I shook my head. “I’ll come visit. I want to visit again, if you’ll let me. Some other time, okay? I know I’ll miss you. I don’t want to go a long time without seeing you.”
He narrowed his eyes but the smile he gave me was soft. “Some other time when Jamie isn’t staying here?”
Shrugging, I walked the bike forward and checked my mirrors. There was a break in traffic coming up, and I intended to take it.
“That’s it. I knew you weren’t leaving because of me!” he crowed.
“Why would you even think that?” I glanced at him and the triumphant smirk he wore.
“Because I forced Angel on you. I thought maybe… maybe you were mad.”
Groaning, I rubbed a hand down my face. “No, that was… nice.”
“You didn’t like it.” His smile slipped. “I realized afterward when Angel and I talked about it that you were maybe feeling pressured.” He rubbed a hand over his abs and grimaced.
“I’m not mad at you. I love you. You’re my brother, and every time we’re together you make me feel….” I searched up the tall ivy-covered front of the Virtue, hoping some sort of understanding would rain down from the gleaming windows, or maybe drop right out of the sky onto my head. I never knew what to tell people, but I tried for Forrest because he was important to me. I took a deep breath. “Peaceful. You make me feel peaceful.”
“Aw.” He cupped his hands over his heart, all theatrics, but I thought he meant it. “You’re still leaving, though, aren’t you.”
I nodded and checked my mirror again. There was another break coming where I could weave into the flow of traffic. I tensed.
“Let me know when you get home. I mean it. Call me. That’s not a request.” I glanced back at his face and was struck once again by how different we were. His concern was painted right across his expression, like Grant’s often was. How had that skipped me? Why? Was it beaten out of me as a kid, or did I beat it out of myself to join the clubs? I couldn’t even remember what I used to be like anymore.
“Okay.”
The drive back to New Gothenburg was somehow longer than the drive to New York City. I stopped to fill my gas tank. Once I even stopped along a pretty stretch of highway just to look at the edge of a field of roses illuminated eerily by headlights. I had no idea why there was an entire field of pink roses, but the smell had drawn me to the shoulder, sweet and spicy. I stared at them for a long time, missing Forrest, wishing I’d made better choices with Jamie. I’d really thought that I was doing right by him, going out to find the men who’d hurt him. I’d thought he’d be happy when the problem was already taken care of when he woke up. And yeah, I’d wanted to keep him safe, too. Nothing had worked out the way I’d wanted.
The lazy sliver of moon sank slowly in the sky as I pulled into the clubhouse later that night—nearly morning. I saw right away that King’s bike was here. I loved that Heritage Softail like it was my own, but when I walked past it on the way inside, I noticed he’d managed to get a scratch on the chrome. My heart jerked and I sucked in a breath, shaking my head. I’d fix that. No way could I let him ride around like that. I glanced up at the clubhouse and my stomach ached with… something.
Could you be sad and happy at the same time? Maybe I needed to eat, but that didn’t seem quite like it was the problem. I swung a leg over King’s bike and sat there upset, wishing I’d stayed in New York City but not sure how I could possibly have done that. I’d managed to piss off Jamie in record fucking time. I’d never in my life screwed something up so fast, and I’d once set a foster brother’s bed on fire the very first night I was in a new house when he wouldn’t stop calling me names while I was trying to fall asleep.
My phone felt clunky in my hands as I dragged it out of my pocket to text Forrest. Less than a minute later, I was staring at the lit screen showing an incoming call from my brother, but I wasn’t in the mood to talk after my long ride, which I’d spent going over every conversation I’d had with Jamie since I met him.
I couldn’t pinpoint the place where I’d gone so wrong.
The front door of the clubhouse slammed open and Barnes stepped out. Inside I curled up a little and died—last thing I wanted was to deal with him—but I didn’t let out a peep. He was the last fucking person I wanted to see, and of course he spotted me right away.
“Look who decided to roll up. What the fuck are you doing on that bike?”
Barnes sneered and sauntered my direction. His eyebrows lowered as he got closer to me, which seemed to make the zigzag scar splitting the right one even deeper. He was shorter than me, and under normal circumstances that would have made me feel safer, except he was powerful from all the muscles packed on his frame. There was no way to make this go well. Answer him, don’t answer him—he’d still cause a fucking problem. I climbed off the Softail, made sure it was steady, and then stepped into the parking lot behind it so I’d have room whenever he came at me. It was never a matter of if, but when, with him.
“What? You went to the big city, so now you’re too fucking good for me?”
Again, I said nothing. It would piss him off, but engaging would only make me furious, too. I didn’t want to lose my cool with him. He wasn’t worth it. I tried the breathing exercises my therapist used to make me do as a teenager, but for some reason, all I could remember was the time he’d asked me to make fox ears as an exercise to be silly. All he’d wanted was for me to just pretend a little, and I’d been so embarrassed, I hadn’t been able to do it. Why that memory flew to the front of my mind right now, when all I needed to do was calm myself, I didn’t know. But I hated that, and I hated this too. I didn’t want to let Barnes control me anymore. He’d kept me on my toes for too long, kept me looking over my shoulder.
“I said,” he growled, finally close enough to shove his face near mine. I stood my ground and took a deep breath. Tonight was not the fucking night for him to do this. I clenched my right fist tightly, and my heart nearly choked me where it thudded in the back of my throat. “What makes you think you’re fucking better than me, huh? You’re going to regret the way you act around me. Some night I’m going to be waiting in that pit you call a room and—”
“Lots of things make him fucking better than you, Barnes, and if you don’t fucking back off him, you’re going to find out one of them in a real fucking hurry.” My stomach froze into a ball of ice. A lighter flared in the darkness near the corner of the house.
King stepped out of the shadows and took a drag on his cigarette. He stopped to exhale the smoke in a long stream above his head, like he was a dragon warming up for battle.
“Hunter’s a prospect. He’s not even a member. He should be doing what I say.”
My jaw clenched, and King let out a nasty laugh. “You’re barely a King yourself. What have you done lately? What good are you to me, you chickenshit? I don’t know what’s been going on between you and Hunter, and I don’t want to know, but if you get near him again, you’re not going to live to regret it.”
Barnes snarled. “You want to pay the fine to hit me, over him?”
King strolled over and stabbed his cigarette out on Barnes’ leather jacket and his nostrils flared. “No, now I’m going to pay the fine to hit you because you were disrespecting your president.”
