Shakedown (Souls Chapel Revenants MC 8)

Wyett grinned. “That word is really kind of an understatement. Six is overwhelming at the best of times. Six, being protective of her first best friend, is overwhelming times infinity.”

That wasn’t a fuckin’ lie.

Six was a little pain in the ass today, and that surprised me, because most of the time she acted like she didn’t care anymore, when I knew that she did.

Six held a mean grudge.

I’d left her way back when, thinking I was protecting her, when in fact it hadn’t protected her much at all.

But my young brain, at the time, hadn’t realized that. All I’d thought was that I was protecting my best friend.

And, in the process, I’d broken her trust in me.

“Yeah…” I said to the two of them. “Thanks for the help.”

Hunt held up a fist and I knocked it with my own before the two of them left, leaving me to go back inside and see what kind of damage Six had done with Belle.

Belle who was currently drinking chocolate milk out of a wine glass.

“Whoa,” I said. “Don’t drink too much of that. We have to get on the road. I don’t want to have to stop every fifteen minutes because you can’t hold your bladder.”

And, I shit you not, Belle poured even more into her glass, then held eye contact with me while she drank it all down.

My lips twitched.

“Nice.” I laughed.

She shrugged. “Your ex-best friend caused me to drink. But, since I’ve never been a heavy drinker, and can’t really stand the taste of anything alcoholic except beer, I had to settle for chocolate milk, which is my one vice.”

My lips twitched. “What did she have to say?”

“In the hospital.” Belle poured herself another wineglassful. “She was really nice. I think that she thought this was all a joke. But when she saw you holding my hand, her eyes narrowed on me, and I might or might not have realized that she might kick my ass. Y’all didn’t…” She made a hand gesture toward me.

“We didn’t,” I promised. “We never went there. In school, we were each other’s rock, so to speak. She was around when I got my ass kicked. I was around to listen to her bitch. Then when I left, she practically disowned me. When we reunited when she met Lynn, there was a really big blow out between the two of us. And she still doesn’t trust me all that much. I left her. I get that. I wasn’t there when she truly needed me to be. But she has Lynn now. And Wyett.”

“Who do you have, Bruno?” Belle asked quietly.

I shrugged. “The guys are there when I need some help. Like today.”

She tilted her head slightly to the left. “They’d never been here before today.”

I shook my head. “No.”

“Then you must not need them all that much if they’ve never been in your house,” she pointed out.

That was true.

I was used to relying on myself and myself alone.

Relying on anyone else was a recipe for disaster.

“I like my place to be just that… mine.” I paused. “I thought having you here might mess with that feeling of ‘mine’ but it hasn’t. But the minute they all got here, I got really agitated.”

“That was why you looked like you wanted to murder them when they walked in here with their shoes on?” she snickered.

“With you, you saw me take my boots off, and didn’t even question it. With them, they all questioned it. I don’t like being questioned,” I admitted. “You ready to go, or do you need another hit?”

She looked at the now-empty wine glass, then at me. “I’m ready. Just need to grab my bag.”