We were all sitting around the clubhouse. It’d been two weeks since I’d left Rae my gifts and I hadn’t heard anything. I was doing my best to give her the space she asked for, but I was also slowly going insane. I hadn’t fucking started seeing her just to find out about the case she’d been working on. It fucking killed me that she believed that. But she also didn’t want to hear any ‘excuses’ from me right now, as she’d put it.
I was teetering on respecting her wishes, and saying fuck everything and going over to her place to make sure she heard me out. It was a precarious balance right now and respect was winning, but not for long. Especially not when my brothers were encouraging me to do the latter. Cypher was right. We all probably needed serious help. Honestly, Torque was probably the most normal of us when it came to wooing women. The rest of us were a bit fucked up. And by a bit, I meant wholly. Even Cypher. I didn’t know, it just seemed that breaking into her house and making her see reason was well…the more reasonable thing to do. What the hell was, ‘I need space’ anyway?
“I’m really starting to dislike that fucker,” Scythe growled, picking up on the change in topic so he could complain aboutForge. “He rolls into town, starts shit—if what he told Rae was the truth—then heads back out again.”
“You’ve got to give him some credit,” Demo replied. “He fixes whatever shit he fucked up to begin with.”
“Or even helps where he doesn’t have to,” Cypher said, his voice even and calm. “It wasn’t his job to help Riggs’s children. Hell, he didn’t even have to stick around to help Rae. Or Owen. Thanks to Rae, Forge knew exactly where he was and could’ve ratted him out. Speaking of, how is Owen?”
“On the mend,” Warrant answered. “Grateful to be alive.”
“Grateful enough to overlook our…help?” Rotor asked in a hopeful tone.
Warrant nodded. “What help? According to both Owen and his deputies’ reports, his deputies took care of everything.” He winked. Or maybe it was just his eye twitching again. I wasn’t sure.
Cypher nodded, satisfaction settling over his features. “Good. And I’m glad he’s healing. Last thing we need is yet another sheriff. Especially one we’re not already on friendly terms with. Besides, the DEA is going to be rolling into town soon enough and it won’t be solely Owen’s mess to deal with anymore.”
“So Dolan’s gone,” Jury said. “The Iron Circle is disbanded. What do we do about Forge?”
“Do we even know where he is?” Warrant asked with a shrug.
“Do we fucking care?” Demo asked, looking over at Cypher.
“So long as he’s not fucking with us,” Cypher replied, “we won’t mess with him. He’s done us a solid now a couple of times.”
“I owe him a debt,” I told them. “If he requests help, I’m honor bound to give it.”
“That’s some old school shit right there,” Demo said with a chuckle.
“That’s Pyre for you,” Jury added. “Weird as fuck, but honorable. So we’renothunting him down?”
“For what reason?” Scythe asked.
“I have questions,” Jury admitted.
“So the fuck what?” Scythe replied.
“Dude. I don’t like not knowing shit. Drives me nuts.” He shrugged. “Why he keeps helping people doesn’t make sense. Far as we know, he’s a piece of shit bad guy…right?” He looked around the table but now everyone was shrugging. No one knew what Forge’s deal was. “But then he goes and has some kind of moral code.”
“Sounds like he’s more like one of us than a piece of shit bad guy,” Rotor pointed out. He was digging a splinter out of his index finger with the blade of a knife.
“He’s not one of us,” Jury snapped. Then he narrowed his eyes. “Where the fuck did you get that knife?”
“I’ve had it,” he replied with a slightly guilty tinge to his words.
“The fuck you have. I know every knife you have, Rotor. That’s way too fucking nice for an asshole like you.”
“Maybe I found it in the Iron Circle armory,” he snapped. “The fuck does it matter to you?”
Scythe stood, reached over and snatched the knife out of Rotor’s hand, examining it. “Says Dan Channing on it.”
“Who the fuck did you steal that from?” Demo asked with a grin.
“May have been the dead guy at the bridge.”
Cypher narrowed his eyes. “Whichdead guy?”
“The one in the SUV,” Rotor muttered, staring down at the table like a petulant child who was being reprimanded.
