Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
DREW
I’d been questioned in this particular room a hundred times before.
There’d been days in my early adult life where I’d had to sit opposite the town’s policemen and women, spending hours convincing them I hadn’t done anything wrong—endless hours of them trying to pin down the cocky rebel kid who they saw as nothing more than a nuisance in their otherwise peaceful small town.
I’d stared into each man’s eyes with pure hatred pouring out of me.
Now?
Now, I wished it was the town’s chief I was looking at instead of the arrogant ATF agent with a bald patch bigger than a baseball diamond on his head, and eyes that wanted to bring me under.
I wished it was Sutton sitting opposite me instead of this fucker.
I stared at the ATF agent as I leaned back in the chair, one arm over the back of it, my other arm resting on the table in front of me. I could stare a guy in the eye for days on end and not feel awkward about it. Especially a guy who was, without intention, declaring himself an enemy.
Time dragged on before I heard the familiar sound of Jedd’s heavy boots stomping down the corridor. When Winnie pushed through the door and held it open for him, Jedd walked in, his eyes cast down before he sat in his chair opposite me.
He rested his hands on the table, leaving me to raise a brow at Winnie and gesture for her to get rid of the asshole in the corner. With a roll of her eyes, she coughed gently and signaled for her colleague to get out of there.
Once he’d left, Winnie shut the door behind her and positioned herself at the end of the table.
“You’ve got ten minutes,” she said, folding her arms over her chest.
“Thanks.” I smiled sarcastically, letting my eyes drift over to Jedd.
He didn’t look guilty.
He didn’t look sorry.
He didn’t look angry, scared, or confused.
Jedd, my ever-reliable vice president, looked… peaceful.
A minute must have passed before Winnie blew out a breath in irritation.
She wanted words to be exchanged. She wanted answers; to be on the inside and to see what happened when the president of the MC she was trying to bring down confronted the VP who appeared to have betrayed them.
She’d be waiting a long damn time.
I watched Jedd, neither moving or making a sound other than to lightly drum my fingers on the table between us as I waited for him to look at me.
It happened slowly—a subtle rise of his eyes as he peeked up through his thick, black eyebrows and locked in on me.
My nostrils flared, and my lips twitched, but I never blinked or looked away.
Jedd held my gaze, and so many emotions ran through me.
Fuck, I’d spent so long looking at the club as a whole, as a family, as a group I had to protect…
it felt like a lifetime since I’d looked at the men as individuals.
The day I’d found Deeks outside The Hut crying as he looked at the picture of me, him, and Harry was the last time I’d stared deep into the eyes of a brother I loved and really, truly seen him.
It was happening again with Jedd right then.
I fucking loved him, and he loved me. There was a loyalty in his stare that didn’t need to be questioned, and I realized at that moment that I’d never needed to speak to him.
I’d only ever needed to see him—to be one hundred percent certain he was still with me.
I raised my chin and released a breath through my nose, but Jedd’s face never shifted. His lips never parted, and his eyes never strayed from mine.
My fingers drummed harder, the force finding a rhythm that matched my racing heart and quiet mind.
“Five minutes and not a word exchanged. Don’t waste this time, boys. Who knows when you’ll get it again,” Winnie eventually spoke.
Jedd’s smirk pulled at one corner of his mouth, making his long beard twitch.
I huffed out a small laugh and shook my head.
“You’re a bastard, Thomas,” I told him softly.
“Learned from the best,” he muttered, low and quiet.
“We good?”
“You know it.”
I nodded once and turned to look at Winnie whose brows were creased, and her eyes narrowed on me like I’d somehow just slipped my brother a fucking chisel to scratch his way out of his cell.
“Thanks for letting me see him. I think I’m done here.”
She glanced wildly between the both of us, her chest rising and falling faster and her mind clearly working at a thousand miles an hour as she tried to understand what the fuck had just passed between the two of us. She’d never figure it out. No one beyond the gates of our yard ever could.
This was loyalty.
Blood.
Brotherhood.
Family.
I stood, pushing my chair back and noting the way Winnie flinched as the legs scraped loudly against the flooring. With a single rap of my knuckles on the table, I made my way to the door without looking back at either of them.
“Don’t hang around here too long, brother. I think the agent in this room has a thing for you.”
Her gasp was loud enough for me to hear. “Wait a minute, I—”
“See you on the other side, VP,” I said calmly, and then I walked out of the room, leaving Jedd with my faith, and Winnie with her questions.
Whatever Jedd was doing, he had it under control.
It was time for me to do what I had to do, and hope that we were all going to come back together as a full pack.
“Where are you?” I asked Ayda, my cell pressed to my ear as I pushed my sunglasses into place and stared up at the dying ball of sunlight outside the station.
