She glared at Casey as Dom
tried to soothe her. “What?” he finally asked.
Shaking her head, she seemed ready to spit nails at him. “Have you seen Evelyn the last couple of days?”
He perked up at the sound of her name. Her voice warned that he wasn’t going to like where they were about to head. “Not in a few days.” His answer was cautious.
“What about you, Ace?” She directed her glare at their new friend.
A new awareness entered his face. “I have.”
What the fuck aren’t they telling me?
“So you know then?” Dee asked him.
“Sort of,” was his answer.
Having had enough of the secret obviously going around, he yelled, “What the fuck is going on?”
“Watch it,” Dom warned him.
Fuck that shit. This was about his fucking woman.
Getting up, Dee walked over to him. The sadness in her eyes instilled fear in his heart.
“What’s wrong with her, Dee?” he croaked out as terror stole his breath.
She placed her hands on his face. “Something happened, Casey.” He held his breath, his heart cramping. “I don’t know what. But something is very wrong,” Pulling a piece of paper from her pocket, she handed it to him. “I got this so you could call her.” He gripped the small triangle with a shaking hand. “But, Casey? You need to go get her. Her sister was very nasty this morning, and I shudder to think of what might be wrong.”
Fear unlike anything he’d ever felt before ran rampant through him as he imagined all kinds of terrible things happening to her. Was she hurt? Was her nephew hurt? Did that fuck Hardy make her do something she didn’t want to?
He zeroed in on his so-called watchdog. “What the fuck haven’t you been telling me, Ace?”
Pushing his worry to the back of his mind, he let his rage take control. Standing up, Dee backed off as Jax jumped from Casey’s lap to follow Dee as she left the room.
Raising his hands in surrender, Ace stood. “Look, man. I knew she was different, but I couldn’t understand why. There was nothing to tell. She avoided me like the plague.”
“But you knew something was wrong.” It wasn’t a question.
“I did,” he confessed.
“Case, you need to calm down.” Dom’s quiet warning didn’t penetrate his aggressive mind. He was ready to beat Ace into the ground for not telling him about his concerns with Ev.
“I won’t fucking calm down, Dominic. This is my fucking woman! He knew something was wrong and failed to tell me.” He was lost in a white hot rage.
Dom walked closer, probably in hopes of diffusing the situation. All he did was make it worse by saying, “If she’s yours, then why the fuck are you letting another man watch her? Why the fuck are we sitting here having this powwow? Man the fuck up, Casey!’
Before he knew what he was doing, his fist shot out, nailing Dom in the face. He watched as his best friend fell to the ground stunned.
“Not everyone has the perfect fucking life like you do, Dom. Not everyone can be as fucking put together as you. Some of us are fucking damaged.”
Having had enough, he left, needing to get away from the fact that he probably just fucked up the only family he had. Running to his truck, he hopped in with one destination in mind.
Evelyn.
The crunching of paper as he gripped the steering wheel had him pulling his hand away to look at the forgotten note. Ev’s number was written across it hastily. He wasn’t sure what he was going to say when he arrived or how he was going to gain her trust enough to open up about what had happened. He dreaded what was about to go down.
Growing up in a household with strict religious parents wasn’t the easiest thing. They weren’t affectionate with him or his older siblings, or even with each other. Casey often felt like they had children out of Christian duty. He had no foundation for what a normal relationship should be like other than Dom and Dee, and even they couldn’t be considered normal. Not with how their tumultuous relationship began.