“Easy now.” Locke stepped between us. Like Nash, he was tall and blond, but he was fully dressed, his laddish grin firmly in place. “This don’t have to get lairy. Lauren, is it? Let me walk you to your car and get your tyres checked while you’re here, yeah? Make sure you’re safe on the road.”
Lauren blinked. She had a black belt in bullshit, but she wasn’t prepared for Locke’s charm. For the easy way he stepped to her and took her thorny fucking elbow, scooped up Ivy, and turned them back the way they’d come.
Ivy met my gaze over Locke’s broad shoulder.
Her bewilderment stoked the anger roiling inside. I wanted to snatch her, take her inside, and keep her safe and happy until her dad came home.
It broke me that Locke’s lackadaisical charisma was our only option.
Mateo would let me burn Lauren down.
Fuck, he’d pass me the match.
Did that make us soulmates or a ticking time bomb?
As Locke disappeared to wherever Lauren had left her car, I had no idea, and the desire to find out deserted me.
Simmering, I retreated to the bar.
Nash was already there, dressed and growling into his phone.
Orla set a bottle of rum in front of me, the only booze I could drink right now without hurling my guts up.
She racked up glasses. Uncorked the bottle and poured. I watched the amber liquid flow and thought of Mateo, but he wasn’t like Saint was to Cam. Or Nash to Orla. Mateo was fuel to my fire and my blood bubbled hotter, nerves zipping with violence that had no place at the clubhouse bar.
“Simmer down, son.”
As if he’d ever say that and mean it. Mateo liked angry things.
And he loved me.
I threw back the rum Orla had passed me. She poured another and I necked three before I was chill enough to speak. “That bird is gonna cause us problems.”
Orla tapped her blood-red nails on the beer-stained wood between us. “Nash won’t let me boot her in the vag.”
Nash was a sensible man, but Orla’s sentiment suited me better. “She’s damaging those kids with her hate. When did Decoy last see Ben?”
“Last month. For five fucking minutes at his after-school football match, until Lauren told the teachers she had a restraining order.”
“She doesn’t, right?”
I should’ve known the answer, but I’d been distracted herding Crows, and now Locke was outside doing my job for me.Get your head in the game.
“No restraining order,” Orla said. “Yet. She’d totally do it, though. Decoy said she’s still raging that he left her. That she’ll do anything to make his life miserable. Why are people like that? Is it so hard to just fucking love someone?”
When someone was as loveable as Nash McGovern, I doubted it was hard at all. But Orla knew as well as I did that love was noise and pain and joy, and none of it came fucking easy.
The door behind me opened.
Locke slipped into the bar and stopped a few feet away, giving council members and Cam’s sister the respect of a little space.
Orla waved him forward and slid him a rum. “I’ll keep them coming all night long for what you did today.”
Beside her, Nash drilled her a look I couldn’t decipher.
Locke barely blinked.
He took the rum and knocked it back. “You’re gonna have trouble with her.”
