Ride Or Bleed

Dex Morrow had one rule about Zane Calloway. Don't look. He had broken it nine times in the last thirty minutes and the man hadn't moved once. The Meridian sat on the dead line between Wolf territory and Veil territory, which was the only reason Dex was here at all. He'd needed noise that wasn't his own, not the Den, not his own brothers asking if he was good, not Cairo's eyes tracking him like he was a problem waiting to happen. He'd wanted a bar where nobody knew his name. Instead he got Zane Calloway at the far end of the counter, two empty stools between them, drinking something amber and looking like he owned the building. Dex ordered. Bourbon, neat. The bartender didn't ask twice. Zane didn't look up. Dex catalogued him anyway, because apparently that was just a thing his eyes did now without permission. The black jacket that probably cost more than Dex's bike payment. The way he sat, not relaxed, never relaxed, just still in a way that made everyone else in the room look like they were vibrating. One hand wrapped loose around his glass. The other hand free. Always one hand free. Dex knew that about him. Hated that he knew that about him. Six years of war had taught Dex exactly one thing about Zane Calloway: the man did not move until he'd already decided where he was going to land. Forty minutes passed like that. Dex working through his second drink, the noise of the bar doing its job, Zane a still point at the edge of his vision that he kept circling back to like a tongue finding a sore tooth. He told himself it was vigilance. Rival president, neutral ground, you didn't take your eyes off something like that. That was the story he was telling himself when he heard his own voice break the silence before he'd decided to use it. "You lost?" Zane didn't startle. Of course he didn't. He turned his head, slow, and looked at Dex for the first time all night. "Never." That was it. One word. He went back to his drink like Dex hadn't spoken at all. Dex felt something hot climb up the back of his neck. Not anger, or not only anger. He pushed the rest of his bourbon back and signaled for another, because if he was going to sit here being ignored by the coldest man in Redrock City he was at least going to be properly drunk for it. "Then what are you doing in neutral territory at midnight," Dex said. "Alone." "Same thing you are." Zane finally turned all the way on his stool, and his eyes were that gray-green that always looked like weather coming in. "Minding my business." "This is my business. Wolf land's twenty feet that way." Dex hooked a thumb at the door. "You're the one who crossed a line." "The Meridian's neutral. Or did your club change the rules without telling the Veil." Something flickered at the corner of Zane's mouth that wasn't quite a smile. It was worse than a smile. It looked like he found Dex funny. "Don't," Dex said. "Don't what." "Whatever that was. On your face." "I haven't done anything with my face." "You did something." Dex was aware, distantly, that he sounded like a man arguing with a wall, and that the wall was winning. "You've got a face that does things." Zane actually looked at him then. Really looked, the kind of look that took its time, started at Dex's jaw and didn't hurry getting anywhere else, and Dex's pulse did something traitorous and immediate that he refused to name. "You've spent six years cataloguing my face," Zane said. "I'd think you'd know it better than I do." "I catalogue my enemies. Smart strategy." Dex kept his voice flat, bored, every trick he had. "You should try it. Might've noticed I'm not the one who crossed into someone else's territory tonight." "I noticed plenty." Zane's voice didn't change pitch. It never changed pitch, that was half of what made Dex want to put his fist through something. "I noticed you walked in twenty minutes before me. I noticed you ordered top shelf and drank it like punishment. I noticed you've looked over here nine times since I sat down." Dex's stomach dropped straight through the floor. "I haven't looked at you once." "Ten times," Zane said. "Now." Dex opened his mouth to argue and found, infuriatingly, that he had nothing. The bar kept moving around them, glasses and laughter and somebody's bad jukebox choice, and none of it touched the two feet of space between his stool and Zane's like it was its own separate weather system. He told himself this was rage. He had spent six years building a very specific, very satisfying hatred of Zane Calloway, brick by brick, meeting by meeting, every cold nod across every negotiating table. He had built that hatred to last. He had not built it for this version. Zane loose shouldered on a bar stool at midnight, looking at Dex like he'd already done the math on the distance between them and found the answer acceptable. That was the problem. That look. Like nothing about this was a surprise to him at all. "I should go," Dex said, and didn't move. "Should," Zane agreed, and didn't either. The bartender came by, refilled Zane's glass without being asked, refilled Dex's because he'd apparently decided this was happening whether either of them admitted it or not. Two o'clock came. Last call got called. The crowd thinned to nothing around them. Neither of them left first.