Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
DREW
Iknew the second I let her in things wouldn’t be so black, white, and red anymore.
It was what had scared me the most, and now there I was, feeling tired for the first time in weeks.
Exhausted, actually. Nothing had kept my mind busy all day.
No amount of aggression or fantasies of death and destruction could perk me up. I was fucked. Mentally. Physically.
Emotionally.
Just admitting that to myself made the old me cringe deep inside the recesses of my mind. The feared Drew Tucker of old had finally turned into a bit of a pussy who recognized his inner feelings. Go figure.
Not even the whiskey helped me that night.
She was all I wanted and needed to hear.
I didn’t plan on telling her where I was or what I was currently staring at as I leaned my ass against my bike, feet kicked out, shoulders relaxed, and pushed the call button over her name, bringing the phone to my ear and pressing my cheek against it.
“Drew?” Her voice was hoarse and filled with sleep.
“Hey,” I said roughly, practically a whisper.
There was a short silence, followed by a rustling as she moved. “You okay?”
I sighed, clearly feeling sorry for myself, and narrowed my eyes on the building in front of me. “No.”
“Can I help?”
“No. Maybe. I just like your voice.”
There was a slight hum of satisfaction on the other end of the line as she absorbed the words. “I’m glad you called me. Do you want some company?”
“You want the truth?”
“I always want the truth. Even if it hurts,” Ayda trailed off into a whisper at the end.
“And that’s my problem. Hurting you isn’t an option, so being with you is dangerous right now.” I smirked lazily, my eyes closing as I tried to make humor of the stab in my chest. “Take a look in the mirror. I’m sure my fingerprints on your body tell you that without me having to.”
“I can handle a few bruises. Have you considered that this distance is hurting me more than your fingers on my body ever could?” She sighed, and I could almost imagine her hand running through her hair in frustration. “You didn’t hurt me.”
“I know what I’m doing to you,” I said flatly. I saw that pain and ache in her eyes every day. “I’m just an unstable fuck. Sometimes, I… I scare the shit out of myself, Ayda.”
“You’re grieving, but I don’t have the sense to be afraid of you. I love you too much to think any different. You want blood for Harry, and I can’t fault you for that, but Drew, don’t get caught. He went in there to make sure you didn’t. Be careful with the last gift he gave you.”
“Sometimes your voice pisses me off, too. You know that, right?” I flared my nostrils and swallowed the guilt again.
“I know you like the challenge.”
“I love it,” I whispered. “I love you.”
“I love you, too. So much.” There was a moment of silence before she inhaled. “Tate broke some kid’s nose at school today.”
“Yeah?” My brows rose with surprise.
“The kid said something that got under his skin. So, of course, he thought I was going to chew him out.”
“Getting tired of telling grown men how to behave, darlin’?”
She let out a huff of a laugh, and I could hear the smile in her voice as she answered. “I can’t stop any of you doing what you do best, but I can sure as hell nag you into being more careful about the execution of it.”
She sounded tired. My woman sounded how I felt, and I was the selfish asshole too busy focusing on his own issues to help her with hers.
“Maybe one day we’ll listen.” I pushed my ass off the back of the bike and stood tall, stretching my legs and rolling my neck. “You should sleep,” I told her softly.
“I’d sleep much better with you here.”
“No, you wouldn’t. Concerned Ayda doesn’t sleep.
Concerned Ayda isn’t still. Concerned Ayda is full of worries for everyone but herself, and she’d spend all night making sure I was okay while letting herself go to shit.
” I found myself smirking, imagining the look of disgust on her face, and picturing her mouthing that I’m an asshole down the phone, or some other genuinely cute insult being sent my way.
“You love too much.” Me too much, I wanted to add. You love me too much.
She huffed out another laugh, but the sound died in her throat as she pushed out her next sentence with little to no breaths at all. “Concerned Ayda sounds like a bore. Fucked Ayda would sleep the night away.”
“I sure do miss that smart-ass mouth of yours.” My small smile grew as I walked around my bike and glanced up at the building in front of me again. “But trust me, the smell of alcohol and smoke on me would dirty all your sheets in all the wrong ways tonight.”
She released the breath she’d been holding. “Maybe another night then, but if you come in and I’m still star-fished in the middle of the bed, consider it an invitation. Just make sure you come home, ‘kay?”
“I promise.”
“I love you, Drew Tucker.”
I nodded, even though she couldn’t see me, tensing my jaw and working the muscles there before I looked down at the ground and spoke. “Wait for me.”
“Forever and a day.”
I hung up, my arm falling limp and my cell smacking my thigh as the weight of it seemed heavier than any loaded gun I’d ever held.
Ayda was braver than she realized, stronger, too.
