Chapter 9
AXEL
I’ll fucking kill him.
It was bad enough when I saw the red marks on Wren’s arm, but when she winced, and I saw the bruise he left behind? I see red.
Wren pulls her arm away from me before walking into the living room and sitting on her couch. I follow behind her, watching as she grabs the remote and turns the tv on.
“You can’t just shut me out,” I growl as I stand in front of her, blocking her view of the tv.
“I’m not shutting you out,” she mutters as she tosses the remote onto the couch beside her. “There’s just nothing you can do about the bruise, so there’s no use in dwelling on it.”
“It’s not dwelling, it’s understanding what happened,” I murmur as I drop into a crouch in front of her.
She looks at me with a furrowed brow. “Sophie shouldn’t have told you guys what happened.”
“Well, she did,” I say as I reach out and run my thumb over her bare knee. “And you’re stuck with us now.”
“Only if you don’t annoy me too much,” she says with a pointed look in my direction.
I smirk. “I know.”
“I never told him where I live,” she admits out of nowhere.
I frown. “What?”
“I never told Dylan where I lived. I never had him pick me up for a date. I never brought him back here. He shouldn’t have known where to find me.”
My jaw clenches. This fucker has to be stalking her. How else would he find out where she lives. This makes me even more sure that I need to be around her all the time. Whether she likes it or not.
“Have you felt like anyone has been watching you or had anything weird happen lately?” I ask, trying to figure out what’s going on. Her face pales. I squeeze her thigh gently. “You can tell me.”
“The night of the fundraiser,” she whispers. “Right after Sophie and Grayson left for the hospital, I was outside by myself and I had the eerie feeling that someone was watching me, but I didn’t see anyone other than the prospects, so I thought it was just them.”
This fucker hasn’t just been watching Wren; he’s been watching the club. This just took on a new life.
I climb onto the couch beside her and wrap my arm around her. “We’ll figure this out,” I murmur into her hair, breathing in the citrus smell of her shampoo. “You’ll just have to put up with me for a little while.”
She snorts as she drapes an arm across my stomach. “I think I can handle that.”
“Are we going to talk about the elephant in the room?” I ask.
Her fingernails trail across my abs. “What elephant?”
“You know exactly what I’m talking about,” I mutter, pulling her closer. “Why did you leave in the middle of the night?”
She’s quiet for a moment and just when I think she’s not going to respond, she does.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers. “It was a spur of the moment decision. I didn’t think we could handle the type of conversation we would have had in the morning. I thought you were going to tell me how much you regretted what happened and I didn’t think I could handle that.”
I chew on my bottom lip in thought. I can understand where she’s coming from. With our history, she expected the worst. We were both drinking and succumbed to our desires. I don’t blame her for thinking that I would regret what happened. I don’t, though.
“I’m not mad that you left,” I tell her. “I understand where you were coming from.”
She twists her head to look up at me, a hopeful expression on her face. “You do?”
“I do,” I admit. “I was unsure of how you would react in the morning, but I thought that what happened between us was really good and long overdue.”
“It was good,” she rasps. “Too good.”
“Too good?” I ask with a frown. “I don’t understand that complaint.”
She rolls her eyes. “You know the saying, ‘if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is’. Nothing good ever lasts in my life.”
My chest squeezes. Wren and I may have driven each other nuts over the years, but she’s a damn good person. She deserves good things in her life.
“Nothing has a chance to last if you don’t even give it the opportunity to,” I murmur as I brush a strand of hair away from her face.
“Is that really what you want,” she asks. “A chance?”
“Yes,” I reply immediately. “You’re already stuck with me for the foreseeable future, why not see how things could be?”
“Okay,” she whispers.
“Really?”
“Yes, really.”
I smile and plant a kiss in her hair. “Good. Now, tell me everything the club needs to know about Dylan.”
She groans. “Fine, but no judgement,” she points at me as she pulls away and turns to face me.
I hold my hands up in surrender. “No judgement.”
“I met him at a bar. I didn’t really know much about him.
He said he wasn’t from the area but that he came here for work.
He asked me out and I didn’t think there was any harm.
Boy, I was wrong,” she mutters under her breath.
“Anyways, we went out three different times. I already felt like we didn’t have a connection after the first date, but I felt bad turning him down at the end of the night, so I agreed to a second date.
At the end of the second date, I knew it wasn’t going to go anywhere, but he put me on the spot and wouldn’t take no for an answer.
” The more she talks the more I hate this guy.
“I went on the date solely so I could tell him I wasn’t interested.
He wasn’t happy about it, but I thought it was just normal upset, not the start of him becoming a stalker. ”
“What does the guy do for work?” I ask.
Wren winces. “I don’t know. I was severely uninterested in him and didn’t listen to much of what he had to say. I was just ready to go home.”
“You said that he never picked you up and you never brought him back, that means he’s been watching you for a while,” I tell her. “Just so you know, we’re going to station two prospects outside your apartment and at Lenny’s when I can’t be there.”
“Is that really necessary?” She whines.
“Don’t even start,” I warn her. “It’s completely necessary. He’s attacked you once, what’s to stop him from doing it again?”
“Fine,” she mumbles.
“Good girl,” I praise her and watch her chocolate-brown eyes dilate. As much as I’d love to devour her again, she needs her rest after the shit she’s been through.
I stand from the couch and make my way back into the kitchen, grabbing my plate from the table and rinsing it off before putting both our plates in the dishwasher and putting the water bottles in her recycling bin. She watches me from the doorway with interest.
“What are you doing?” she asks as she leans against the frame, crossing her arms over her full breasts.
My eyes trail over her, following the line of the t-shirt down her frame and over her silky-smooth legs.
“Cleaning up so you don’t have to,” I tell her.
“Chivalry isn’t dead,” she mutters playfully.
“No, it’s not, baby,” I tell her as I step into her space. “Come to the clubhouse tomorrow.”
“Okay.”
“Okay,” I murmur before leaning down and brushing my lips against hers. I keep it short and sweet, because if I give into my desire, I won’t be leaving here tonight. “Lock the door after me,” I order as I turn to leave.
“Yes, sir,” she mumbles, making me smile.
I unlock her door and open it, looking back at her from outside. I wait for her to close the door and only when I hear the lock engage do I walk back to my bike, nodding at the prospects when I leave.