“Good.” He nodded firmly. “Good. Then you should know that I wouldn’t argue with you unless it felt right to.”
Flaring my nostrils, I held a big breath of air in my chest before releasing it slowly, my voice strained when I forced words out. “Spit it out, Ken. Honesty is always appreciated around this table, and that’s something you should know by now. There’s nothing you can’t talk to me about.”
Kenny’s head snapped up in my direction, his expression deadpan as he spoke. “Don’t get Tate involved in this. Kids or not, amateurs or pros, I’ve come to know him, and something tells me that once he’s in, he’s all in.”
My eyes narrowed in his direction as my chin slipped, pushing my fist to my mouth. “Tell me why.”
“Because I know him, Drew. He follows me around like he’s a damn puppy and I’m the only one that can lead him out into the yard to take a piss. Don’t get me wrong, I like having him here. He’s become a brother to me, without having to wear the cut. But…”
“But…?”
Kenny’s hands slapped down on the table weakly, his shoulders sagging. “He’s just a boy—a boy who hasn’t been allowed to be a child. I know he thinks he’s got the world at his feet, and I know he looks at you as some kind of hero.”
I couldn’t help the raise of both brows, but I didn’t speak, instead clearing my throat and silently asking him to go on.
“He sees what you are, flaws and all, and he asks a lot of questions about what you were like at his age. I think anything you do now to encourage him into this lifestyle could mark the beginning of the end. If he thinks he’s been useful to the club, he’s gonna want more of that. He’s gonna soak up that high and feel ten feet tall.”
“Like you did?” I breathed against my hand.
He nodded once, his eyes dropping back down to the table in front of him. “Yeah. Like I did.”
“Do you regret the choices you made?”
“We all have our moments,” he whispered.
“I guess we do.” I sighed softly. “Kenny?”
“Yeah?”
“Thanks for being honest with me.”
Rubbing his lips together, he pressed his hands down and began to stand. There wasn’t much left to be said. He had concerns, and they were noted. He was no different than Ayda. He was no different than any of them out there. All I had to do was show them that no harm would come to him that wasn’t intended. The only scare Tate Hanagan was going to get was going to be from me.
Because if anyone thought for one minute that I was going to allow the woman I loved to lose her only blood relative because ofmyclub, they were all more fucked up in the head than I realized. I’d made the Hanagans a promise allthose weeks ago at the safe house, and it was a promise I had zero intention of ever breaking to either one of them, no matter what that meant for me.
Chapter Eleven
Ayda
The earphones were pumping music into my ears, the beat forcing my feet to move as I separated the whites from the colors. I had the laundry down to a fine art in this place. I’d made it clear that I didn’t care who owned what. I did colors on Fridays and whites on Sundays. You missed the day, you were on your own.
The truth was I'd been hiding in the huge laundry room. I still wasn’t ready to talk to Tate. Even though the place was mainly free of the other women due to it being Black Friday and I should have been soaking up the time without them, I couldn’t face my kid brother just yet.
You’d have thought after months of living with him and Sloane heading back to our home after school most days, I would have been better equipped to deal with that particular situation. However, there was something to be said for ‘seeing is believing’. I’d never had to deal with the reality of what Tate and Sloane were doing, because I’d been too wrapped up in what bill was due next or whether I’d washed my sheets in the last month. That ignorance was bliss, and there wasn’t an image scorched into the back of my eyelids that I couldn’t get rid of.
Reaching into the container to grab a little laundry bubble,I chased air around the damn thing before pulling it from the shelf only to find it empty. I’d barely turned half way around when I saw movement from the corner of my eye and threw the box at the figure with a yelp of surprise. The very feminine grumble of pain was the only thing I heard over my music, and it forced me to pull out the earphones and drop my hands to my sides.
“Was that really necessary?” Libby asked, pulling her hand from her head and checking for blood.
“Hey, you’re the one sneaking up on me here,” I said, even though the guilt was eating me alive.
“Right. I guess I am,” she mumbled, pulling the bottom corner of her lip and chewing on it as she swung her arms and clapped them together as she started to pace. I watched with interest, my chest rising and falling as we stared at one another and waited for the next words to come. The question was, who from? I thought I had nothing to say to this woman.
“Tate doesn’t know I’m here.”
I blew my bangs from my face and headed toward the small closet where I stored and hung up anything that needed hanging. I almost wished it was bigger so I could step inside and hide, but there was barely enough room for me to push to my toes and grab the new detergent from the top shelf. “And why are you here, Libby?”
“Because I feel like I should explain.”
