Not a Role Model (Battle Crows MC 4)

Plus, I didn’t want to go in with their group. Going in with their group would likely get me roped into sitting with them. And I didn’t want to sit with them. In fact, I wanted to sit by myself because I was starving and didn’t want to share my rolls.

There was a pause. “The whole point of getting the door for you is so that I can hold it for you.”

Him pointing out the obvious made me want to punch him.

If I could only reach his throat…

Damn him and his superior height.

“I realize that,” I told him. “But when I go in first, people will automatically want to talk to me. And I don’t like talking to people.”

“Oh, my god.” I heard breathed. “Price. From now on, when you and I go somewhere, you’re always walking in first.”

I turned to find Price’s girl, Sabrina, staring at me like I’d just handed her the cure to cancer.

“What?” Price asked.

“When I go into a place, and you are with me, you always hold the door. But that puts me going in first,” she points out. “And then I have to be first point of contact. I don’t like being point of contact. If you go in first, then I’ll not be point of contact.”

Exactly.

“But then it makes us look like douchebags who don’t hold the door for the women. Kind of like when you wouldn’t take the helmet, and then that old man called me a piece of shit for not protecting you,” Tide grumbled.

Still butt hurt about that, I saw.

“Yeah,” I confirmed. “But it makes me more comfortable. So which one would you rather have? Someone else thinking something about you? Or your partner being comfortable?”

“You’re not my partner,” he countered.

No, the fuck I wasn’t.

And never would be.

Nope.

No.

Nuh-uh.

“Whatever.” I shrugged as the group started to file inside.

I hung back, hoping that they would get seated before anyone would turn to me.

And, at first, I thought that they had.

They started to walk toward the bar, and I hung back, smiling at the hostess.

When I held up my finger for a table for one, I was caught by the ponytail and pulled unceremoniously into the bar with the rest of the group.

Goddammit.

“What are you doing?” I grumbled, taking a hold of my ponytail above his grip on it and tugging my hair back.

“I’m bringing you with me,” he grumbled back. “So I don’t have to look at you being a sad sac eating by yourself.”

Ugh.

“I want to sit by myself,” I disagreed.

“You don’t get a choice, Elvis,” he thundered.

“Elvis?” I heard another woman call. “What’s that mean? I thought her name was Coreline?”

“It is,” I muttered darkly. “Only, this one likes to call me that because he knows that I hate it.”

Honestly, had anyone else in the world started calling me that but him, I wouldn’t have minded. It was a play off my last name, King. I could get behind that. But with Tide being the one to do the name-calling, I didn’t like it anywhere near as much.

“I call her Elvis because she hates it,” Tide commented, confirming my suspicions.

“Oh.” She paused. “I’m Sophie, by the way. Haggard’s wife.”

I nodded. “Nice to meet you.”

I wasn’t antisocial or anything. But I was anti-Tide.

Which meant, all of these people were my enemies.

Even Sabrina, who seemed really cool.

“I’m Iris,” Iris, Shine’s wife, said. She must’ve forgotten that we’d been introduced multiple times before. “It’s nice to meet you.”

I kept myself from rolling my eyes and nodded my head at her.

“That’s my uncle, Jeremiah.” Tide jerked his head toward the older man at the end that looked to be the same age as the rest of them.

“Uncle?” I played dumb. It wouldn’t do for him to think that I knew everything about him.

“Uncle,” Tide confirmed. “Jeremiah was born a year after Haggard. Our dad and Jeremiah’s father remarried.”

“Ahh.” I understood. “That’s interesting.”

“Yeah, it was weird for Dad at first, but Jeremiah fits right in like he’s Dad’s kid, and not his brother. Weird, but it’s us,” Price admitted as he took the seat directly at the end of the table.

I grimaced, hoping I’d been able to get that one.

Iris took the one to his immediate left, then Tide took the one to his right.

Leaving me the option of sitting with the devil I knew or moving to the end of the table.

I chose to move to the end of the table.

Only, Tide caught me by the belt loop before I could even take a step in the opposite direction.

I sighed and all but fell into the seat next to him, glaring at the empty table in front of me.

“I don’t like sharing rolls,” I grumbled.

“Get over it,” Tide said.

“You’re an ass tonight, Tide,” Iris said.

I looked at her to see her brows furrowed as she stared at Tide.