Then he began to shout.
“The graveyard? Fuck. Again? Okay. How many?”
The mention of the graveyard demanded my attention even more, but my hands curled slowly around the grips of the handles as I looked down at the ground and tried to ignore whatever it was he had going on.
“These fucking kids,” Sutton roared, forcing me to look back up at him again. My frown was deeper than ever, even as Ayda whispered quietly in my ear that we should go.
“We’re going,” I whispered back, and I had every intention of doing exactly that until the chief came charging over to stand in front of my bike, kicking the sidewalk like a frustrated kid.
“Jesus Christ,” he yelled out.
“Whoa, easy,” I said calmly, pulling my chin back as weboth watched him storming around.
“Drew,” Ayda whispered quietly. “If you want to check it out first, we can ride by. Let’s just go.”
“I’m not doing his job for him, Ayda. I handed that shit over the other day. If he needs my help, he better get down on his knees and beg for it. We’re leaving, don’t worry.” I spoke so only she could hear me, backing us out onto the road as carefully as I could.
Sutton was still on his call, more animated than I’d ever seen him in my life. I wanted to ride away, and I knew it was the right thing to do, but something about his behavior was confusing me, and that weird feeling of trouble ran down my spine like a long lost foe.
Before I managed to turn away, he stepped down onto the road and began walking towards us. There was desperation to the way he was moving. Panic, too, and when he threw his arm up in the air and pointed his finger straight in my face, I struggled not to swing my leg off the bike and bend that fucking finger backwards.
“You. Stay away from my town. One sign of you and those kids are running around wielding their goddamn knives again.”
“What?” I choked out, unable to hide the sarcasm on my face.
“You heard me. Stay away. Stay away from Babylon, stay away from the graveyard and stay away from anything that doesn’t involve you. This is all your fault.”
“What exactly is my fault?”
“The fact that I have two boy scouts on the loose, threatening the whole of my town, wearing your patch on their backs.”
“Ain’t my fault if you can’t keep the ankle biters away from the big boys’ toys, Sutton. Like you said, it’s your town, not mine. Not my responsibility.”
“If people end up hurt, I’ll make sure it’s your responsibility. You hear me?”
That was all he had to say for me to shake my head, sigh heavily and be done with the fucking conversation. Date night was going to be perfect, no matter how much he or anyone else tried to stop that.
“Whatever you say, Chief. Despite what you think of me, I only want what’s best for this town, and by this town, I mean every single person in it. That includes you. If pinning this on me is what gets you off, go for it. I’m not playing. I have a date to finish and a woman to look after tonight, so how about you stop forcing me to be an asshole and just let me ride away. You go do your job, I’ll do mine, and hopefully sometime in the future, the two of us will grow up enough to work together instead of tearing each other apart.”
Howard stood back quickly, stumbling over himself as he struggled to find his footing. The shock on his face was more obvious than I think he realized, and as Ayda tightened her arms around my waist once again in some kind of approval, there was only one thing left for me to do.
Smile and ride away.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Ayda
Iwas so proud of Drew. It wasn’t something I would ever have said out loud to him, mainly because I didn’t think he would understand the idiom that I intended. Drew had always had a reputation as a hardass, a force to be reckoned with, and he’d just walked away from Sutton’s provocation as though it meant absolutely nothing. I wasn’t sure whether that was something that sat right with him or not. It was hard not seeing his face for the last half of the conversation between them, but as we rode away from the chief, I was comforted by Drew’s hand covering both of mine as they rested against his stomach, his thumb circling with silent reassurances. I would have been proud of him no matter how he’d chosen to deal with it; Sutton had been laying it on pretty thick. It was like watching a child prod a sleeping bear with a stick, but Drew had taken the moral high ground and left Sutton looking like the asshole.
After the evening we’d had, existing in the perfection of our own little bubble, Sutton’s uncharacteristic insistence in trying to lure Drew into a fight seemed completely out of place, and it was lingering like a bad smell.
It was only when we straightened out from a corner that I let myself slide closer to his body and absorb his warmthwhile my mind branched out in a million different directions. This little band of wannabes was not a club problem and they never really had been. Sure, they were wearing Hound patches, but anyone who took a good look would see the differences. They were bored kids with too much time on their hands and the money to fix the old cuts they'd found, but that didn’t mean that they had a thing to do with us. Sutton was pointing the misguided finger of accusation at Drew and the club, and they’d done nothing but try to help him find a solution. Even Tate had tried to help, but it seemed Sutton was blinded by his hatred of Drew and the club as a whole.
I despised how inquisitive I was sometimes. I disliked that my curiosity made me wonder whose property those brats were destroying, or why they’d suddenly found the need to carry weapons. They were just kids playing adult games that could very well get them killed if they didn’t stop.
We’d barely made it over the train tracks that divided the town when I started seeing the signs of the fake Hounds pack a little too clearly.
Some of the older buildings had been defaced by a crude dog baying at the moon. As we took a corner, there was the bad copy of the Hounds’ patch I’d seen on the boys, only this time with a cracked skull, and the sentinel hounds now had daggers thrust into their brains. The farther we went, the more they made a mockery of the pack and everything they stood for. Someone was pissing on their pride and I could feel the subtle change in Drew’s posture the farther we rode. The man, who only moments earlier had been warm and supple, was now as cold and rigid as a granite statue beneath my touch.
