was a lot of love in the club now, certainly more than a bunch of ragtag misfits like us deserved. And I wasn’t jealous—I was glad to be surrounded by it.
I just…
Sometimes I wondered if there was something inherently missing inside me. Like everyone else had a room, deep in their hearts, with a locked door they could eventually open up and let someone else into. And when I looked for that door inside myself, it opened directly to a brick wall. I loved my brothers, and I was loyal, and I worked hard, but whenever I tried to connect with a woman in a real, meaningful way, something just… Didn’t work.
Jazz was the only person I’d ever felt truly close to, in the way where that person is practically a part of you, and that was because of our youth together. I hadn’t realized how much I’d relied on his companionship until he was gone. It was as if I’d had a bad hangover for the past three years, and having Jazz in front of me again was finally bringing me back to clear-eyed sobriety.
Half of me wanted to deck him. The other half wanted to grab onto him and hang on there for a long, long time. I managed to hold myself back until I could choose. Instead, I just looked at him.
He looked different.
Of course he did. Prison changed a man. In what ways, I guess I’d find out. He was still a few inches shorter than me, and he’d always been broader in the shoulders and thicker around the waist. In prison he’d put on even more corded muscle, in his biceps, his deltoids, even the width of his thighs straining in his old jeans.
His eyes were the same, though. In twenty-eight years, I’d never met anyone else with eyes like Jazz’s: an odd mix of yellow and brown that Jazz claimed was hazel, but it clearly wasn’t. It was closer to amber, and the yellow in his eyes brought out a slight red tint in his tousled dark brown hair. I’d always thought his messy hair and amber eyes matched the lion tattoo he had across his back—a relic from when we were twenty, a little younger, a lot more reckless.
I was struck suddenly by the urge to see the tattoo. Since I didn’t know quite how much he’d changed yet, if he’d changed, I wanted to see all the ways he was the same. To make sure it was really him in front of me.
Jazz lifted his hand, like he was about to reach for me, but aborted the motion halfway and carded his hand through his hair instead. The motion drew my eye to the new muscle of his bicep, visible even through his leather sleeve.
It was a little—awkward, almost. Like he wasn't sure if he was still allowed to shove me around like we used to.
Fuck. Were we really just standing in front of each other gaping like a couple of wide-eyed gophers? Of course this was how our reunion would go. We were both famously stubborn—our standoffs in Hell’s Ankhor were a thing of legend.
Jazz tipped his chin up slightly, his eyebrows raised in a little hint of a challenge. I couldn’t help but smirk slightly. So at least that hadn’t changed. At his core, he was still my best friend. My brother.
And I could stand here all day. I definitely wasn’t going to be the one to break first.
Jazz crossed his arms over his chest. “You checking me out?”
I barked a surprised laugh, ignoring the weird flip in my stomach. Three years since I’d heard his voice anywhere but my memory. It was nice—familiar, nostalgic, like a favorite song unexpectedly on the radio. “You wish.”
A slow smile spread across Jazz’s face.
I still wanted to punch him, a little, but that could wait. Instead I finally grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him in for a rough hug. Jazz wrapped his arms hard around me, and the new strength in his body forced a rough, embarrassingly choked exhale from my lungs.
God, it was good to see him. I loved all my brothers in Hell’s Ankhor, but there wasn’t anyone else like Jazz. No one who knew me like he did.
With some reluctance I pulled away, and then grabbed him by the back of his neck and shook him roughly. “Been a while.”
Jazz grinned down at his feet, and then shoved my hand away. He’d always claimed to hate it when