Strays

Chapter 3

Wren looked around sheepishly, hoping he wouldn't run into anyone from Old Rick's family at the restaurant. He would have preferred to meet somewhere less public, but there was only one diner in town that was open late. It was empty except for a few high school kids giggling in the corner. This town shut down pretty early, especially on a weeknight.

"Alright, what did you want to meet me for?" he asked softly, leaning forward to the two men on the other side of the table.

"We came to bring you home," they responded, not nearly as clandestinely as their brother had. Wren almost flinched at their inside voices. "What kind of message does it send if we just run off when things get sticky?"

"Things didn't get sticky," Wren hissed, "Someone died." He ducked his head when a waitress passed.

"I'll be right with you," she called pleasantly over her shoulder.

"One of them died," hissed his oldest brother, Liam, "and we followed through on our threat. If you just go running off, it'll make us look scared and weak. We need to stand our ground."

Before Wren could argue, the waitress came up beside him, and greeted, "Hi, welcome back to Big Mama's, can I get you started on anything to drink?" When Wren popped up to assume a more casual posture, a coaster was dropped in front of him. Lindley froze like a deer in headlights when she saw the guy from Old Rick's in front of her. Wren was cursing himself internally.

"Hey," he said attempting to come across casually. "You're the girl from the bar the other day." He pointed at her, his expression trying to remember the details. "Lindsay, right?"

"That I am," she answered, ignoring the mistake in her name. "So what'll it be?" She plastered on her best customer service smile.

"Girl from the bar the other night?" his second brother, Bates, asked, curiously. "Now I see why you're so adamant about not going back home." His tone was calculated, and Lindley found that his eyes were more unsettling to her than Wren's had been. However, in this moment, Wren was looking anywhere but at her.

"Coke?" Lindley interrupted, itching to get away from their table and to the back of the restaurant. She never thought that her favorite table of the night would be a bunch of drunk high schoolers. "Sweet tea? Milkshake?"

"Round of waters," Bates ordered, studying her expression carefully, while Liam was studying something else very carefully as she walked away.

"You're abandoning us for some chick?" Bates demanded of Wren.

"What? No!" Wren looked over his shoulder at Lindley to make sure she was out of earshot. "Listen, Dad sent me out here and got me a job at a bar with some old friend of his, and she's friends with that family. I'm staying here, because I don't want to kill anyone—I'm tired of all of it. Dad agrees. I'm starting over here." He looked down at his arms, crossed over one another on the table in front of him. Something about his brothers bringing that girl into the conversation made him feel that much stronger about not going back. He wished she wasn't here tonight to see this.

"That's bullshit, and you know it," Liam growled, and Lindley was already back, dropping the waters in front of them. Liam was sitting back in his chair with his arms crossed in front of his chest, looking broodingly out the window. Bates had his chin resting on his hand, studying Wren intensely, who was looking down at his hands on the table. The sight made it clear to Lindley that she was interrupting.

"Need another minute before ordering?" she asked, awkwardly. No one says anything for a long pause, so she began to excuse herself, before Bates's arm reached out and caught her wrist. Lindley reflexively snapped it away from him, giving him a distasteful look. Bates's eyebrows simply lifted slightly, while Wren's head snapped up and studied their interaction carefully, his eyes masking his thoughts, though revealing that his mind was racing. "Did you know what you wanted to order?" Her voice had a deliberate edge to it, and her eyes for the first time focused entirely on Bates's eyes.

He smiled sinisterly at her, as he answered. "I think we will need that extra minute after all." As Lindley stormed away, Bates turned smugly to his brother. "See that? Riff-raff like us aren't welcome here. People like your friend here will always look down on you—think they're better than you. You don't belong here; you belong with your family." He turned toward his still sullen other brother, and ordered, "Let's go Liam."

"What?" Liam snapped, but stopped once seeing their oldest brother's expression.

"It'll only be a matter of time, Wren," Bates told him as he stood. Liam followed him. "See you later, Princess," Liam called toward Lindley, crudely blowing her kisses. She glared at them from behind the counter.

Once they were gone, she went back over to Wren's table and asked him, distantly. "Just checking to see if you want food or anything."

"How do you know Old Rick and that whole crowd?" He asked her suddenly, his cryptic eyes studying her once again. He had seen the way she reacted to his brother—the look of disgust on her face. Wren had assumed that Old Rick must have been connected to the Fist somehow, otherwise why would his Dad have sent him here? But the way that she had looked at his brother, there was no way that she would be so intimately connected to a gang family.

Lindley shrugged, before answering vaguely. "Small towns, you know. Everybody has history with everybody. That's just the way they work."

Unsatisfied with his answer, Wren was about to question her further, before he stopped himself. He wasn't about to bite the hand that feeds and go asking questions about a family who gave him a job without asking questions about him.

Lindley interrupted his thoughts, telling him. "Hang out as long as you want—just wave me down if you need something." She wandered off and stood casually behind the bar, chatting with someone in the kitchen that Wren couldn't see. He sighed, took another sip of his water, and left, frustrated, dropping a twenty down on the counter behind him.