My cock stiffened as her arms tightened around my waist. The faster my bike roared down the road, the more she clung to me. And my body couldn’t take it. I tried to focus on anything that might help the situation. I focused on my grandmother, and how she used to chastise me as a little boy for the stupidest shit. I thought about my father, and beating his sorry, pathetic excuse for a face in when I caught him beating on Mom.
I even thought about Mom, and how she’d wholly disapprove of how I felt about Raven.
Nothing worked, though.
Shit.
Then, I focused on the task ahead of me. I had to make sure Raven was safe from whatever the hell was coming our way. Because a visit from the Black Flags always signaled death. Whether it was death to the person receiving the unwelcomed intrusion or whether it was someone close to them, they had marked her. They had Raven in their sights.
And damn it, she wasn’t going to be taken away from me, too.
After a tense fifteen-minute drive, I pulled into the gravel parking lot of the clubhouse. I pulled up to the parking spot that had always been marked off for myself and found that my name had been spray-painted over so that just anyone could park there. It made me angry how this club seemed to try and erase my name. My legacy. Even my title from this entire club.
Something really weird is going on.
“We’re here,” I said as I took my helmet off.
Raven sighed as she let go of me. “I haven’t been here in years. It looks so…”
I snickered. “Neglected?”
She paused. “Yeah, in a way.”
Just like this entire club. “Come on. I want to get you inside before we start talking to people.”
“Do you think they’re going to accept me back?”
I slid off my bike and offered her my hand. “What?”
She slid off the bike without taking mine in return. “Accepting me back. I mean I haven’t seen or talked to anyone since… well…”
I put my hand down. “That night was hard on everyone. I’m sure they all understand. Come with me.”
The second we walked up the steps, the front door whipped open, and Porter stood there with a judging face. Guess he didn’t get my fucking text message after all. Archer peered over the man’s shoulder and shot me a look that said, “Are you fucking kidding me?”, and I wanted to claw his damn eyes out. Nevertheless, I took Raven straight back to my room at the compound in order to get her away from everyone’s prying eyes and figure out what happened.
Only to throw the door open and find someone else’s shit there.
“What the fuck?” I asked.
Someone charged down the hallway before Porter spoke. “They gave that room to Finn.”
I slowly turned around. “Well, tell him to come get his shit and move. And get someone to spray-paint my name back onto my parking space, for crying out loud! It’s not like I died.”
Raven whimpered and I immediately felt like shit. Anger from the likes I hadn’t felt in a very long time rushed through my veins and when Porter’s frown deepened, I wanted to smack it right off his face. It was like nothing was sacred to these men anymore. Not my place, not my stuff, not even my goddamn room.
It was almost like they didn’t expect me to make it out or something.
“Sorry, hold on,” Finn said as he slipped by me.
I stood by as patiently as I could and waited until he tugged his shit out of my room. Then, I slipped inside and pulled Raven in with me.
Before slamming the door closed.
“Think you could’ve been anymore tasteful about it?” she spat.
I swallowed down my anger. “We need some privacy to talk. I’m not sure who I can trust right now.”
“Then, why didn’t we just go back to your place? Or do you not have one right now?”
I snickered. “For all I know, someone’s subletted that place out right from underneath me.”
When she didn’t answer, I turned to face her and found her perched on the edge of my bed. With her back to me and her eyes facing the blank wall, she stared at a picture that hadn’t been taken down yet. I slowly walked over and eased myself down beside her. I rubbed her back while she stared at the last picture Gage and I had ever taken together.
“He loved that bar,” she said softly.
I nodded. “Maybe you and I can go there sometime. Talk about the good ol’ days.”
She drew in a curt breath. “I don’t think so. Rehashing the past has never been good for anyone.”
“We always did agree on a lot.”
She quickly stood to her feet, crossing her arms over her chest. “So, uh, what now?”
I looked up at her. “Start from the beginning and tell me everything you remember?”
“With the Black Flags?”
I nodded. “Unless there’s other things you’d like to tell me. Then, that’s fine, too.”
She swallowed hard, her eyes diverting from mine. “They knew your knock, Brooks.”
I blinked. “What?”
She scoffed. “Yeah. The two big knocks before a slew of little knocks. They knew that. I swear to fuck, I thought it was you at the door. It’s why I answered.”
