Badd Motherf*cker: Badd Brothers (28 page)

But yet somehow I deserved more than how I’d found out?
 

None of it made any sense. Had I fallen down a rabbit hole?
 

My head was spinning.
 

I heard feet on the floor behind me, and then felt Sebastian’s arms go around me.
 

“Nice shot,” he said.

“How much did you hear?” I asked, not quite ready to turn around and face him yet.

“All of it.” He, apparently, had other ideas, since he spun me around and tucked my head under his chin, my ear against his chest. “I was on the other side of the door the whole time, listening.”

“Asshole,” I murmured, not really meaning it.

“Yeah, well, that’s me. King of the Assholes.” He touched my chin, so I was looking at him. “I know shouldn’t’ve listened to your private shit, but…I wasn’t ready to let you go through that alone.”

“Meaning, at the first hint that he was going to get out of line you were ready to rip him apart?”

He grunted an affirmative. “Nearly came out when he called you a bitch.”

“You do know I can handle myself, right?” I said, frowning up at him.

He just smirked at me. “Yeah, ’course. But now you don’t have to.”

I sighed, not minding it at all, if I was being honest. “So…can you believe all that?”

He rumbled a negative. “Not even close. I think he’s gotta be one of those…whaddya call ’em, psychopaths, or whatever. Like, the ones who don’t even really get the difference between right and wrong.”

“I think that’s a sociopath,” I said. “And I think you may be right. I just…it makes no sense.”
 

“No, it doesn’t.” He scooped me up in his arms, set me down on the table nearest the door. “Now kiss me, so we can both forget that crazy fuckhead.”
 

“Sounds good,” I murmured, but the words were lost as he kissed me, and I realized that, from the outside looking in, this thing I had with Sebastian might seem just as crazy, just as unlikely as what Michael had done with Tawny.
 

I only met him the other night but I knew I wasn’t going anywhere any time soon. Neither of us were claiming this was some kind of undying love, but we also both knew that was where it was going. How long would it take to get there? No way to know, and I didn’t really care. A month, a year, five years? As long as it was
real
, both of us all in and honest about what we had and what we wanted…that was all I needed. Well, that and…

“You gonna take me upstairs and fuck me or what?” I whispered.
 

He laughed. “Wild thing, we’ve fucked like eight times today.”

“So? I’m ready for number nine.” I cupped his hardening cock over his shorts. “And from the feel of it, so are you.”

“Yeah, always. But I got brothers you ain’t met yet.”
 

The door to the bar opened then, and Sebastian swiveled to put me behind him, but then when the figure stepped over the threshold and into the light, he immediately let me go.

“Lucian!” He took an eager step forward. “You’re here! Wasn’t expecting you for a while yet, from what I was hearing.”

Lucian Badd…dear god. Whatever magic had gone into the creation of these eight brothers hadn’t spared the beautiful gene. Lucian was—like the twins I’d only barely seen and the youngest brother, Xavier—tall and thin, rangy, corded with lean muscle, more of a razor than a burly bear. He had the same rich brown hair as the others, but his was so long I wondered if he’d ever cut it. It was bound low on his nape and hung to mid-spine. He had a bit of everyone’s features, the sharp nose, the strong jawline, the deep-set dark eyes, the perfect symmetry, but where even Brock, the most classically handsome of them all, was still handsome in that rugged, masculine way, Lucian was…

I struggled to put a word to it.
 

Ethereal. Otherworldly.

Something like that. All of the brothers I’d met were larger than life and could easily dominate a room with their loud, brash personalities, and the quieter ones like Brock were still fascinating, people you couldn’t ignore. But Lucian just…sucked you in.
 

It was hard to explain, honestly.

He was gorgeous, freakishly so. Sharp-featured, hard-eyed, tall, emanating a quiet strength. His presence was…unnerving, in a way. He hadn’t said a word, but his gaze was taking in me, Sebastian’s shirt on me, Sebastian’s protective posture, and he’d probably seen Michael outside with his bloody nose. Lucian’s gaze missed nothing.
 

Finally, Lucian stepped forward, slammed his arms around Sebastian. “Good to be home, Bast.”
 

