Chapter Thirty-Seven
Ayda
The fact that I had to be nudged from my check out station when my shift was up said all that needed to be said about my day.
I hadn’t been able to concentrate one little bit—not since Drew kissed me and took a small piece of me with him.
To add insult to injury, Deeks was on my ass twenty-four seven.
It just reminded me of what I didn’t have, and that damnable kiss that made my lips tingle every time I thought about it.
Then I got mad.
How dare he kiss me?
How dare he keep coming back when I had nothing left to give?
That stream of thought was the very reason I was sitting out in front of The Hut with my knuckles white on the steering wheel, my jaw working back and forth, sending an ache through my teeth.
The bastard knew what he was doing. He fucking knew, and he’d made sure I wouldn’t eat or sleep for thinking about him.
I was like a fucking toy he couldn’t put down, and he never would, not until I was completely destroyed and another one came along.
Well, I refused to be a toy anymore.
Using the code to get through the gates, I slammed it shut behind me to slow Deeks down in his pursuit.
I'd lost him in a subdivision that my ex-boyfriend had lived in.
It looked like a rabbit warren, but I wasn't taking any chances. Not that night. I wasn’t going to be deterred from speaking my mind.
I was going to keep my back straight and stick to my guns, and I swore to God, if he tried to kiss me again, I was going to bite the son of a bitch.
The door to The Hut was propped open, as it was most evenings when everyone from the club was around.
With that many bodies in the space, the smoke and stench had to go somewhere.
I had to walk through a cloud of cigarette smoke to get into the main room, but not a soul saw me as being out of place anymore.
I'd been invited in. They'd started to expect me. I was just the “cleaning lady.”
The cloying air that wrapped around my body like a force field made my throat feel raw as my eyes scanned the four corners of the place.
My first stop was, inevitably, the bar. I could already see him in my mind’s eye, propped up against it with a bottle of whiskey in one hand, a whore in the other and his signature smirk plastered across his face.
It wasn’t as though he expected me to be there…
But then again, maybe he did. Maybe I was walking into another one of his traps so he could watch me jump through his hoops with amusement.
For a moment, I actually believed I’d finally got him pegged, but the face wearing the smirk wasn’t Drew’s, nor was it as handsome. It ended up just being one of his boys, who obviously looked up to him with some reverence and hero worship.
“Where's Drew?”
The guy shrugged lazily and huffed out a laugh at me, his arm curling around the girl’s neck and pulling her in for a kiss.
He had the emulation down to a fine art apparently, but it wasn't perfect. His eyes had flickered a second before his lips met the girl’s, and it was just the direction I'd been headed in. Drew’s office.
Even though I felt my stomach flip at the last memory of being in there, I pushed forward regardless.
The train I was on needed desperately to be derailed, and the sooner I managed to get it done, the sooner I could try and get back to some semblance of a life.
I took a huge risk not knocking. There was a chance I would interrupt him with a girl, or more importantly, him and the inner sanctum of the pack, but I stormed in with my anger-fueled bravado anyway, my chest rising and falling as the adrenaline pumped desperately through my veins.
He was there.
I didn’t need to look at him to know that.
I could feel his presence the same way I always had, but I chose instead to stare at the memories filling the shelves on the bookcase in the corner of the room, where a younger, smiling version of him seemed like a better target for words that might just piss him off.
“You kissed me, you son of a bitch.”
There was no response from him, which, all things considered, wasn’t unusual. He was the king of stoic indifference when he wanted to be. He also knew when to play the cards he had and when to hold them close to his chest.
“You kissed me, Drew, and then you walked away when I begged you not to. I begged you to stay.”
I turned my head to look him in the eyes. I needed to see his reaction, but I choked on my last word as I did.
The man, the one now standing in the middle of the room like a shell of who he once had been, was hollow.
His normally vivid and cynical eyes were now glassy and devoid of anything.
For a moment, I was so stunned that I couldn’t move, and I sure as hell couldn’t breathe.