“Rusty’s. Sutton’s about to leave and Deeks is about to take his place. Where are you?”
I spun around to look at the building I’d just left. “Visiting family. Making sure we don’t have any more men going rogue on us. Trying to find a way to figure all this shit out without anyone getting hurt. I think that about covers it.”
“Is there anything I can do?”
“I just like to hear your voice.”
Ayda made a small humming sound that expressed her pleasure. “I’m glad to hear it, but at the risk of ruining the moment, we bumped into an old friend in the diner.”
“And by the tone of your voice, I’m assuming by friend, you mean enemy, asshole, or both.”
“Rosie Sullivan.”
I frowned. “Who?”
“Maisey’s best friend. One of the women from The Hut who walked away just after I started warming your bed.”
Admittedly, I wasn’t good with names, and if someone didn’t leave an impression, they were a ghost to me, but the mention of that bitch Maisey—may she rest in Hell—had my brain scrambling like crazy through a sea of female faces.
Faces that held no warmth to me, only instant gratification and even that wasn’t always instant.
Sometimes the effort outweighed the reward.
Rosie…
Rosie…
Rosie…
Then it hit me. The memory of her and Maisey talking to each other on the street corner in Babylon before all hell broke loose in our world. After that, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen her.
“Fuck,” I groaned. “She’s back.”
“Seems like it. She was meeting with Libby. I didn’t hear much of the conversation, and I’m not sure if Rosie saw Howard and me come in, but she was laying it on pretty thick. Libby didn’t seem convinced, and Rosie sounded like she was trying to get a toe back in the door. She mentioned the fires.”
I closed my eyes and threw my head back. “Please tell me this little bitch isn’t involved in all this, or so help me, God…”
“I don’t think so. It sounded like she was using it as a topic of conversation—an excuse to call Libby in the first place.”
“Has Libby always been close with Rosie?” My head rolled down, and I scuffed my boot across the ground.
“Because if she is, and if there’s any chance that Tate’s lady is playing both sides the way Sinclair was, I’ve got to be honest with you, Ayda, I will have to fucking end her. Tate’s girlfriend or not.”
“If that were the case, you know I would back you up all the way. The thing is, it sounded more like Rosie was scraping the bottom of the barrel, grasping at straws and seeing if she could pull the short one. Libby didn’t seem to buy it, but it may be worth keeping an eye on her. Just to be sure.”
“What’s your gut telling you? Can we trust her?”
“I feel like we can. Libby’s happy where she is right now, but I can’t say for certain what her relationship with Rosie was before you and I got together.
But to be sure, it may be worth having Slater ask the HW called Gemma?
There was mention of her not taking Rosie’s call for getting Gemma kicked out of Slater’s bed or something. ”
I ran my hand down my face in complete and utter exasperation. “Is this what being a father is going to feel like? Constantly dealing with the kids’ bullshit?”
Ayda’s quiet laugh was full of warmth. “Maybe, just with less life or death shit attached to it… I hope. Hang on, Drew.” There was a slap at the other end of the line. “We need to start feeding the guys more.”
“Huh?”
“Sorry, Deeks is trying to steal my lunch.” She paused, releasing another breath. “Do you want me to follow up with Libby?”
“No, I want you to put Deeks on the phone.”
“Okay, but you should know we came to a peaceful resolution about the food.”
“Woman, I know you and your peaceful resolutions. Whatever it was, it’ll still mean my baby having less bacon or eggs.
” I meant it playfully, but my voice betrayed me with a hint of seriousness I wasn’t expecting.
I’d never cared what Ayda did with her body before, what food she put into it or how she chose to look after herself, but suddenly she wasn’t just Ayda anymore.
She wasn’t just one love of my life. She was two, and the weight of that may as well have been an arrow to the chest that struck me hard, forcing me to step back and rest a hand on the seat of my bike.
I was so fucking screwed already.
“The fact that you know I have both bacon and eggs on my plate is scary. Sounds like I need to change some things up and keep my man on his toes.”
“Darlin’, I’ll spend my entire life on tiptoes if that’s what makes you happy.”
“You realize I’m sitting here with a goofy ass smile on my face right now, don’t you?”
“Make sure it stays there. I want to see that when I get home later.”
“It will be there all day, but how much later are you thinking?”
Blowing out a breath, I gazed up at the sun again, appreciating its warmth and remembering the cold, lonely days of my prison cell. The sun… I’d never get tired of it.
Maybe that’s why I was so determined to marry someone who reminded me of it.
“As soon as I can, darlin’. As soon as I’ve figured out where the fuck Eric is.”