Page 10 of Unleashed
The door swings shut behind them, and the bar lets out a collective exhale. Someone behind the bar flips the jukebox music back up. And just like that, Rosie's Roadhouse goes back to being a bar again. People pick up their drinks. Jimmy starts sweeping broken glass. A waitress rights the overturned tables. Life goes on.
Because that's how it works in New Falls. The Sterlings handle it, and then everybody pretends it didn't happen.
Hunter turns to me, and the coldness drops away. Underneath it, just for a second, I see my big brother. The man who has always looked after me. But I know he’s tired. Carrying the weight of an empire he never asked for. Our dad signed us up for that, and we’ve pushed it forward bigger than he probably ever imagined.
"You alright?" he asks.
I flex my hand. My knuckles are split and stinging, and there's a bruise forming on my ribs where somebody got a lucky shot in. Nothing broken. Nothing that won't heal.
"Never better."
He shakes his head, but the corner of his mouth twitches.
"Jimmy!" Colten shouts at the bartender, slapping his palm on the bar. "Four glasses. Best bourbon. Top shelf. And get yourself a double. We will send the bill to Carson at Ranch 42 to clear this place up, alright?"
Jimmy doesn't hesitate. He reaches up to the highest shelf and pours four generous glasses of Blanton's.
We stand at the bar, the five of us. The people I'd burn the world down for.
Hunter raises his glass. "To Ace."
"To Ace," Colten and Jett echo.
"To twenty-seven," I say, touching my glass to theirs. "And to Ranch 42 paying for those very expensive tables they just smashed up."
Jett snorts. Colten grins. Even Hunter laughs.
We drink. Jett and Colten start replaying the fight, arguing over who dropped more guys, talking louder and louder over each other while Jimmy shakes his head and pours another round. Hunter leans against the bar beside me.
I pull out my phone.
The screen's still cracked. Still nothing from the only person I want to hear from.
I open our thread. The last message is mine.
Merry Christmas, Goldie. Hope you're doing okay out there.
No reply. Same as always.
My thumb hovers over the keyboard. The bourbon makes me brave. Or stupid. Same thing, really.
Twenty-seven today. Got into a bar fight. You would've loved it. Miss you.
I stare at it for ten seconds. Then I hit send before I can talk myself out of it, shove the phone back in my pocket, and pick up my bourbon.
She won't reply, I’m used to that.
But she'll read it. I know she will. And maybe, wherever she is, some apartment in LA with too many locks and not enough stars, maybe she'll smile. Maybe she'll press her thumb against the screen like she's touching my face. Maybe, for just a second, she'll let herself miss me back.
Or maybe I'm just a drunk cowboy on his birthday, talking to a ghost.
Colten throws his arm around my shoulder. "Best birthday yet?"
I look at my brothers. At the blood on Jett's shirt. At the bruise forming on Colten's jaw. Tate is already drowning in whiskey. Hunter is standing guard like he always does, watching the door like the trouble might come back.
And I think about a girl in Los Angeles who's the reason I can't let anyone else in. The girl who broke me so completely that even almost six years later, I'm still picking up the pieces and finding her fingerprints on every single one.
"Yeah," I say, and I mean it despite everything. "Best birthday yet."
