Rage by Kaylee Song

he’s an investor in the club.  We do some work for him, provide some protection for his place.  Even though it’s a bit out of our way.” He grinned and walked up to the bar, leaning against it.  “Don O’Grady’s cousin.” Irish Mob.  Again.  They were everywhere.
    The bartender greeted him.  “What’ll you have, Cullen?”
    “Bourbon, neat.  And something for the lady.”
    “Miss?” the bartender asked.
    Drinking wasn’t usually something that I did.  It reminded me of the way my dad had clung to the bottle.  It was the only thing he’d loved.  I didn’t want Cullen to know that.
    “Whiskey sour, please.” It was the one drink I knew I liked.
    “A whiskey girl, huh? I wouldn’t expect any less from you.” Cullen’s devilish grin was back.
    “Oh?” I asked, looking at him.  Despite the smirk on his face, his eyes were so angry, so sad.  A deep and murky green that swirled like a maelstrom.
    “I always knew you would go to college, make something of yourself.  That you were better than all this.  Better than me.”
    “Yet here I am without a job, sitting in a bar with you.” I reached for the drink that the bartender poured and swirled it, looking into the glass.
    “Where would you rather be?”
    “Honestly? I don’t know.  You and I, we have a past that we can’t repeat, Cullen.”
    He nodded like he agreed, but even as I said it, I wanted to take it back.  I wanted to repeat that past.
    “I don’t know that I can do much about that, Lala.  When I look at you—”
    “Fuck.”
    “He was proud of you, you know.” Cullen’s voice was low, quiet.  “Sean.”
    I should have taken solace in that, but it just made me so damn angry.
    “Yeah, well, maybe if I stayed he wouldn’t have wound up dead.” I bit back the tears that were threatening to fall.  I’d spent the whole day crying.  I didn’t want to do it here, now, in front of him.
    After we’d both finished our drinks in silence, he looked around.
    “Let’s get out of here.” He waved to the bartender on our way out.
    “Wait, don’t you have to—“
    “Price included in our protection.” He wasn’t smirking now.  He looked angry.  It felt like there was something—guilt, resentment—right there beneath the surface.
    The fury was building.
    There was a reason they called him Rage.  He was calm and cool until all of a sudden he wasn’t, like a tornado that touches down out of a calm sky.  And I was the only one who could read him.  The only one who could predict the coming storm.
    I didn’t ask any questions.  I just followed him back to his bike and hopped on, putting on his helmet as he peeled out of the gravel driveway.
    The memory of my brother hung over us like a cloud, reminding us of everything we’d lost.
    Of what we could never have.
    I didn’t want to sit and talk.  I didn’t want to be around people.  I just wanted to get lost in the ride.
    ***
    We drove down alongside the Monongahela River until we reached an industrial complex, then we pulled into it and parked so that we could look out over the river.
    It was the same river that ran through Braddock and provided the steel mill transportation for its coal.  But here it was used for something else, probably shipping goods from factory to factory.
    Hell, even this late there were people in their boats just floating down the river.
    The one that reminded me I was home.
      “I like to come out her on my rounds sometimes.  There’s so much out there.  It reminds me I’m small.
    He pulled the helmet off and let me brace on him to get off the bike.
    “It’s my fault, Layla.  My fault he’s dead.  Not yours.  I shouldn’t have gone when Bones called me.  I should’ve made Sean go.  Then it’d be me instead of him.  Or maybe not.  I don’t know.  I’ll never know.”
    It was the first time he’d said those words aloud.  I could tell by the pain in his eyes that surfaced as he said them.  He meant it.
    But I knew