The hairs on the nape of my neck stood on end as her eyes came back to mine.
“How did they know, Brooks? How would they know something like that?”
I shook my head slowly. “I don’t know.”
She swallowed hard. “There was something else that man said. I mean we fought for a bit and he had me pinned down, but I used what Gage taught me and—”
Tears rushed her eyes and I stood, taking her hand in mine. “He’d be proud of you. I’m sure he currently is.”
She looked up at me, her eyes reddening with her sorrow. “I almost killed him.”
“You would have had every right to, had you done exactly that.”
“But there was something he said that stopped me.”
I furrowed my brow. “What did he say?”
She drew in a broken breath. “I kept asking him why he was really there. And once he got past making jokes about paying their respects to Gage, they said they were looking for you.”
“For me.”
She nodded. “Yes. For you. And when I told them you hadn’t been by, and that I hadn’t heard from you—”
“You lied to them and got away with it?”
Her cheeks turned red and she looked away. “Yes.”
So, she did get my letters. “What happened next?”
Her back fully faced me now. “They were under the assumption that your first stop out of prison would be my place. But I told them you hadn’t popped by.”
My muscles tensed. “There’s something you’re still not telling me. What are you so afraid of, Raven? What did they say?”
She whipped around. “The man accused me of still having feelings for you even though I married Gage and I told him it was a lie. I told him I left that life behind when this club got my husband killed and he said, and I quote, ‘Is that what you really believe?’”
Her words flooded my mind, and I didn’t know which issue to tackle first. “Did you ever have feelings for me?”
She scoffed. “Are you kidding me right now? That’s what you took away from that?”
I shook my head. “Yes, sorry. Sorry, you’re right. Wait—did he say anything after that?”
“After what?”
“After he asked you if that’s what you really believed.”
She shrugged. “No. I asked him if what I knew was a lie, but he didn’t answer. That’s when guns started going off and he rushed out of my place like a bat out of hell.”
The tears that streaked her cheeks killed me inside. I placed a soft hand on her shoulder and squeezed it, trying to provide some comfort while keeping my cock at a distance. This wasn’t the time to give into carnal desires. This wasn’t the time to start replaying some of the dreams I had that kept me afloat while in that dumbass little cell.
Then, Raven spoke with a question that made me pull away as if her words were literal fire.
“Why were they looking for you, Brooks?”
I slid my hands into the pockets of my leather jacket. “Probably to settle an old score. Those Black Flag bastards never do know how to let shit go.”
“What kind of score?”
She can’t get hurt because of me. “Just something that happened a long time ago.”
I backtracked toward the door, the tension between us dissipating at the drop of a hat. I needed to put distance between us, otherwise she’d get hurt because of me. And I couldn’t lose someone else due to my own stupidity. In some ways, I blamed myself for Gage getting killed. Not because I knew what was happening that night, but because I hadn’t checked up on him in a while up to that night. After he got married, well, a lot of his outside friendships fell to the wayside. Not that it was a bad thing, just was what it was. But had I been checking in on him and keeping up with shit more than once a week, maybe I would’ve known.
Maybe I could’ve inserted myself more into that job instead of letting Gage do it himself.
“You should get some rest,” I said as I reached for the door.
Raven’s voice was flat and devoid of emotion. “Yeah. Good idea.”
I stepped out into the hallway. “You can sleep in here. You’ll be safe until we can figure out how to step next.”
“And where will you sleep?”
She didn’t turn to look at me, but her words hung as heavily as they would have had she been staring me straight in the face. But I decided that not answering her was better than giving her the actual answer.
“Get some rest. I’ll go find another room to bunk in, and tomorrow we can figure all of this out.”
She spun around quickly. “What about the cops? You know they’re going to show up at my complex.”
I slowly closed the door. “I’ll handle them, don’t worry.”
“But how? Won’t you get thrown back into—”
The door was nothing but cracked now. “Archer’s got friends on the force. Something this small will disappear into thin air. Get some rest, Raven.”
Then, I closed the door. Muting her voice, her presence, and her sadness.
But no matter what I did, I couldn’t mute the wondrous smell of her perfume that hung heavily around my body.
