Badd Motherf*cker(55)

“And you think that’s me?”

Brock just shrugged. “That’s up to the two of you, whether or not he’s willing to actually man up and let you in, and whether or not you have the patience to put up with his emotionally-stunted nonsense.” He slapped the bar top with his palm. “And I, for one, hope you do, and hope he does.”

“And if he doesn’t?”

Another lift of his shoulder. “He’ll asshole his way out of having to be vulnerable. I’ve seen him do it any number of times. He doesn’t like it when things get real, so he puts up these spiky death rays of asshole behavior, to just sort of push people away. Doesn’t work on us, of course, since we’re his brothers and we see through it, but for women…? He’s a bad boy, you know? Like, true-blue, down to the bone bad boy. Chicks love it, short term. But trying to push through the asshole to get to the truly decent guy lurking beneath it takes more than anyone’s ever been willing to put up.”

A big booming voice broke the skin of the quiet discussion. “Quit boring the lady with your girly psychobabble bullshit, Brock! Time to do shots!”

The man accompanying the voice must have been Baxter, according to Sebastian’s description. Big, burly, thick, bull-necked, full of blustering thunder and power. Same as Sebastian, Zane, and Brock, Baxter had brown hair and brown eyes, but like each of his brothers, he wore it differently. His arms were so huge I found myself wondering how he even managed to wipe his own asshole, and his chest was actually some kind of tectonic plate, but his waist was a trim wedge hugged by a green and yellow University of Oregon T-shirt. He occupied a huge physical space, but as he left the stairwell and swaggered across to the bar, it was clear he was also one of those people who just dominated any room he was in, through virtue of sheer volume, bluster, bravado, and power of personality.

He slid behind Brock, trailing his fingers along the bottles of booze lined up on shelves. “Eeny…meeny…miney…mo!” He tapped a bottle of Johnny Walker, Jack Daniel’s, Wild Turkey each in turn, and then at the word “mo” stopped on a bottle of Patrón Silver.

Brock whacked Baxter on the shoulder. “It’s noon, moron. We’re not doing shots of tequila.”

Baxter ignored him, poured three overflowing shot glasses full of tequila, rummaged around under the bar for a tray full of sliced limes and a salt shaker. “It’s always time for tequila, you little bitch!” He set a shot glass in front of me, grabbed my wrist, licked it, shook salt onto it, tossed me a lime. Held up his glass to me. “To my brother Sebastian—asshole extraordinaire, and owner of the meanest right hook I’ve ever fucking felt; and to you, Dru, for being woman enough to get even his tightwad panties in a hell of a bunch!”

He clinked my shot glass with his, spilling tequila all over my hand and his, and then he slammed his glass against Brock’s glass who, despite his protest, was doing the shot with us. We licked the salt off our hands, did the shot, and then sucked the limes, each of us doing the requisite post-tequila shot grunt.

I noticed, then, that Baxter had a shadow on his jaw, too. “Wait, Sebastian punched you, too?”

Baxter poured another shot and downed that one, no salt or lime or gasp. “Yes, he did. The fucker. I always forget how hard that bastard can hit.”

I frowned. “Why’d he hit you?”

Zane appeared, then, grabbed the bottle of tequila and stole Baxter’s shot glass, did two shots in short order, forgoing the salt and lime. “Because the dumbfuck had the balls to ask Sebastian why he had his panties in a bunch.”

“To which Sebastian replied ‘not wearing any panties, cocksucker,’” Baxter said, rubbing his jaw, “and then he decked me.”

I looked in turn at Zane, Baxter, and Brock, each of who bore some kind of mark from Sebastian’s anger. “So he’s clocked all three of you…” I grabbed the bottle and did another shot, but I went with salt and lime, because I clearly wasn’t on the same level of hard-drinking badassery as the Badd brothers. “Which leads to tequila shots at…twelve-oh-nine on a Monday afternoon?”

Zane nodded. “Yep. I mean, I don’t know about these fuckers, but I haven’t been to bed yet. Took an overnight from London to LA, and then connected from LA to Seattle, and then from Seattle here, and that was the short leg of my journey. So for me, it’s basically still Sunday, according to the ancient rules of staying up all night.”

“And I got cheated on, on the day of my wedding,” I said. “Which was two days ago—and then I met Sebastian and had him mess me up in all kinds of ways, so I feel a little entitled.”