I turned back to my laptop and stared at the black screen as Viper came to hover behind me.
“Working on something, I see,” he said.
“Ha. Ha. Ha. Very funny.”
I saw his reflection in the empty screen. “Are you gonna make me ask?”
“Ask what?”
He rolled his eyes. “What’s wrong, Reaper?”
I shrugged. “Nothing. Just gotta get started on lots of shit and I’m trying to figure out—”
“Lie.”
I closed my eyes. “Viper, I really can’t—”
He pulled up a chair and swiveled me around to face him. “You can talk, or you can work. But right now? You’re not working. You’re torturing yourself. So, what happened? Tell me about it so you can get back to focusing on that blank screen in front of you.”
My face fell flat. “I hate you sometimes, you know that?”
He grinned. “I know.”
I chewed on the inside of my cheek. “Rose and I fucked last night.”
He groaned. “Oooooh, boy.”
“And she admitted that she was starting to have feelings for me.”
He leaned forward and whistled softly. “Oh, boy.”
“And that can’t happen right now because it makes her even more of a target than she already is, so I told her that her abusive father fucked up her sense of decency in men for her and that she needed to work that shit out first before bed-hopping into another man’s life.”
His jaw hit the floor. “Oh! Boy!”
I put my head in my hands. “Jesus fucking Christ, what have I done?”
“Apparently, you’ve ruined your life before your second cup of coffee.”
I peeked up at him. “Jokes? Really?”
“But seriously, you only had one cup, didn’t you?”
I scoffed as I sat upright. “That’s not the point.”
He shook his head. “You’re an idiot, you know that?”
“Hey, it was Fangs that stopped me this morning and asked me if I really wanted to put Rose in the line of fire on this one. Especially with everything else she’s asked of me. And he had a good point, asking me that question.”
Somehow, his eyes got wider, and his jaw dropped more. “You’re taking fucking relationship advice from the fucker that hasn’t been laid in at least a decade? Are you fucking kidding me right now?”
“No, but Iamtaking advice from the man that’s got this club’s health and future in mind.”
“Of course, he’s got that on his mind. He’s our president, for crying out loud. And I’ve got a lot of respect for the man. He’s been in the game for a while now. He’s wise, even when we think he’s an idiot for not reacting when we believe he should be. But he’s got no fucking clue what it means to care for anyone else outside of the men of this club. No clue. At all. So, what in the hell are you doing taking relationship advice from a man like that?”
“Rose and I aren’t in a relationship.”
“Aren’t you two engaged?”