I wanted nothing more than to go to her, but I also wanted to save her the pain of seeing me so fucked up.
Yes, I’d warned her that grief changed me, but not even I’d known how this burning feeling in my chest would rise the second I took a breath in the morning, searing my skin until I somehow managed to close my eyes at night.
Burn, burn, burn, the flames licked my stomach, the growl of the heat inside me being constantly fanned by air that was so weak and faint at times, yet it somehow managed to have the effects of an almighty hurricane on my need for revenge.
It only took something small to make me snap.
Add the guilt I felt on top of that—the fact that it should have been me in those cells, not Harry, as well as the guilt I felt for Ayda and all my brothers—and I was a fucking mess.
The only one who seemed to evoke no emotions from me whatsoever was my father.
The man who was walking toward me from the back of one of the Navs’ buildings we’d discovered.
Eric sauntered closer, neither worry or anger showing on his face or in his controlled swagger. He looked totally calm.
“Nobody there?” I asked, clearing my throat of the softer tones I’d just used on Ayda.
“I told you, it’s been empty for years now.”
“To say you’ve been away a while, you know a lot about the shit that goes on here in Texas.”
“A good leader has eyes and ears everywhere, son—Drew,” he corrected himself.
My face fell, and the two of us stared at each other, waiting for the other to speak first.
“Don’t,” I finally said coldly.
“Sorry.”
“Let’s save son for Harry’s memory from now on.”
“Got it.” He nodded, pushing both hands into his jeans’ pockets and staring at me, cool and hard.
Sometimes, when I looked at him for a certain amount of time, it felt like I was looking at a carbon copy of myself in twenty years time.
His eyes were just like mine, only more assured these days.
His jaw was strong. His stance was… it was all Tucker.
The two of us were born with arrogance running through our veins, it seemed.
And sometimes, when he looked at me for a certain amount of time, it felt like he was looking at one giant disappointment.
He never said it, but there was an echo of something in his eyes.
A lingering shame.
I took one last glance at the building behind him, looking up at the roofing and at some of the loose tiles that were slanted out of place. The dirty moonlight of the night showed me just enough, but I was also aware of how much that kind of night could hide.
“We should get out of here,” I said quietly.
“You’re too suspicious, Drew. Of everything. Everyone. Every—”
He didn’t get time to finish. The sound of the gunshot going off rang through the air like a thunderbolt heading in our direction.
The two of us dropped down, knees buckling, arms behind the backs of our heads as we tried to avoid whatever and whoever was trying to use our skulls for target practice.
The bullet whizzed past us, and I saw my dad make the exact same move as I did, the two of us working on autopilot as we reached around for the Glocks in the waistbands of our jeans.
Another shot rang out in our direction, missing completely but bouncing off the framework of Eric’s bike with an almighty metal-hitting-metal clang.
I’d never appreciated someone missing a shot more in my whole life.
The second the two of us figured out which direction the shooter or shooters were coming from, we raised our guns, and we fired.
“This way… to the right, Drew!” Eric called out.
We moved automatically, crouched low and running to the side, eyes and ears on high alert, allowing us to hear the scuffling of feet and, finally, voices.
Whoever was shooting our way they definitely weren’t from Texas—the jumbled, panicked voices of at least three men drifting our way in a foreign tongue.
Within seconds, Eric and I had moved toward the side of the building, running around the back of it to find the clearing that led to nowhere.
No shelter. No cluster of trees for anyone to hide in.
Nowhere for the fuckers to run. Eric took one glance over his shoulder to look at me, and when our eyes connected, I felt that blood bond running through my veins, giving me permission to do whatever the hell we needed to do.
“Sick of hitting on the bags, Drew?”
“You know it,” I growled, fighting to stay in control.
“Let’s go hunting.”
We watched as three men tried to flee the scene, one with a gun raised pointing backward and no target in sight, his aim completely off. I raised my weapon, closed one eye and counted to three.
One. Wait.
Two. For.
Three. Me.
The ring of the bullet I fired swallowed the sound of the word Ayda in my mind, while the cries of the man I’d shot in the leg had my father and me running as fast as we could to the men who’d tried to kill us.
I had no idea who the fuck they were. I didn’t need to. All I wanted was to take a life tonight. Avenge Harry.
In the end, we took three. Three men we didn’t need to know or want to know. Three men, who looked like they’d been living in the Navs’ old property without permission. Homeless drifters, maybe illegal immigrants, hiding out to make a better life for themselves in the future.
If only they hadn’t fired first.
If only it didn’t feel so good to kill.
If I didn’t get a grip on myself, it wasn’t just going to be me who felt the flames of my rage deep inside.
If I carried on like this, the whole of Babylon was going to burn.