Chapter Forty-Four
Drew
There were many things I was growing to appreciate about Ayda.
Despite the obvious, I think my favorite was her ability to walk away from complex situations and not ask questions.
All the other women I’d ever been with, even if it was only for one night, used to hit with the ‘getting to know you better’ bullshit before I’d even finished my final stroke and fallen down beside them.
I was a mystery to the town of Babylon. An enigma.
Everybody wanted to be the one to crack me wide open and expose the real me.
Only I’d never wanted to go there with anyone else up until now.
The truth was that I still wasn’t sure how much I wanted to tell anyone.
Not even Ayda, no matter what this was that was going on inside the two of us.
But it didn’t matter because she never asked.
She never pushed or pressed or made me withdraw.
Instead, she would just look up at me as she rested her elbow by my head on the bed, use those fingers of hers to lull me into some kind of relaxed state of mind, and the words seemed to fall from my lips with ease.
Since Cortez came and went, I’d seen the hidden fear in her eyes every time she looked at me, and I’d not been away from civilization so long that I didn't recognize that she was too small a woman to survive in oceans as big as mine.
I was just too much of a selfish bastard to try and do anything to change that.
For the first time since my teenage years, I had something else to look forward to besides death and darkness when I woke up each morning.
For the first time since I last saw my parents or Pete, I had a little bit of light in a world.
My brothers had seen it, too. Their know-it-all smirks and sly winks across The Hut would normally have gotten under my skin and made me snap, but for some reason, this time around, they didn’t. With every cocky grin that was sent my way, I flashed one right back and gave each man a salute.
Although I knew I had to be careful. There was falling fast and then there was falling fast. The last thing I needed was for either one of us to get caught up in something that would be impossible to walk away from if we needed to.
Reality was always only a single scary moment away. Anyone who got close to us usually ended up hurt. My job now was to make sure that that never happened to Ayda. Not on my watch.
Thursday came and went without much fuss. Once she eventually peeled herself away from me and grumbled her tight little ass all the way to the shower, I made a deal with myself to tackle the day as head-on as I could.
By Friday morning, I’d called my brothers into the office to have a proper meeting on everything to do with all our businesses, and even though I was hungry and desperate to keep myself fully up-to-date with everything that was going on, I was biding my time and waiting to hit them all with questions over the boxing rings that I still hadn’t seen any paperwork on.
“Effectively,” Jedd spoke up from the couch opposite my desk, “Harry is the Mr. T of our club. Anything gold or of value, he wears it and handles it.”
“Yeah,” Harry huffed out beside him, his chest bouncing while his eyes flickered all around the room. “You should see the looks I get when I tell people I’m in pawn management now.”
Shaking my head, I jabbed the pen on the invoice book in front of me and raised my brows back up at him. “Not the right kind of porn for you, Rogers?”
“Not even close,” he answered with a smile.
“We missed you doing the books though, Drew,” Jedd offered as his fingers rose to pinch his nostrils together. “Sinclair is a prick.”
“Tell me about it.”
“No one has the same take on things as you do. “
“Figure savvy,” Kenny piped up from the other side of the room. My attention turned to him slowly and a grin played on my lips.
“Definitely figure savvy,” I said quietly, winking at the little fucker who I knew was trying to hide his jealous streak from me for taking Ayda from him, even though we all knew he’d never really stood a chance.
She had too much about her to be the kind of girl that would just drop her panties for a gin, and Kenny didn’t have the patience to hang around and wait to see the fruits of his labor grow in his own hands.
He rolled his eyes. Despite making it look like the only thing I wanted to do was wind him up, I actually had as much respect for him as I did for Harry, Jedd, and Slater.
It always came down to loyalty. Even Deeks was climbing up the ladder.
Ayda was always talking about him and what she saw beyond what he revealed.
She spoke like that about them all in the quiet of my room.
