Free Fake by D. Breeze Page B

Glancing at the time in the corner of the screen, I noticed it was only six-thirty.  It would be another four or five hours before launch night really started to get busy, and a nap sounded pretty damn good seeing as I wasn’t sleeping much at night, through worrying about her staying in that run-down flat by herself.
    I lay back in the computer chair, crossed my feet on the desk, and closed my eyes.
     
    *~*~*
     
    “Holy fuck, brother! Have you seen this shit?” Mase exclaimed, bounding into the room, sounding every bit the hyperactive child he was acting like.
    I grinned at him. It was nearing ten-thirty and I was still sat in the security room at Blaze, watching the queue of barely-clothed women and half-drunk men, grow by the second. This night was Mase’s baby, his launch night – he’d planned the entire thing, right from the original promotions, to the cocktails they’d be serving on the sky deck.
    He looked proud of himself, bordering on smug, but I couldn’t blame him.
    There must have been four hundred people in the queue, three times as many inside and the doors had only opened twenty minutes before. They’d have to start turning people away at some point and I was praying that the security guys on the doors would stick to the rules about the body count limits.
    I just sat back, my job was already done and everything was going smoothly. Bodies filled the dance-floor in the main room, mouths dropped open when they walked through the doors and my chest swelled with pride. Jackson and Mase did a damn good job.
    Granted, it was Jackson’s third club, but I’d never been as heavily involved with the other two because he wanted us to finish school and go to college. Plus, in England, it’s illegal for under eighteens to work in bars or anywhere that serves alcohol and I think Jax would never want to take the risk of losing his license.
    I was planning to enrol in the University of London later that year, not for any other reason that I wanted to be one of the first people to come from the estate...and have a degree.
    The launch night made me rethink that plan.
    What did a degree prove anyway?
    Watching the club-goers pour shot after shot down their throats and dancing around with grins on their faces, I instantly saw why Jax had chosen clubs. I was under no illusion however, that it would stay that way for long. Give or take a few hours, I figured there’d be glasses smashed on the floor, drunk idiots puking in the corner somewhere and people being dragged out by their friends because they can no longer hold their own head up.
    It was a nightclub after all!
    The thought made me cringe; I didn’t want to see all of our hard work get puked on. Literally.
    So I decided to call it a night and head home. I’d been there going on thirteen hours anyway so I figured I’d earned my bed. As I was packing up my stuff, I noticed Jax on one of the cameras in the main room, he had his hands wrapped around the hips of some girl and I shook my head – that didn’t take him long.
    Thinking that Mase would probably use tonight as an excuse to hook-up too, the idea of a good night’s sleep seemed a little less likely – so I rushed home to get a head start.
    I was out like a light, the second my head hit the pillow.

 
    Chapter Nine
    Ruben
     
    I blinked the sleep from my eyes and stretched lazily, shocked that I’d managed to sleep the whole night through.
    I actually had received a text from Lydia the night before, just a simple ‘ Sweet dreams, Ruben ’ but it still made me smile because, one; I figured it was her way of letting me know she was ok, without actually saying the words. And two; it meant she was thinking of me right before she went to sleep.
    I didn’t bother getting dressed before I left my room. I had a pair of loose grey pyjama shorts on anyway, so I wouldn’t be giving my brothers a show. I opened the door and strolled out, only to walk straight into some girl who definitely hadn’t been