I stopped thinking this when Deke claimed me with an arm around my chest, pulling me off my stool, shifting me and securing me in front of him, my back pressed close to him, Deke not a guy, I was noticing, who had a problem with having his picture taken.
Lexie pressed in at my right side in the same hold with Ty behind her. Lauren had handed her phone off to Tate, a good choice since he had a long arm. She then curled both her arms around Jim-Billy in front of her, Lexie sandwiched in between Laurie and me.
Faye and Chace got close at Deke and my other sides and Tate leaned over his wife as he held the camera out in front of us.
“Give Krys a big, fat smile!” Lauren yelled.
I had no idea about the others, but in our huddle, mellowed by several beers, in good company, it was not hard for me to aim my eyes at the camera and give Krys a big, fat smile.
I saw the screen snap a bunch of images before Tate dropped his arm and we all shifted, separating, the men going back to their drinks, the women forming a new huddle around Lauren so we could bend over her phone and check out the pictures.
But when I caught sight of the photos, my body stilled and I stared.
Everyone had given Krys a big, fat smile. Even the men hadn’t held back.
Drinks and bonding in a nowhere biker bar in the mountains of Colorado.
Me right there in the middle surrounded by these good people, smiling huge.
Me.
Jussy.
There it was in that picture.
Proof.
Here, I was not a Lonesome.
In Carnal, I was just me.
I was just me, and in that instant I understood something that I was getting, but it hadn’t quite come to me.
After a lifetime as a gypsy, I’d found home.
“I’m so totally printing this out, framing it and putting it up behind the bar,” Lauren declared then her gaze came to me. “If you’re cool with that, Jus.”
Not only taken out of my thoughts, also taken aback by her saying that, I asked, “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Don’t want to raise a profile you want to keep low,” she replied.
Good people.
Surrounding me.
Home.
“I’m totally cool with being a part of this bar, Laurie,” I said quietly. “And can you text those to me?” I asked, not sharing I wanted them not only because I dug those pictures, me surrounded by friends, but also because they were the first pictures taken of Deke and me.
“Sure,” she replied.
“Me too,” Lexie put in.
“And me,” Faye added.
Laurie bent to her phone, mumbling, “On it.”
“Cool, thanks, Laurie,” I murmured, intent on moving back to my beer, and Deke, who had been standing behind me while I sat on my stool gabbing to Faye on one side, Jim-Billy on the other, Lexie beyond Jim-Billy. Deke had been standing in a man cluster, talking with Ty and Chace, as well as Tate, when he wasn’t with Lauren working the back of the bar.
I got close to my man. Putting my hand on his waist, I circled him from behind, trailing that hand along the small of his back in order not to interrupt the conversation he’d returned to with Chace and Ty.
And as I did, he automatically lifted his other arm high so I could duck under it. When I made it to his other side, still with his attention on the men, he curled his arm around my shoulders, pulling me in for a sideways hug before he released me so I could hit my seat.
All this participating in a chat with his buds.
But doing it managing to let me know he knew I was close. He liked me close. And he wanted me to know that.
And when I took my stool, he shifted into me so I could use his long body as a seat back then I felt his hand weave through my hair and come to rest, lightly fisted, on my shoulder.
This wasn’t claiming. Deke did not have to claim me around these people.
This was entirely affectionate.
This was just Deke being Deke.
I felt Faye climb up on her stool beside me but I didn’t look to her. I memorized the feel of Deke behind me, his hand in my hair, thinking for me, but also for Deke, that we came easy. That this came easy. That the lives we’d led brought him to me so he could give me this easy.
But more, so I could give that back.
On this thought, I felt something funny, lifted my gaze and caught Tate’s eyes on my shoulder where Deke’s hand lay.
He must have sensed he had my attention because I’d barely looked at him before his gaze came to me.
He did not smile. He did not lift his chin. His face didn’t soften. He looked reflective, actually borderline brooding. And when he looked in my eyes, he didn’t wipe any of that to hide it.
From what Deke had said, it was clear of all these folks, he was tightest with Tate.
And that look, I knew, was the look I could not see that Joss had when she was talking to me on the phone about her concerns I was getting in deep with Deke.
Catching Tate’s eyes, knowing this, I didn’t know what to do. I’d never been on the receiving end of a guy looking over the chick his best bud was into, wondering if she was right. Wondering if she’d make his friend happy. It had always been me that had to be cautious, my loved ones a hundred times more cautious than me.
But I was rich. I was famous. I was settling into a big house in the mountains.