“How’d you get here so fast? I thought you were in the Philippines?”

Lucian tilted one shoulder upward. “Red-eye from Honolulu.”
 

“Hawaii?” Sebastian asked.
 

A nod. “Some sick waves on the North Shore.”

“So were you ever in the Philippines?”

A shake of his head, ponytail bouncing. “Not for a while. A few months ago? Got the call from the lawyer in Honolulu. Been there a few weeks.”

Sebastian chuckled. “Never could pin you down. What were you doing in Hawaii?”

“Surfing. Fishing.” A sly wink. “And…
fishing
, na’mean, brah?” He held out his hand to me. “Lucian.”

I shook his hand, still trying to get a read on him. He was chill, quiet, and terse even, but I could see a whirling, dizzying depth boiling beneath his placid exterior. He just…gave away little of what he was thinking or feeling. But you just knew it was deep, and that he was seeing and hearing everything, missing nothing, and you couldn’t help but wonder what he was thinking, if only because he was so hard to read.
 

“I’m Dru Connolly,” I said. “Welcome home.”
 

“Home?” Lucian asked, and it was just one word, but the inflection he lent that one syllable put a dozen questions out in the air.
 

Sebastian clapped his brother on the back. “Yes,
home
. For you, for all the others…” he curled me against his other side, “and for her, if that’s what she wants.”
 

A lifted eyebrow, and a single nod from Lucian. “Gonna be crowded, then.” He let go of my hand, and even offered me a small smile. “If Sebastian likes you, then pleased to meet you.”

“I more than
like
her, punk.”
 

This got Lucian’s attention. “No shit?”

Sebastian seemed to be able to read Lucian a hell of a lot better than I could, and they obviously had that silent guy-communication going on. “Yeah, no shit.”

Lucian nodded and shrugged. “All right then.” He had a huge backpack on his back, the kind people who hike the Appalachian Trail for weeks and months at a time use. “I’m hungry.”

And, just like that, all the Badd Brothers were home.

And, it seemed, so was I.

EPILOGUE

Zane

I fuckin’ hated suits. Put me in ghillie suit in the goddamn desert and I won’t complain, but when I stuff my ass into a tuxedo I’ll bitch till the cows come home.
 

Dru didn’t seem to give a shit. “It’s for like twenty minutes, Zane. Soon as we start the reception you can take the coat and tie off.”
 

“I want the goddamn tie off
now
,” I growled.

She just patted my chest. “But you’re the best man. You
have
to wear the tie. Plus, if you don’t wear the tie, none of the other boys will. And then all hell will break loose, and my wedding will be ruined. You wouldn’t want that, would you?”

I frowned at her logic. “The stupid fuckin’ ties aren’t what’s keeping them in line, Dru, it’s the threat of violence and the promise of booze.”
 

She gave me her patented freeze-your-balls-off glare. “
Wear
the goddamn motherfucking
tie
, Zane Badd.”
 

God bless Sebastian and may he have a long life and a happy one with Dru Connolly, but god, it took balls to parlay with this woman. She was something else, that was for damn sure.
 

I held up my hands in surrender. “Fine, Jesus. But the second that service is over—”

“Then I’ll take the tie off for you, if you’re so worked up about it,” she cut in. “Just
please
quit bitching about it.”
 

“I can’t breathe wearing the fuckin’ thing,” I started.

Dru just hissed at me. “You’re a Navy SEAL, Zane. You can hold your breath for, like, ten minutes.”

“That’s beside the point,” I said. “Doesn’t make the goddamn monkey suit any more comfortable.”
 

She just shook her head. “Pussy.”
 

She turned away from me, then, because Baxter was rolling up on his Harley. The bastard had gotten one look at Xavier’s bike and had decided he needed one too, but of course he needed the biggest, baddest, loudest one ever made, so you could hear the stupid gorilla coming from a mile away. He wasn’t wearing a helmet, being absurdly vain about his hair, and he wore his tux like he’d been born in one. But then, he went to a lot of players’ dinners and such, so he wore one more frequently than I ever had.
 

