He’s always been rough around the edges, but lately it’s different. He seems quicker to temper, with a short fuse. Constantly running his mouth about respect like he’s daring someone to question him.
Angel hasn’t corrected him.Yet.
Four steps up beside me.
“You’re quiet,” he says.
“Watching.”
He nods once. Four isn’t one to needle or fuck around. His loyalty runs deep and quiet. He doesn’t waste breath on surface talk.
“You taking north patrol tomorrow?” he asks.
“Yeah.” I answer.
He grunts approval.
Kori makes her way over to us, bottle bleach blonde and barely wearing clothes, and drapes herself over my shoulder.
“You hiding over here, Clutch?” she asks, voice sweet and practiced.
I gently remove her hand without looking at her.
“Keep your hands to yourself, you know I am married.”
She laughs like that’s a joke, but I don’t laugh with her and eventually after Four and I ignore her long enough she drifts away.
Four watches the exchange, but says nothing. Everyone knows that I am a taken brother.
There was a time when I didn't go home alone. When I didn’t sleep in the same bed twice and didn’t care whose name I forgot. Then I walked into an ER at two in the morning with Axel bleeding through his sleeve and sawher.
Chestnut hair pulled back tight, not an ounce of makeup, with the clearest blue eyes I have ever seen. She didn’t flinch when she cut the shirt off Axel to reach the wound. Didn’t blink at the ink on my arms or my cut and didn’t ask stupid questions.
When I leaned too close, she looked me dead in the eye and said, “You can wait outside or you can behave. Those are your options.”
Her clear blue eyes didn't hold any fear and she definitely wasn’t flirting. She stood her ground, set her boundaries and got to work.
I went back the next week with a sprained wrist I didn’t have. But it took her three months to agree to go out for coffee with me.
I stopped seeing other women before she even said yes. Not because she asked, because it didn’t make sense to touch anyone else once I knew what she felt like in my orbit.
Bex is younger than me, by almost 15 years. But she holds a maturity to her that you don’t normally see in women her age. She can come off cold, people say that… especially some of the rough around the edges brothers. They say she’s standoffish, too sharp, too controlled. They worry that she thinks she is better than us.
But, they don’t see her in our room when she laughs so hard she snorts and covers her mouth like she’s embarrassed. Or the way she curls into my chest when she finally falls asleep after a shift. They don’t see the softness she guards like a treasure.
She had to be strong long before me. That’s why she doesn’t trust easily.
I know that, but it kills me that she still doesn’t trust this place.
Angel approaches around three in the morning.
“Blood Reapers were seen south of the line again,” he says quietly. “And they weren’t just passing.”
My shoulders square when I ask, “Preacher?”
He nods, “His men.”
Fuck.Preacher doesn’t send men unless he’s planning something.