“Then what is? That Mateo’s corrupting lesbians, or you think he’s a liar?”
“I never said he was a liar. Just that something is weighing him down, and I’d be a shitty president if I didn’t care about that.”
I pushed the sandwich further away from me. Cam’s hands twitched to push it back, to coax me to eat like every one of my brothers had in recent memory.
But he didn’t move.
Didn’t give an inch.
Neither did I, out of habit, more than anything else, and a fierce loyalty to Mateo that even Cam couldn’t break. But I really was tired, and Cam’s suspicion cut deep. Mateo vanished at least twice a month, for days at a time. If he wasn’t getting laid, where the hell was he going?
An hour later, I still had no clue. I left Cam in the chapel to think on the more in-depth assessment I’d given him of Folk, Ranger, and Locke, and drifted outside.
It was a hot day, and the compound was busy with brothers and their families enjoying the sunshine. Relaxed and communal, it was everything Cam wanted the club to be, but I found no joy in it as I swept the yard for Mateo and came up blank. Alexei saw things with different eyes and he spent a lot of time with Mateo. Was he right? Did Mateo have a secret?
Or was it my secret that was fucking with his head?
Reverse it. How would you feel?
Nope. Couldn’t do it. The anger wrenching my gut hurt too much.
“Hey.” Mateo’s warm palm skated over my arm, not quite touching, but close enough to my skin that I felt him everywhere. “Did you eat?”
I raised my gaze to the six inches he had on me. The sun was behind him, shadowing his face, but I saw him. Saw his amber eyes molten with concern I wasn’t in the fucking mood for right now. “I need to ride.”
Without waiting for his answer, I ducked around him and headed for my bike before I remembered I was barely dressed.
Like magic, Rubi appeared from the workshop with a pair of boots. He handed them to me without comment, eyeballing something over my shoulder.
I didn’t look. I took the boots and stamped into them. Then I mounted my bike and roared out of the compound, knowing with every mile my bike devoured that Mateo was a heartbeat behind me.
5
MATEO
I’d follow Embry into the sun. But I’d always be playing catch up because he rode that Tiger like a fucking psychopath.
A crazy Cornish boy with a need for speed.
Breakneckspeed.
While everyone else drank, fucked, and punched people, he did this: danced with death while I chased him down, praying he wouldn’t eat dirt before I got there.
Lucky for me, and maybe for him, Embry was a badass biker. A racer, if his life had been different. He wasn’t gonna come off, which was just as well, considering he was dressed in sweats and a T-shirt, skin bare to the elements. To theroadif he crashed.
He won’t crash.
I held onto that thought as we left the main roads and ventured into the coastal tracks. We gained altitude, hugging the cliffs, and I knew where we were going. What he wanted. And I was here for it. Embry was everyone’s best friend, but beneath the calm the rest of us sucked from him like vultures, he was the edgiest motherfucker I’d ever known. He needed this: the adrenaline, the danger. And for him, I’d push my bike and myself to the ends of the fucking earth.
A few hair-raising hours later, we reached Embry’s version of Narnia: a deserted cliff face on the Newquay coast.
He ditched his bike and waited for me at the foot of a steep path.
I rumbled to a stop, legs shaky from the death ride he’d just led me on, and engaged the kickstand. Helmet off, the wind blowing in from the ocean hit my face, battling the summer sun for dominance. It felt fitting when I thought about Embry, which was every moment I didn’t need for something else. Add some rain and you had yourself a thunderstorm, and Embry was stormy as fuck right now. I saw it in every inch of him as he kept his gaze on the horizon.
Leaving my helmet hanging on my handlebars, I abandoned my bike and joined him on the path. “We haven’t been up here since last year.”
It was a stupid thing to say. Of course we hadn’t been up here. It was a near vertical climb to get to where he wanted to go, and he’d only started training again a month ago.
