Straightening my shoulders, I kept my back to him and answered without any hesitation. “Yes.”
“And does she know?”
I scowled hard, my head turning over one side to glance his way. “It seems to me you and everyone else in this club know Ayda better than I do, so why don’t you tell me.”
Harry’s head dipped before he walked closer towards me, looked up, and landed a hand on the back of my leather cut. “Have youtoldher, son? Have you said the words?”
“I’ve said enough.”
“I’ll take that as a no.”
Staring into his eyes, the rumblings of anger began to scream out at me from inside. I wanted to tell him to fuck off. I wanted to slam him up against a wall and tell him to mind his own goddamn business. I wanted to wipe that smug, know-it-all grin off the fat, bald bastard’s face. But I couldn’t, because I loved him too much, too.
That was the thing with love.
It made you weak where you were once strong.
It made decisions that used to be easy, hard.
It made you care.
Pressing my lips into a thin, hard line, I shrugged him off carefully and turned to leave. There wasn’t anything left to say. When I walked back into the bar, Kenny was standingbehind it, capping three bottles before sliding two of them along to Jedd and Slater. He didn’t look up at me once. Not once. His verbal vomiting in the back of the van had told me he was firmly fixed in Camp Ayda. Jedd gave me a nod of respect before bringing his bottle to his lips and tipping it up at an awkward angle, and Slater —well, Slater did what he always does. He followed me out into the yard.
“This isn’t on you, Tucker.”
“Save it, Slater. I don’t need the talk down. I’m not going to do anything stupid.”
“Stupid comes far too naturally to you for me to believe that.”
“Believe what you like,” I said calmly, lifting my hand up in the air and flashing him the middle finger before giving him his orders. “Get back inside. Man the phones and tell everyone to do whatever the fuck Ayda asks of y’all when she calls.”
“You know the only thing she’ll ask for is you, brother.”
I smirked to myself, thinking about how I would have thought that was true before I saw the look she was wearing when she left. “Then tell her I’m honoring her wishes and giving her the time she needs.”
My boots crunched the stones on the gravel path, my finger spinning the loop of the key around and around as I walked past the bikes and over to the garages. Pressing the red button on the side of the first one, the screen began to roll up slowly, cranking and causing an almighty noise as it rose to let me in. Slater didn’t follow me any farther, but I heard the expletives he called me before he turned and headed back into The Hut as he’d been told to.
The perks of being king.
When the wheels I needed came into sight, I was alsograteful for being part owner of a repo business, which had towed in aRama few days before. Slipping into the driver’s seat, I pulled that thing out of the garage slowly, the low, throaty growl of the engine crying out across the yard. Slater didn’t come back out like he once would have. None of them bothered to stand in front of the truck and beg me not to go out alone. They were learning about the new me as much as I was.
As I turned the wheel to the left and headed onto the road that led straight into Babylon, I leaned back in the leather of the chair and rested a limp hand on top of the steering wheel for guidance. Glancing out from left to right, I took in the homes I passed along the way. I saw the white picket fences, the sprawling green lawns of well-kept gardens, the familyVolvosin the driveways and the lights that shone from bedrooms where people’s children slept. For a few minutes, I allowed myself to imagine what a normal life must feel like. One where things were simple, and the biggest fuck up you could make was buying the wrong cereal for breakfast. No death, no violence, no tearing bodies apart and burning their remains.
I tried to imagine myself living like that, surviving the mundane existence that the majority of the world seemed to do.
It lasted all of three minutes before I was shuffling up in my seat and smirking, the thought alone turning my blood cold and forcing my head to shake in protest. My fingers curled around the top of the wheel as I felt that fire erupt in my stomach again, and I knew that I was doing the right thing.
Pressing down on the accelerator, I leaned back and blew out all the air in my lungs, knowing exactly where I was going and what I needed to do.
Whether Ayda approved of my actions or not.
Chapter Seventeen
Ayda
Iknew long before I went inside the station that Sutton was going to take great satisfaction in making me look like a fool, and he didn’t disappoint. The smile he wore as I stepped inside was enough to set my teeth on edge, but the sanctimonious condescension that he started with had me in defensive mode from the get go. Stepping from his office with his arms folded across his chest, he watched as I was escorted through the heavy doors and into the sea of workstations.
“Ayda Hanagan.”
