The guys argued up a storm while I sat there, trying to take stock of my own situation. Why the fuck was I so angry that Aria had gotten tangled up into all of this? She was just some girl I fucked once, and that was it. Yet, at the homeless shelter, all I thought about was her safety. All I thought about was keeping her alive. And when I saw her sitting there with her legs spread and her eyes wide with fearful tears, I had wanted to slaughter everyone in that room for ever making her cry in the first place.
When I came to, the guys were cursing at each other as they got their bikes turned around. If looks could have killed, each one of them would have buried me six feet under. They all rode off without me, leaving me there with Aria’s car parked in the middle of the abandoned fucking road.
And when my eyes focused on hers, she tilted her head.
“You okay?” she asked, her voice a bit softer than before.
I walked my bike up to her rolled-down window. “Yeah, I’m good. Want me to follow you home?”
“I don’t think I have a right to ask that of you.”
“I don’t care. Is that what you want?”
She furrowed her brow. “What I want is to know what you’re thinking about.”
I licked my lips. “I’m thinking about why in the hell I care about your well-being so much.”
Her gaze raced down my body. “Let’s head back to my place. I can whip us up some food and we can rest for a bit. Sounds like your guys don’t want you around much right now, anyway.”
I chewed on the inside of my cheek. “Lead the way. I’ll keep an eye out for anyone following us.”
As the Devil’s Rage clubhouse faded away in my rearview mirror, I thought about what I had just done. I had just put the well-being of someone else over the well-being of my brothers. Of my club. Of the one group I had pledged my entire life to protecting and serving.
I had betrayed my club for the sake of some pussy.
And I had no idea how to process that.
EIGHTEEN
ARIA
I stood at my little stove stirring the noodles while the Alfredo sauce bubbled on the burner next to my elbow. I had my blender ready to go and the chicken in the oven keeping warm while Bender sat on my couch staring listlessly at a blank television screen. I kept looking over at him from time to time, trying to see if he had moved, or shifted, or done anything other than sit and stare.
“You okay?” I asked as I pulled the sauce off the burner.
He cleared his throat. “For someone who just got captured by a dangerous motorcycle gang, you’re holding up pretty well.”
I shrugged. “I’m not a stranger to the darker things in life. I just don’t let the dark tell me what I can and cannot do.”
He snickered. “Yeah, I’m seeing that.”
I pulled the chicken out of the oven and sliced it up, then tossed it into the Alfredo sauce I had made. I stirred it up before pouring it over the strained noodles, then I mixed everything together and pulled out some bowls. I divvied it in half, pouring it out until there was nothing left. And after I grabbed a couple of beers out of the fridge, I walked over to the couch.
“Here, this is yours,” I said.
I set the bowl and beer in front of him on my small coffee table, but he didn’t budge. “Thanks.”
I blinked. “You sure you’re okay?”
He heaved the heaviest sigh I’d ever heard from anyone, ever. “You shouldn’t have gotten involved. Seriously.”
I shrugged. “I’m already involved, whether you want to admit it or not. They took me the second they knew who I was, and not because I was some journalist. They knew about us from this morning. They knew I had a connection to you.”
He finally lifted his blank gaze to mine. “They told you that?”
I sat down beside him with my own food and beer. “Yeah, you guys are being watched.”
He finally reached for his bowl. “I never wanted you to get hurt. You should have just fucking listened and stayed the hell away.”