My glance moved slowly from his bloodied jeans, up to the droplets of crimson falling languidly from his hands, which were balled at his sides and looked as though they’d been masticated.
The higher my attention got, the more blood I saw. Dark spots on his already dark T-shirt made the stains obvious. It was as though the more of it I saw, the more my own ran through my veins, colder, filling me with dread.
This hollow, vacant husk of the most formidable man I thought I’d ever known was making everything but my fear drain from me.
“Drew?”
He didn’t say a word. He didn’t even flicker his eyes in my direction.
There was no response. The only sign he’d heard me at all was the sway of his body before he fell into the same chilling stillness he had when I’d entered.
I stumbled forward one step, my feet dragging as my bag slid from my arm and landed at my feet with a thump.
Neither of us moved; he wouldn’t, and I couldn’t.
My eyes were trained on his, looking for some spark of life.
“You’re bleeding.”
Drew's eyes finally dropped to his balled hands and back up to me in a slow circuit that almost made him look deranged. I don’t think I took a breath as he did.
I was too afraid that any movement I made would throw him back into the lifeless statue he had been.
The darkness of his normally multi-hued eyes now looked as though his irises had swallowed the color in their depths.
“Not mine.”
I looked behind me at the door that led to the corridor, before glancing back at Drew with concern.
I didn’t know if the men out there knew what the hell was going on in here, but it didn’t really matter to me what they thought, because all I could think about in that moment was protecting him.
My only priority was to take care of him when he was so obviously lost in his own head.
I didn't think about my next actions. I was on autopilot as I twisted the lock, and kept my back to him as I attempted to catch my own breath.
It was true, I’d always been afraid of Drew Tucker in the past, but as unresponsive and daunting this mimic of him was, I found I feared for him.
I was afraid that he was broken, that there was no putting him back together, and even in that moment, where hope seemed so unattainable, I thought about what a loss that would be to the world.
I sucked in the biggest breath I could manage, regaining my focus before I turned to face him again. I closed the distance between us in a couple of steps until we were completely isolated, and my hands reached to cup his cool cheeks, if for no other reason than to simply let him know I was there.
“Drew, I need you to come back to me,” I whispered, my thumb attempting to rub some warmth into his flesh.
The hand closest to me twitched, bumping against my leg, recognition that he knew I was there and talking.
There was a chance I was imagining things, but contrary to his belief, I wasn’t that defeatist girl he’d pegged me as.
I was an eternal optimist, and I wasn’t giving up that easily.
“We need to clean you up, but I need you to work with me here.”
His responding nod was small but obvious, and as I dropped my hand to his wrist and tugged gently in the direction of the bathroom, he gave me no resistance.
There were no words I could give that would reassure him or make whatever this was go away, and I wasn’t going to try.
In his world, there were different rules and standards.
This response he seemed to be having could have been to anything.
The possibilities and variables were endless.
So I kept my mouth shut and my hand lightly on his wrist as I reached into the shower and started the water, the sudden stream a grateful break to the silence that had been ringing around us only seconds earlier.
“I’m going to undress you,” I whispered, my trembling hands moving between us and up to his broad shoulders. I paused as my thumbs brushed the cut. It was a sacred thing for him, and I wasn't aware of the rules.
When he didn't react, I pushed the leather back and down his long arms, my hands sure of each movement they executed, hoping against all hope that I didn’t startle him.
When I could no longer reach, I kept contact between our bodies, brushing by as I stepped around behind him, relieving him of the cut respectfully before folding it carefully and setting it on the sink.
I'd been taking my time, and the more measured my movements, the more the room filled up with steam.
It didn't deter me as I moved all the way around to his front again.
The T-shirt he was wearing was still damp with blood when I gripped the edge of it, but as I started to lift it upward, his hands clamped down around my wrists and held them in place. “No.”
The word was executed with such precision that it froze me in place, my skin dampening from the heat and humidity the steam offered, which was beginning to completely close in around us.