Only me.Because he trusts you to guard Cam.Hard to believe after he’d been shot on my watch.That wasn’t your fault.
I knew that. But it still hurt. I wanted to switch places with Alexei so he could witness Cam hiding his pain and fatigue from every brother who looked his way. So I could stare at Alexei instead and lose the night to wondering why his close proximity made my blood run so hot I thought I was fucking dying.
“You are agitated tonight.”
I glanced at Alexei and raised a brow.How can you tell?
“It is in everything you do, wingman.”
Nice. I wanted to get drunk—the blackout kind that wiped my brain clean. But I couldn’t. The club needed this blowout for normality’s sake, to let the membership know it was business as usual. But it was bullshit, and anyone who looked close enough would see it in the way Nash hovered by the doors, eyes inside and out. The way Mateo met my gaze every second it wasn’t glued to Embry.
The way Rubi smoked a thousand cigarettes instead of chilling with a blunt in the corner.
We couldn’t relax.
Fuck, sometimes it felt like I’d forgotten how.
I need air.
“Are you claustrophobic?”
I glowered at Alexei. “Get out of my head.”
He smiled, somehow filthy, hideous, and the prettiest thing I’d seen all day. “You can go outside. I will watch him.”
“You know,” I started, then swallowed hard and shook my head.Doesn’t matter.
Alexei took my phone from my pocket and pressed it into my hand.
I rolled my eyes but followed his silent instruction.
Saint:he won’t put up with it much longer. Sooner or later, he’s gonna get on his bike and disappear.
“He is a man that craves peace.”
I nodded and typed again.
Saint:his own kind
Cam didn’t need to be alone in the woods to find solitude, a crowded bar would do. He just needed space from the club to get his thoughts in line, and as long as no one was trying to kill him, it was never a problem.
We need church.
I didn’t type that shit, but Alexei knew. For an outsider who claimed to be a lone wolf, he understood club politics better than most.
“My offer remains,” he said when I ditched my phone without saying anything else. “You can go outside.”
Tempting, but I liked being around him as much as I needed to keep eyes on Cam. I’d been tired before he’d crept up on me. Now, I felt alive with the need to push him against the wall and kiss him until my pulse deafened me, but I couldn’t do it. Not in the bar in front of the entire club. That shit just wasn’t me.
Besides, as much as Alexei had let the underworld know the Rebel Kings were important to him, he’d never said why. He’d never said it wasCamhe’d burn the world down for.
Or that, somehow, for reasons I’d never understand, there was room in their surreal bubble for little old me.
A warm palm grazed my back, rough fingers tiptoeing over my spine.Cam. My every thought revolved around him, but I’d missed him rising from his seat beside Embry and crossing the crowded bar.
By Alexei’s smirk, he hadn’t. “You are thirsty, biker boy?”
Cam’s glare simmered like an active volcano. The ricocheting heat hit me like a train and I almost flinched. Their energy scared me. Sometimes, I thought I had a handle on it. Others, I looked between them and saw strangers, even in Cam. In all the years I’d known him, he’d never gazed at anyone like he gazed at Alexei.