He wipes his tears of laughter away and finally stops, eventually, then smirks over at me. “She spread for you the moment you took her around the clubhouse? Out in the open, in broad daylight?”
Pressing my lips together, I bite the inside of my cheek but don’t answer him. “Brother, go and get your woman. She’s yours, you’re both just fighting it.”
“Left with another man. I’m not going to be made a fucking fool of.”
Silver stands with a groan, then tips his head down to look at me. “Then you don’t deserve her.”
“The fuck?” I rasp.
He shakes his head once. “I don’t deserve Presley, never did and never will. In the beginning, I was like you. Now? I’d be a fool for her if it meant keeping her or losing her.”
He walks away, leaving me alone with my booze, my smoke, and my thoughts. He’s right to a degree. He’d do some foolish shit for his bitch, but what he would never do is be made a fool of by her. If Presley took off, went to another clubhouse and was doing fuck knows what? No way would he go there, tail between his legs, to get her back.
Fuck that.
“See you’re thinkin’,” Dragon grunts.
“So, when one of you doesn’t get through, another one comes in, you got a line formed outside?” I ask.
Dragon chuckles. “Nah, I just saw him walkin’ out, asked what he was doing. He told me he was trying to get through to your dumb, stubborn ass.”
“Wants me to make a fool of myself by going to another clubhouse to collect a woman who don’t want me,” I spit.
Dragon’s brows rise as he crosses his arms over his chest. Tilting his head to the side, his eyes search my face. I’m too shit-faced to stand right now, so I take another drink from my now almost empty bottle.
“You think she’s fucking one of them,” he states.
Just the words, hearing them out loud, it really fucking pisses me off. “Color me fucking stupid, but she walked away from me, getting into Dutch’s truck, and I haven’t seen or heard from them since,” I bark.
There is a long moment of silence, and to be honest, I’m getting kind of tired of men that are supposed to be my brothers coming in here, lecturing me and then being all fucking quiet as they analyze me.
They can all go fuck themselves, and if I could stand, I would tell Dragon that and walk away, but since I can’t, I have to keep my mouth shut.
“All you gotta do is ask, brother. Just fucking ask. You two don’t know one another well, she’s probably scared shitless. You left and she was alone. Ran scared.”
“Straight to another clubhouse, landing on some other guy’s dick? No fucking thank you.”
Dragon shakes his head. “When you’re ready for the truth, all of it. I’ll give it to you. But I can see that you’re just not.”
He turns away from me, walks away and leaves me there alone to find my joint and my booze. His words ring in my head over and over again, that there’s a truth and that for whatever reason, he doesn’t think I’m ready for it.
“Fuck you,” I slur to the empty room right before everything goes dark.
LEIGHTON
“You have got to get some more clothes,” Ana announces.
Looking down, I cringe as I lift my gaze back up to meet hers. My belly has kind of popped seemingly overnight. While I can still hold my shorts up with a rubber band around my button, my shirts don’t cover my lower belly anymore.
“Maybe I can just get some men’s shirts?” I ask.
Ana’s eyes widen. “If you’re thinking of getting some of Dutch’s old shirts, you can just kiss anything with Mountain goodbye.”
“What?” I breathe.
She arches a brow, her lips twitching into a small smile. “I’ve learned a lot about these men while living here, one is wearing their t-shirts is basically the same as having sex and being claimed by them.”
“Wow.”
“You want Dutch’s shirts, don’t you?” I ask with a grin.
She throws her wet dishrag at me, it hits against my shoulder before it falls to the floor with a slap. I look down at the rag, then lift my face to look up at hers. Ana’s cheeks are bright red and she’s biting her bottom lip.
“You do.” I laugh. “God, you know he’s only over here all the time to look at you, right? He’s totally in to you.”
She shakes her head, taking a step back until her butt hits the edge of the counter. Her head tips down as she reaches back to curl her fingers around the counter. I smile, watching her and waiting to see if she’s going to respond.
Ana lets out a sigh before her gaze shifts up to meet my own. “He doesn’t like me and even if he did, I think I messed it all up.”
“Oh, he does,” I sing.
Ana sighs, shaking her head. “No, he really doesn’t.”
“You know this because?”
There’s a long moment of silence, then finally she growls beneath her breath and takes a step toward me. “I kissed him, okay. He kissed me back, then pushed me away, ran his hand through his hair and told me that it couldn’t happen. He didn’t feel the same, before he turned around and ran.”
“Ran?” I gasp.
Her eyes focus on mine and she nods her head once. “Ran,” she repeats.
“Do you think he’s just worried because of your past?”
I don’t know a lot about Ana’s past, I know that her family is bad news, similar to mine, but their own kind of badness. I know that the Sinister Skulls have kept her here, under their protection for a reason.
“He could be, but I doubt it. Doesn’t matter. Even if I like him, I can’t ever give up as much control as the women of this club do.”
“Is it giving up control, though? I mean the women say what, where, when, and how, ultimately, right?” I ask.
That’s the way it was explained to me, anyway. I don’t know if I believe it all. However, I’ve seen the way the Old Ladies are around their men, the way they look at them, the way their men look back. It’s really beautiful. Even if I don’t understand it, even if I know that I could never do it, to see the way that they obviously love one another, it is breathtaking.
“To me it is,” she mutters. “I like him, but he doesn’t want me, so it doesn’t really matter how I feel. I really just need to find someone that doesn’t wear a cut.”
Nodding, I tilt my head to the side and watch her. I could see that, too. Not wanting one of the rough men. They can be intimidating, overbearing, stubborn, and just plain cruel. But they can be a million good things too.
“Oh, God,” she groans. “You’re thinking about Mountain. Why don’t you just go back to him?”
Shaking my head, I cross my arms under my chest and snort. “You think Dutch doesn’t want you? Well, Mountain doesn’t want me times ten, at least not in the same way as I would like him. He wants to have his cake and eat it too, he wants the idea of me waiting for him, but he doesn’t really want me.”
“That can’t be true,” Ana rasps.
“Can’t it?” I ask.
She presses her lips together, her gaze flicking down to my belly, then back up to meet mine. “You haven’t told him about that yet, have you?”