Dropping my chin down to my chest, I nodded slowly. I’d always known I missed my brothers while doing time, but it was only then that I was truly starting to realize just how much I’d missed of their lives.
“Okay, I think we’re done here,” I muttered, shutting up the file in front of me before peering around the room.
Each one of them seemed to lean forward and release a small sigh of relief.
I knew they weren’t expecting me to notice, but I saw it.
Something was going on and I wasn’t privy to it.
The only comfort I was taking away from that was the fact that I knew if it was some serious shit, I’d have been the first man they told.
This was them making a decision that went against what I’d asked to happen. Of that, I was pretty certain.
“Anyone else feel like they’ve just sat in on a meeting with Donald fucking Trump?” Slater joked, standing up tall as he stretched out his back and rolled his shoulders around.
“You’re fired,” I snorted back at him before glancing up at Kenny to point my pen in his direction. “And you… You have somewhere to be.
“Guard dog duties,” Kenny grumbled.
“More like babysitting,” Harry hit back with a rough laugh before he broke out into that god-awful cough again.
“Label it what you like. The Hanagan kid needs watching as much as Ayda does. Get over there.”
“He loves it really,” Jedd said in his deep, rough voice. “Spending all day outside a high school, checking out all the young blood.”
Kenny pushed himself up off the wall, narrowing his eyes as he walked to the door and spat back. “You’re sick. You’re all fucking sick.”
“Eyes up, Kenster,” Slater joked. “We’ll see you at the game.”
Before I had any time to gift Kenny with a parting insult, my attention snapped back to Slater and my eyes had widened about as much as my mouth had dropped open. “Sorry, what?”
He took a glance at Jedd, winking while his smirk broke free. “The game.”
“What game?”
“Tate’s football match. We’re all tagging along tonight.”
“Like fuck you are.” I laughed, even though I didn’t find anything funny.
“C’mon, Tucker,” Harry grumbled beside him, small fits of his cough still lingering in his throat as he tried to clear it and speak.
“We’ll be good little biker boys for you.
It’s been a lifetime since any of us got to see a proper game.
Go, Bulldogs!” His hand flew in the air for only a second before his choking fit kicked in again and he had to push his fist back against his chest.
“You’re all dicks. You hear me? Short, stubby, useless, limp dicks.”
“Is that a yes?” Jedd barked laughing, shoving his hands in the pockets of his cut to dig out a smoke.
I didn’t stand around to argue, mainly because a small part of me was imagining the look on Ayda’s face when we all showed up there like some kind of modern day T-birds.
I suddenly had the urge to see that face up close and personal for myself.
All day I’d spent with the boys, working around the yard, checking in on the repo unit, the pawn shop and even going back into the training room to oversee all the shit had been cleaned out properly last weekend.
The last thing we needed in here was the police and a forensics team, should Hernandez’s trail ever lead back to us for reasons we hadn’t factored in.
Once I knew everything was as it should be, I did the one thing I promised myself I wouldn’t do since the whole shit with the Emperors went down.
I rode solo. Despite both Harry and Jedd telling me they thought it was risky, I hit out onto the open road with no one and nothing around me but the cut on my back.
I was going to the game and the boys would follow.
I was going to spend some time with Ayda and not think about the man I killed a week before. I was going to believe that, since we hadn’t heard anything back from Chester, we weren’t suspects number one in Hernandez’s disappearance.
It was only when I flew through the center of town again and was halted by another red light, that something else beside my own thoughts caught my attention. On the corner of the street, outside the barbers, stood Maisey Sutton.
As soon as she heard my bike slow to a crawl, her body swung around to mine, her hand on her hip as whatever she was about to say to whoever was next to her got caught in her throat.
That slow, teasing smile began to crawl up that mouth of hers, and all I could think about was how once upon a time, that look alone would have had me pulling my bike over to pick her up.
