haired guy with high cheekbones and startling amber eyes.
