But it was neither. It was Saint, Jaeg, and Addie. Sam had obviously skipped the bouncers and gone right to the top to tell the Chief of Police.
“That hottie Sam told Saint you needed help,” Addie said, her gaze ping-ponging from me to Vic. A slow smile spread across her face, and her green eyes scintillated with laughter. “But it doesn’t look like she needs help to me.”
Heat blazed in my cheeks. Oh my God, she thought we were…. What? Making out?
“We’re not…. I was just….” Shit. “I mean, we were just talking.” My voice was hoarse and I stuttered, which only amplified Addie’s smile.
Jaeg propped his shoulder against the wall and crossed his arms as if he was getting primed to watch a show.
Saint was quiet, assessing the non-situation. Because that’s what it was. A non-situation. There was nothing going on.
“I… uh, was about to tell Vic that I found a place and we’re moving out of his cabin.” Then I added, “Tomorrow.”
I didn’t have to look at Vic to know his eyes were drilling into me. I already felt every inch of him all over me, but the temperature of his gaze had plummeted from the heat at the top of a volcano, to the icy depths of the Antarctic.
Jaeg’s brows furrowed as his gaze shifted from Vic to me and back again. “Are you serious. You’re really doing this? You’re kicking them out?”
“Guess where they’re moving?” Addie blurted.
I glared at her with a quick shake of my head. I didn’t want Vic to know we were moving into Callum’s guesthouse. He shouldn’t care, but after how he’d reacted to me working for Callum, I wasn’t about to find out if he’d be pissed or not.
“Where?” Jaeg asked.
“To a nice house just outside of town,” I said. Feeling Vic’s glacial eyes still on me.
“This will be interesting,” Saint said, a hint of amusement in his tone.
I glanced at him, and he winked at me.
It threw me because I didn’t expect it from the cold, hard-ass cop I’d witnessed at the laundromat the other morning.
A fist slammed into the swinging door and just missed hitting Jaeg in the head. “What do you guys think this place is? A freakin’ church?” Brin shouted. Her gaze landed on Jaeg, and there was a flicker of something in her eyes. It disappeared too quickly for me to distinguish what it was, but when Jaeg didn’t smirk or say anything like he usually did, I knew there was history there. What kind, I had no idea.
She peered past Saint, Addie, and Jaeg to glare at Vic. “You’re pushing it,” she told him, and then she looked at me. “Babes, you slammed it tonight. You’re officially our new Friday-night gig.”
I smiled, elation filling my chest. “That’s great, thanks.” I didn’t dare look at Vic, but then I didn’t have to. I felt the tension radiate off him like rays of steel. “I should go help Cali,” I said.
Vic pushed away from me, and I slid past him. But the instant I did, cold shivers swept through me. I hurried down the hall, feeling everyone’s eyes on me.
I grabbed my guitar, and Addie slung her arm over my shoulder. She leaned in, whispering, “Holy shit. What was that between you and Gate?”
I had no idea.
Vic
“Care to share why you had North’s little sister in the back room, looking like you were going to fuck her against the wall? Or just had?” Jaeg asked, brows arched with a curious smirk.
My jaw clenched. I didn’t like him talking about Macayla like that. She wasn’t some piece of ass, and that there was the issue. That she wasn’t.
She was everything. She was the light in the suffocating darkness, the fire in the frozen tundra, and the hand pulling me out of the rain.
“You let her work here?” I ground out.
Jaeg laughed, shaking his head and causing strands to dangle in front of his eyes. “You’re not serious right now, are you? You kick them out of your cabin, and now you’re concerned about where she’s working?”
“A bar owned by a crime lord,” I said.
Jaeg crossed his arms over his chest. “It’s legit. And you know it’s legit. Nothing goes down here. Callum agreed. Besides, it would be suicidal for anyone to start shit in his bar, and everyone knows it.”