“Get it over with,” I groaned against the palms of my hands.
“Got nothing to say,” he answered flatly, the way he said it letting me know that actually, he had about a million things to say but just couldn’t find the energy or the balls to crack thehell on with it.
“Sure you don’t.” I sighed, dropping my hands down onto my thighs with a slap. “Sure you don’t.”
“You need to sleep.”
“No shit.”
“Tomorrow’s a big day.”
“They’re all big days for me from now on. I get it. There’s no respite for the freed man.”
“Is that what you want, Drew? A break?” he asked quietly, as though he’d been waiting to ask that exact question since the second he saw me outside the prison gates. “Five years not enough for you?”
That’s all it took for my eyes to snap open and my jaw to tense again. I stared up at the roof of the car with such an immediate sense of intensity, it was a wonder I didn’t burn two big, fat fucking holes through the fabric and the metal. “Not tonight, Harry. I’m not doing this now. Not after what’s just happened. Save your shit for another day.”
“And what exactly has just happened?” My head rolled to the side lazily, the movement so small and so half-assed that I wasn’t even sure if he saw the shift in my position or not as I turned to study the look on his face. Harry generally didn’t speak to me that way—not before my stint, anyway. Maybe that was what I would have to get used to from now on—people not having the same respect they once had for me. Maybe that would be something I would have to correct the second my eyes opened up to a brand new day that wasn’t tinged with the fuzz of alcohol in my bloodstream.
“What do you mean?”
Harry’s eyes twitched to look down at me before he quickly faced back out to the open road and curled his fingers tighter around the wheel until his fat, stubby knuckles turned white. “Don’t make me say it.”
“Bro, I’m too tired for riddles. I’ve spent too long tryingto understand my own unspoken thoughts. Don’t make me try figure out yours, too.”
“Fine,” he grumbled, his head glancing out of the driver side window before looking forward again. “What would you have done to a guy you found in your room five years ago?”
I didn't even have to think about that one as I blinked and answered without thought. “A man? Ended him. A boy? Exactly what I just did back there.”
“Really?”
“You don't think I would have let him go?”
Harry's mouth turned down at the corners before it straightened back out into a thin line and he shrugged a shoulder. “Not without some kind of shit going down first.”
I knew what that shit he was talking about was, too. We both did. And I guess a part of what he was saying was right, but I was only a kid back then myself, and quite honestly, that version of Drew Tucker died the first time he took a gang beating behind bars.
“Maybe I'm not that man anymore,” I sighed back over at him before staring back up at the roof again. “And that's what worries you, isn't it?”
“You're damn fucking right it does.”
“Don't let it.”
“Just like that, Tucker?”
“Just like that,” I repeated in a whisper as I closed my eyes and tuned him out. If he expected me to give him a world full of answers tonight, then he was even more damn stupid than I thought he was. Considering the amount of whiskey that was in my blood, it was a miracle I could move my lips at all, never mind psychoanalyze myself.
He didn't say anything else the whole way back. I didn’tspeak either. Tomorrow was going to be a brand new day for me and my resurrection into MC life. When the time was right, and when they all least expected it, I would show them who I was in that moment and I would show them what I stood for. Each and every man would be able to look into my eyes and see nothing but fire and certainty there, while I looked down on them with nothing but pity for the ones who ever doubted or questioned me at all.
When the wheels hit the gravel of the parking bays outside The Hut, my body rocked to life again as my shoulders bounced all over the place, forcing my eyes to flicker open. The porch light was still on, but more importantly, a few of the men were waiting for us outside. No doubt each one of them had their own questions to ask.
Jedd could have dealt with that shit, Tucker.
Why didn't you let him nail his ass to the wall and teach him a lesson?
Did you deal with him in private?
Did you show him what this club stands for?
