“Dedicated, more like.” To the club.
To Cam, and to Alexei, who’d fought him every step of the way to take care of himself a little longer.
But as much as I knew Mateo’s motivations were the same as the fierce Russian third who stood beside Cam and Saint, on this, he’d run out of time. I wasn’t hurting for cash, but I was done waiting for the person I’d been before to come back.
That version of myself was dead and buried.
Mateo knew that. He had to.
Or he didn’t know me at all.
His hot temper faded. We needed to separate and head home.
Not before he’d dug that promise out of me, though. And he did it without saying a word. He was bewitching like that, and irresistible, his stare a dark and dangerous quicksand that held me hostage until he got what he wanted.
I kissed his scarred cheek one last time. Then pressed my forehead to his and tapped two fingers to my temple. “I’ll be whole when you come home, I promise.”
7
MATEO
I made Embry follow me back to the compound, ignoring him as he buzzed my rear wheel on the open road, urging me to go faster.
Nope. Aside from the fact that I didn’t want to die in a collision with a half-blind OAP driving a motorhome, or get arrested and my fingerprints banked in the police database, riding harder meant a sooner end to the afternoon, and I wasn’t ready to let him go just yet.
So I rode like a granny until the compound came into view and I admitted defeat.
Folk opened the gate. I slowed as I passed him, flipping my visor to check him out.
He dead-eyed me right back and I swerved, narrowly avoiding his feet on purpose.Prick. What was he even doing here? Sharing our fucking oxygen when their whack job leadership had tried to kill us all?
Easy.
Nah. That was a hard nope from me too, and even Embry’s voice in my head didn’t cool the fire I sent Folk’s way. Embry was broad-minded enough to believe the leftover Crows were a different breed to the old guard who’d conspired to kill us all, but I wasn’t. I wanted them dead to a man, and I didn’t care if they knew it. If it meant they came for me first when their game was up, so be it.
Leaving Folk behind, we rolled into the compound. I shut my Dyna off and hung my helmet.
Nash waited for me. “The fuck have you been?”
“What do you care?”
His gaze slid to Embry behind me. Then he brought his pretty boy baby blues back to me. “Okay, I’ll rephrase. Wherever the fuck you go half the time, don’t turn your phone off. I ain’t your secretary.”
“What?”
“Some bird called the yard asking for you. Third time she got Cam and he’s all stroppy that no one knew where you were.”
Some bird.I never gave anyone my number, and truth be told, the woman could’ve been anyone. It wasn’t unheard of for hook-ups to track boys down to the yard when they got ghosted after a one-night wonder, chasing more biker dick. But as Nash frowned at me, my stomach roiled something rotten.
Fuck. I needed to split away and deal with this shit, but with Nash all up in my face, there was no chance, and real fear dug into my soul. I couldn’t even worry about Embry’s gaze drilling into my back. Or his fading footsteps as he slid from his bike and walked away. However he really felt about me fucking other people paled in comparison to what he’d do if he ever found out what was making my blood run cold right now.
I forced a flat, bored expression onto my face. “What did she say?”
“Your name.” Nash eyed me. “Then she said please a lot in an accent like your ma’s. She your sister or something? Or you got a girl from the motherland on the hook?”
“Shut the fuck up.” I swung my leg over my bike and made to stride away.
Nash caught my arm. “If you don’t want the chaplain knowing you’re fucking around, you need to make better choices, man. Now let it go. We got shit to do.”