Now, there wasn’t anything. Only amusement. It had been years since I’d seen her and, even though it was obvious she thought differently, those years hadn’t been at all kind. Her skin had a grayness to it that wasn’t there before, and her clothes seemed at least three sizes too small.
I couldn’t help the small smirk I returned back to her.
It was there in an instant, once the realization of how times had changed hit me square in the jaw.
But that humor on my face soon dropped like a lead weight to the ground when I saw who was standing in front of her, looking shifty as she tried to bring her hair farther forward around her face to hide.
Rosie.
The girl I’d thrown off me and dismissed only nights before, in favor of Ayda.
What the fuck were those two doing talking to one another on street corners?
The sound of a car horn beeping from behind had me facing forwards again, my frown growing deeper before I twisted the throttle and tore down the street.
It wasn’t the fact that they were together that caused that unsettling niggling to start to chip away at me.
It was the look of shame Rosie let slip and the way her body had turned to hide itself from me, like I could see right through whatever shield she was trying to put up.
When I pulled up outside the football field, I could see Deeks and Kenny’s van in place, and it wasn’t long before the noise of the others arriving filled the air in the distance.
Pulling my helmet off and smiling to no one but myself, I hooked it on the back of the bike, adjusted the leather on my shoulders and started to glide on into the high school stadium.
I could feel the stares of the townsfolk as I made my way to where she usually sat, and it was concentrating on both finding Ayda and keeping a lower profile than I normally would, that made me miss the most obvious thing waiting for me at the top of the stairs to the seats.
When I finally looked up through wide eyes, I paused in my footing and let my mouth fall open as Howard Sutton stared down on me, his arms folded across his chest like he was ten-feet tall and a hundred pounds heavier than he actually was.
“I had a feeling you might show up here again tonight, Dreeew Tucker.”
I had no idea when my name had acquired all those extra vowels, and the way he said it caused me to run my thumb under my nose and look over my shoulder, just so I had a minute to get myself together instead of laughing.
Turning back to face him, I cleared my throat, tugged up on the back of my jeans and gave him a nod. “Sutton.”
“That’s Chief of Police Sutton to all the convicts around here,” he said slowly.
“Okay… Chief,” I pushed out.
“Why are you here, Tucker?”
“To watch a game of football.”
“And since when did you take such a great interest in high school football?”
“Since I got out from spending five years behind bars and promised everyone on the release panel that I would find myself a new hobby. One that didn’t involve me fighting underground or being responsible for any more deaths.”
A few patrons approached Sutton from behind, walking straight on by, but not before they cast the two of us a nervous glance on their way. As I watched them, Howard took a slow step forward, raising his chin when he spoke.
“Let me make one thing clear. I don’t like you. I don’t trust you. I don’t want you in my town. I don’t want you near the people I know. And I don’t like you around the Hanagans.”
The mention of Ayda in any capacity had my mouth clamping shut and the muscles along my jaw twitching as I tried to remain in control.
I didn’t need to say anything back to him.
The look I was giving him from every dark corner of my eyes should have told him enough.
He’d gotten away with patronizing me twice. That was the last time.
Lifting my hand to his shoulder, I slapped down on it once, my gaze dropping down as his arms came undone and he reached for his gun.
There were so many things I could have done to scare him, so many threats I could have made, but just the thought of Ayda had the muscles in my neck relaxing and a small smile tugging on my tense lips before I moved to his side and whispered.
“Relax, Chief. I’m not looking for a Christmas card this year. Consider me warned.”
Huffing out a laugh, I side-stepped around him and began to walk away. I was pretty sure that his mumbles of threats and destruction were aimed at me, but as I shoved my hands in my pockets and made my way to the aisle she always sat on, I couldn’t find it in me to give a shit about any of it.
Especially not when I finally raised my chin to find her, only for those flashes of blue to find me first, and all the smiles I’d smiled that day came together to create something even bigger and brighter.
All of which was aimed directly at her and yet another unexpected moment between the two of us.
I was fucking done for.