“That’s not who I am.”
“Drew, please don’t walk away now.”
His head began to shake in defeat. His body was showing one thing and his face another thing entirely. He wanted this; I could tell he did. At least, that’s what I hoped. “Be at The Hut on Sunday,” he said quietly, clearing his throat as he began to turn away from me.
“Stay. Talk to me.”
“Talk? We can’t talk. There are only two extremes with us. Fight or…” Drew didn’t finish, and even though I was desperate for him to stay where he was and to hold onto the moment, when he dropped his chin to his chest, I knew it was over before it had ever really begun. “I can’t do that. Not with you.”
He didn't wait for my rebuttal, or a reaction of any kind. He just turned and walked away; his hands plunged into his pockets and his shoulders relaxed as though nothing at all had happened. I watched his confident swagger until he was swept up in the crowd of people rushing to find their seats.
My back came against the wall and knocked the air out of me, my body sliding down until my ass rested against my heels. He was gone, and with him, he'd taken the last thing I had to give.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Drew
“You look like shit,” Slater said flatly when I pushed open the door and walked into the old training room.
“I feel like shit,” I muttered under my breath.
“You didn’t sleep well?”
My eyes shot up to him as I drew closer. Given the circumstances, it seemed like the dumbest fucking question he could have asked me, but I guess even people who have been friends for the majority of their lives need conversation starters sometimes. I tugged on my jeans around one knee, pulling them farther up so I could crouch down in front of the chair, keeping my eyes up on Slater.
“No. No sleep at all.” I shook my head.
“None?” he asked, both brows rising in surprise as he wrapped a fresh white bandage around his right hand.
“Lot of shit going on,” I said quietly, dropping my head back down to the floor just for somewhere else to look.
“This just about what happened on Thursday night, or does this have something to do with the girl as well?”
My jaw rolled back and forth slowly as I kept on staring down. Since leaving Ayda last night, I had, not just Deeks tailing her, but Kenny, too. The fact that she was refusing tocome into The Hut anymore only made me ten times tenser, and her a thousand times more vulnerable. I couldn’t leave her out there in the wild to fend for herself, especially not after what had gone down at the Emperors’ place the other night. I rested my arm across my raised knee and sighed quietly. In a mere matter of days, I’d managed to fuck life up again, not just for me, but the rest of the club and Ayda. I’d come out of prison a worse man than I’d gone in, and there was no one else to blame for my fuck ups but myself.
Nobody in the MC was stupid. They all knew better than I did that me putting two of our most important members on Ayda duty meant there was deeper shit going on with me. This wasn’t just about wanting to keep her safe anymore. They didn’t have to say it and neither did I. I couldn’t. I couldn’t even say it to myself. I just knew that for every morning I woke up without her, I had to make sure she lived another day, even if it meant her being surrounded by people she’d grown to hate because of me.
The lack of response to Slater’s question told him enough. I could hear his sigh of resignation blowing over me and I could feel the shake of his head like it was throwing the whole fucking room off balance. “I guess that answers that,” he blew out.
“I guess so.” I nodded, blinking down at the floor a few more times before I heard Slater’s boots move forward until was towering over me.
“What’s the plan with this one then?” he asked, like it was the most normal thing for us to be doing on a Saturday morning.
It was my turn to blow out all the air in my lungs then. My head rose slowly, starting off at the ankles of the man whowas tied to the chair in front of me as I glanced up at all the blood splattered across his dirty black jeans, rising up to his filthy T-shirt, and eventually, his face. The guy’s hands were still tied behind his back and the gag that we’d wrapped across his cheeks to keep him quiet was soaked to the core.
I had an Emperor.
A man of no more than twenty-five years of age—one I’d never seen in my life up until he found me climbing out of their garage, just two nights before. A man who probably didn’t even know my name as I launched myself back out of that window to jump on him and send us both crashing to the ground in the hopes that I would get there in time before he managed to pull his gun out of his cut. A man who, by all rights, could have made one cry for help and had an army of men there to save him, but who instead chose to stand and fight me, an intruder with a temper. An asshole who made the wrong decision. An idiot who knew that as soon as he had this rival gang member in his grip, he could never let him go again without there being catastrophic consequences.
As I looked up into his half shut eyes and examined all the blood he wore because of my hands, I hated myself more than ever before.
I’d had to pat the Emp down, steal his phone and call Slater for back up with the van to get him back to our hut. Since then, apart from that moment with Ayda the previous night where I’d found myself selfishly needing to see her, I’d kept the enemy tied up as my hostage.
Harry and Jedd hadn't spoken to me since. The flashes of disgust as Slater and I had pulled him out of the van and shoved him into the warehouse had been enough. I'd started a war again without even trying.
I’d been selfish. I’d been delusional, and I was risking the lives of my brothers once more.
They were better off without me.
