Keaton pushes up from my knees. “I fucking knew it.”
“What the fuck does that mean?” Harlen asks, his tone hard. “What the fuck did you know?” Harlen rises to his feet too, the chair behind him cracking to the timber.
“Fuck!” Keaton yells before hauling a chair across the deck, then he starts to pace with his hands over the top of his head. “I’ve been tracking him…them…for months, but they’re fucking good.”
The screech of a chair is loud as Rusty shoves his back and stands. “Why didn’t you tell me, Skinner?”
Skinner, I assume that is his road name.
Keaton stops moving, throws his arms out, and retorts sharply, “How the fuck was I supposed to know you weren’t in on whatever the fuck they were up to? Hmmm? I had my fucking reasons to keep quiet, old man.”
No one speaks. It's deathly silent, apart from the rustling leaves from the wind around us, and the heaving breaths from the four raging men circling the table like sharks.
Though Chase stays quiet, slumped back in his seat with a blunt to his lips.
Keaton falls into the seat beside me and leans over his knees, running his hands down his face. Rusty does the same, then Keaton continues to speak, “I had heard him talking with his brother and piece of shit son one night outside at the club, whispering at their fucking bikes. They didn’t know I was out there. I was…cleaning myself up after a job.I was about to make my presence known until I heard what they were talking about.” He swallows hard, and I watch the lump in his throat bob. “I had thought maybe they had heard of something sinister happening, but they just weren’t ready to tell the club.”
“A job?” I ask.What does that even mean?
He swallows again. “Fuck.” He reaches out when Chase extends his beer toward him, taking a sip and flicking his eyes to mine. “I’m the Enforcer of the Devil’s Peak MC.”
“What does that–”
He hasn’t taken his eyes off me. “I kill people, Blaine. Bad people.”
“Of course you do,” I mumble, not surprised.He kept that secret well hidden.
He slides the beer back over to Chase, but he is already shoving it away again. “Keep it,” Chase states.
Keaton takes another sip, then turns back to me. “That's why I used to come around and warn you to be careful. I knew of a lot of the shit that happened in Devil’s Peak and Shadow Heads. I was constantly fucking paranoid about you.”
I nod. It all makes sense now, and I wish that I had taken him more seriously. I wish I had listened,especially that night at Wes’s Bar. So, I know that my next words are going to hurt him, as much as they hurt me.
I was so fucking stupid.
“I slept with him, Keats. Menace. The night you came around warning me, I slept with him.”
His eyes turn impossibly dark, and I shiver, feeling the needles of his ruthless gaze prick over my entire scalp.
“You what?” Keaton asks.
I turn to Harlen, and he bites his bottom lip back into his mouth.
“He was fucking trying you out,” Harlen growls so low, I can hear the reverb of his tone thick through his chest.
“Oh god,” I whimper, pushing up from my seat, running to the edge and throwing up over the drop off the deck. Harlen’s hand is instantly at my back, and he caresses me through the pain,the agony of truth.
I spin back around and see Rusty jerk his head at Keaton. “Keep speaking, son,” he says.
Keaton falls back into his seat, gripping onto the armrest firmly. “When a few months had passed and the rest of the club wasn’t made aware of the knowledge that I had come to hear, I became suspicious. But they were fucking good, Rusty. They moved when I was busy. I never saw them together, and when I did get the chance to trail, I think they knew someone was following them. I was never ledanywhere.”
“Did they ever see that it was you?” Rusty asks.
Keaton shakes his head. “They couldn’t have. I always took a burner car.”
“Good.”
Harlen’s hands run through his hair, still beside me against the railing. I pull the arms of my hoodie over my knuckles and bring my right hand to my mouth, nervously chewing on my thumbnail.
