“Because you can’t be,” I say, pointing out the obvious.
I don’t say anything about the family comment, I’m not sure what she’s alluding to, but I can also tell that she’s tiptoeing around something so much bigger—I’m just not sure I’m ready to hear what it is, yet.
There’s a long moment of silence and it’s her turn to search my face. She doesn’t speak right away, but she’s thinking and it’s hard. Then her lips curve up and she gives me a big smile with teeth.
“I thought that I would never be at peace in my life and I know that part of me will never be, but there’s another part that finally is. I’ll never love them as deeply as an Old Lady could. And I’d never be happy, not with them or anyone else. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t want all that and more for them.”
We don’t say anything else, there’s nothing else to say. How could there be? Pinkie opened herself up to me. She made herself completely vulnerable. That was brave. I can’t help but wonder if she really could be happy with any one of the men here. I don’t ask her though, she’s firm in her choices and I respect that.
Pinkie is so wrong though. So very wrong. Dylan doesn’t want me, and he isn’t falling for me. I’m a burden, gum on his shoe that he can’t wait to scrape off. He saved me for one reason and one reason only—redemption.
JAGUAR
I stay up until ten in the morning cleaning up the party that ended at four. I don’t mind it though, I probably wouldn’t have slept anyway. All I could think about was Pinkie’s kid and how she’s eighteen now—the same age as Pamela.
My thoughts shifted to Pamela and eventually to Riot. I have no right at all to ask about his whereabouts, if they have any ideas where he is, or if they’re going to try and bring him down. But I find that I need to know.
I’m trying to think of a way to casually work it into conversation with Mamba later today, seeing as he seems to be the one most open to actually talking to me, well the one who isn’t Eagle anyway, when Dragon walks through the door.
Looking over at him, I blink seeing Bellarosa at his side and Kora trailing behind them. Dragon must sense me watching him, because he shifts his head and his gaze catches mine. He frowns, then murmurs something to Bella and Kora before he turns and makes his way toward me.
“Jailbait up?” he asks.
I blink, then shrug a shoulder. “No fuckin’ clue.”
His brow arches. “She don’t sleep next to you?” he asks. I would think he was being a smart-ass if he didn’t seem so damn sincere about the question.
“Told you, not getting mixed up with her, not like that.”
He whistles low and shakes his head. “Mistake there, brother. She’s good Old Lady material, as any of the women, they vetted her fully and completely.”
I think about that for a moment, then I decide that it doesn’t matter. Maybe she’ll be someone else’s Old Lady, but she’s not getting saddled with a loser like me for the rest of her life.
“Don’t matter. But I did have a question.”
I watch as he shifts his feet so that they’re set apart and he crosses his arms over his chest, dipping his chin to look down at me, waiting for my question.
“I know it’s probably club business and all, but you got a pulse on Riot?”
He watches me for a while, longer than I’m comfortable with, but I don’t even flinch under his scrutinizing gaze. Like Eagle, he has a look and he could break a weaker man with it, but I’ve known them for half my life and their looks don’t scare me one fucking bit.
“Should tell you to fuck off,” he says. And he’s right, he should, but he won’t. “But I won’t, only because I can tell that you’re worried about her, even if you’re not ready to brand her yet.”
“Won’t brand her, Dragon.”
He snorts. “Sure. Anyway, thanks to you, I know they went to Oregon. Worm found them lying low outside of a small coastal town called Winchester Bay.”
“We going up there to smoke ‘em out?” I ask, my adrenaline pumping through my veins suddenly.
Dragon watches me. Again he’s expressionless, and I wonder if the fucker thinks that he’s going to somehow make me feel intimidated. He won’t. Not even when I thought he was going to kill me. I just don’t get that way.
“You do, just with bitches, little eighteen-year-olds that are good and clean.” He chuckles.
Biting the inside of my cheek, I can’t believe that I fucking said that shit aloud. “Riot,” I snap.
“Gathering intel, then we go. You think you want in on that action?” he asks.
“I know I do,” I grind out. “Saw what he did firsthand. Know the kind of sick shit he’s into, he needs to be put down like the goddamn animal that he is,” I grind out.
Dragon’s lips curve up into a grin. “Good. Hoped you’d say that. You’ll go when it’s time, as long as you continue to prove yourself.”
“Got no contact to the outside world and there’s always a brother up my ass. I’m good with all that shit too, happy to prove myself, Dragon.”
His eyes almost glitter as they search mine, then he chuckles. “Good.”
I watch as he turns away and walks toward his wife and daughter who disappeared somewhere down the hall. I don’t know why they’re here, not that he’d tell me anyway. Just the fact that he was willing to even tell me anything at all was more than he had to do.
Deciding to stop dwelling on any of that shit, I continue cleaning up. I tell myself that I’m
