“Uh… It’s…Slasher’s chair.”
“Slash…” she ground her teeth, the intensity coming off her deafening. I could cut the tension with a fucking knife. “That’s always been my chair, Malcolm, or have you forgotten?”
“It’s okay. You can have it this time,” Prez offered.
“Oh. How generous of you to give me permission to use my own f-fucking furniture!” she snapped, her cheeks red, looking even hotter.
No one had snapped at Prez like that before. No one that lived. That woman had more fire in her than hell itself. Firecracker. I’d call her that from now on.
Prez was fuming, and I was fighting a laugh.
“Vixen, show some respect,” Dasher pleaded.
“Respect?” she exclaimed as if he’d stabbed her in the back. Her eyes wandered to the three of us. “What do any of you know about respect?”
“More than you think,” Prez challenged.
She narrowed her eyes at him, but then her gaze shifted around the room, glistening. “Where you blatantly meet to plan your next shady gig used to be Mom’s reading room, Mister Slasher. My brother and I have spent so much time in here. Happy time.”
She looked at Dasher, blame lacing her voice. “When she got sick and had to be moved downstairs, we set a bed for her right here because she loved this room so much. I used to sit in this chair to read for her when she couldn’t do it herself. And in this chair,” a tear ran down her cheek, “I watched her take her last breath.”
Holy fuck.
She wiped her face quickly, her eyes on her brother. “Don’t talk to me about respect when you don’t know what it is anymore.”
Dasher bent his head down, the room suddenly too quiet.
Prez’s hard face softened as his hand fell on Dasher’s shoulder. “Take your sister to your room. We’ll be outside.” He nodded at me, and we left Church.
Dasher led the professor to his room—the one adjacent to Church—while Prez and I settled at the bar. One of our prospects slid a couple of cold beers our way, and we chugged the first half down.
The patched brothers gathered around, asking the million questions swirling since this morning.
“Is she going to live here?”
“Are we telling her the truth?”
“Do we have to move out?”
Slasher groaned. “Fuck no. We’re not going anywhere. We own the place.”
“Half of it. You only bought Dasher’s share,” I corrected.
He stared at me. “Then she’ll have to sell her half like her brother did.”
“Didn’t you hear that sentimental shit? She’s attached to the house like you’re attached to your bike. Would you sell your bike to the fucker who trashed it?”
“I’d never sell my bike, and I’d rip the throat of any fucker who dared trash it.”
“Exactly.”
He narrowed his eyes at me as if he understood my point. Then he stood, finishing his bottle and almost smashing it as he set it back on the bar. “Don’t give a shit. This is our place now. We’re not leaving it.”
Why not?I downed the question with my beer. I kept the books and knew we could afford to get ten other houses like this one. Slasher’s stubbornness was unjustified.
Unless he was getting territorial. Not on the house but on the girl.
Yeah, that justified how he’d been behaving all day. Waiting for her outside work, then leaving, then going back, and now this. Slasher wanted the professor, but for the first time, his patch stood between him and the pussy he craved.