Dru, wearing her wedding dress, gathered up the back of her dress and swung onto the bike behind him. I was pretty sure only Dru Connolly could pull this off. She’d taken her old wedding dress, the one that douche-canoe Michael hadn’t ever even seen her in, and went to town with a pair of shears and a needle and thread. A joke, a joke—I’m just kidding.
 

She’d taken it to a qualified seamstress and had it professionally altered. I’d never seen the original version, but this dress looked pretty good to me. I’d heard she’d had the top part loosened so she could breathe in it, and had the skirt part cut away up to her thighs so she could walk it in while leaving the back long enough to be a real train. I don’t know how the seamstress had managed it, but she had, and Dru looked fuckin’ bangin’. Classy, sexy, and regal all at once.
 

This being Dru and Bast, the wedding was anything but traditional. The service was being held on the docks outside the bar, and the reception was on the street outside the bar…during normal business hours. It was seven p.m., and Bax was only taking her around the block so she could make her grand entrance on the back of a Harley. No aisle, no “Here Comes the Bride”. Well, actually, I think Cane and Cor were planning on surprising her with an impromptu version of it.
 

We’d blocked off the entire street around the bar, and the catering company had set up a buffet of food outside and a bunch of white-cloth-covered tables in the street and on the docks. Canaan and Corin had a stage off to one side and planned to play all night long, taking breaks for food and booze, of course.
 

The twins, being the twins, could play covers of just about anything, plus their catalog of a hundred or so original songs—including dozens of songs they’d written while touring but had never got into the studio to record. They’d never told their old record label about them, and there were only the twelve songs from their debut album that they weren’t allowed to play without permission.
 

The whole wedding was open to the public, with the interior of the bar open for business as usual, the wedding and reception all taking place outside. We’d hired temporary staff in addition to the catering staff to run the bar for the evening so all of us could hang out and party all night.
 

There were something like two hundred people gathered already, more in the bar, and yet more streaming in from all directions. Might have been Canaan and Corin’s rambunctious cover of “Stairway to Heaven” they were currently playing, or it could have been the lights and the crowd and the smell of food…or just the air of a rippin’ party that had infused this entire section of Ketchikan.
 

In the four months since Dru had drunkenly crash-landed in Badd’s Bar and Grill, things had gotten a little crazy. Word had spread that all eight of us Badd brothers were back in town, and that we all were around in the bar on a regular basis, which had brought in the ladies in droves…and their boyfriends and husbands had stuck around because of the kickass music provided on a nightly basis by the twins and the stiff drinks poured by Bast and Bax. Business had turned around, you might say. Xavier had proven to be as talented a chef as he was at anything else, which meant we had a killer menu, and Dru provided a smiling, beautiful, happy face for the crowds which pushed in to max capacity every night. That’s right, the chick had torn up her law degree to play hostess at a dive bar…and seemed well and truly happy with the decision.

Lucian, Brock, and I took turns helping out as needed in the kitchen, behind the bar, and on the floor, and Xavier took it upon himself to take care of the books, since he could do the requisite math in his head blind-drunk. Things were…amazing. We were busier than ever, and all of us were pretty content with the way things were.
 

I hadn’t shot a gun in months, which was the longest I’d gone without spending hours on the firing range or in combat since I was eighteen.

Not all of us fit in the apartment above the bar, obviously, so some of us brothers had pitched in funds to buy and renovate an old storefront and the apartment above it a block away from the bar. The storefront had been turned into a recording studio for the twins, and the apartment above provided living space for them, Lucian, Brock, and Bax, while Xavier and I had the other two bedrooms above Badd’s. None of us spent much time in any of the bedrooms except to sleep, so it didn’t really matter, as we all tended to spend every waking moment at the bar either working or drinking.

With Dru and Bax making their circuit around the block, it was time for me to take my place beside Sebastian at the altar—which was a microphone stand and a rented white archway decorated with roses—with the brothers lined up on either side. Since Dru didn’t have any real girlfriends and no family except her dad—who was performing the ceremony—the brothers had taken it upon themselves to be her “bridesmen” as well as Sebastian’s groomsmen. Lucian, Xavier, Bax, and Brock were her bridesmen, and the twins and I were Bast’s groomsmen. Technically I was the best man, but that just meant I was tasked with carrying the rings.