Page 14

When she glanced over and found me watching, I mouthed, you okay?

She considered it for a second, then nodded once before turning back to Skye.

That was enough. I moved on to see where my brothers were.

I smelled the joint before I cleared the back door. Some of my brothers were scattered in a loose circle. Warden and Torch reclined on the worn picnic table. Switch sat, relaxed on a discarded leather chair from who the fuck knew where with his laptop perched on a stack of plastic crates. Rook and Torque leaned against sturdy wooden posts. Ace stood, self-contained with his hands in his pockets.

Torque spotted me first and whispered something I couldn’t hear. Everybody went quiet the way people go quiet when they’ve been caught talking shit.

“Talkin’ about me?”

“Course not,” Rook answered. Too fast. Way too fucking fast.

I stared at him blankly. “How the fuck are you such a terrible liar?”

He stared back, those dark brown eyes danced with mischief. “Projecting much?”

I let that go and studied them. Every single one of them had that particular shade of guilt that told me they weren’t just talking about me. They were talking about my marriage.

“Just say what’s on your fuckin’ mind,” I spat out, annoyed with them for being gossiping little girls. “The guilt wafting off you is making me sick to my stomach.”

Torch went first. He usually did because he was incapable of holding a damn thing inside that big chest of his for longer than necessary. He shook his head, long dark hair pulled back with a leather strap to tame it, his jaw clenched tight. “We should review this so-called truce in Church.” The anger coming off his shoulders was almost physical. “This wasn’t the right call, aligning ourselves with Rex.”

I was already angry and goddamn offended on a level I didn’t fully understand yet. It was too soon to feel anything on my wife’s behalf, so I kept my mouth shut and let my brothers say what the fuck they needed to say. One day, maybe sooner than I wanted to admit, I’d be asking these men to follow my orders into places none of us wanted to go. That meant I needed to act like a leader right now, even when what I wanted to do was tell Torch to mind his fucking business. “Tell me why.”

Ace pulled his hands from his pocket and took the joint, inhaling deeply before he exhaled with his gaze on mine. “For starters, some of Rex’s prospects were at Switch’s, selling some new shit inside our club.” He said it flat, with no heat, like he was reading a report. That made it worse somehow.

That was news to me, and I looked to Switch for confirmation.

“Overall hostilities are down. Rex’s people are focused outward right now, taking on smaller clubs, absorbing territory.” His gaze cut sideways to Ace. “Which could mean they’re regrouping. Building up before they come at us.”

I nodded, taking in everything they said. “Okay,” I said slowly to let them know I heard them. “Anything else?”

Torch puffed his chest out because whatever he was about to say would piss me off. “What if your wife is a spy?”

The words landed and something in my chest stretched tight. I shouldn’t feel protective of Ivy. Not yet. We’d been in the same house for less than a week and we’d had one real conversation lubed by booze. But I did. I felt it clean and clear, which pissed me off almost as much as the accusation itself. I kept my voice level. “I don’t think that’s true.”

Torch’s eyes didn’t let go of mine. “You don’t think?” he huffed out a laugh laced with bitterness. “That’s all you’ve got?”

It wasn’t just that, I had a feeling she hated her father more than any of us but I had to know for sure. “I’m getting to know her and I’ll find out. Leave it to me.”

“But—” Torque started.

“He said leave it to him.” Rook cut in without raising his voice. He looked at me once and something passed between us that didn’t need words, before he turned to the group. “They’re already married. Switch told us some of what Rex put her through. We ain’t throwing her back without a damn good reason.” He paused and it was heavy enough that we all noticed, before he dropped his next bomb. “Breaking off this marriage now would be certain war.”

We all knew it. Some of us just needed the reminder.

Nobody said anything.

This arrangement was supposed to hold things together. Unraveling it now, especially over suspicions and what ifs, would be covering ourselves in gasoline and lighting a match and dropping it.

“This is new,” I said to them. “Believe me, I fuckin’ know it better than any of you. But my old man thinks this is the best way forward, so we’ll make it work.” I turned my attention to Torch. “You want to bring it to Church? Go ahead, but we already voted on it.”

Warden passed what was left of the joint to Torque and exhaled slow. “She seem like a spy?”

I shook my head. “Fuck no. She doesn’t eat enough and she jumps at loud sounds, and she’s afraid of her own damn shadow.”

Torque offered me the last of the joint and I shook my head because I needed to be clear-headed until I figured out what the fuck to do about the Warlords.