Property of Drex (Death Chasers MC 2)

I don’t answer. Instead, I motion with my head for him to start walking as we stay across the street and follow her. There’s enough traffic on the sidewalks to keep us from standing out too noticeably, but she’d sure as hell notice me if she looked back.

She’s not like me though. She’s not looking around for someone to be following her or checking over her shoulder for threats. She’s innocent. Naïve. Blissfully unaware of all the shit that comes with being a criminal.

She’s a good girl. And I’m the devil who stole her from grace.

After walking in silence for so long, Axle blows out a breath.

“Are you going to tell me why it looks like you’ve had the hell beat out of you?” he asks me.

Eve is laughing with the woman behind the sales counter as she hands her cash. She was worried no one would take my card since it didn’t have her name on it, and she only took the money because I told her she had to. It’s not like I’ve given her a chance to make her own money.

She looks carefree and all smiles. My eyes move around at all the other people living their lives without looking over their shoulders. I don’t fit in with those people. I don’t even want to fit in with them. But Eve looks at ease amongst them as she walks out, loaded down now with four bags.

“Damn it, Drex,” Axle growls.

“She wanted to be a school teacher,” I tell him quietly, watching as she eyes a diner, licks her lips, and heads in.

Axle and I sit down on a bench, staying across the street and adjacent to the diner she just went in. He blows out a breath while taking in what I just said.

“And she can’t be a school teacher and be with you. Your position is too dangerous for her to be so exposed.”

I nod slowly, watching her as she sits down and pushes her bags in on the other side of the booth. She beams up at the waitress who comes to take her order, and something squeezes inside my gut.

“She can’t be anything outside the club if she’s with me. She’d have to give up her entire life and dreams. If I was just a low-level nobody within the outfit, she could be any-fucking-thing she wanted.”

“She set fire to her dreams and future when she signed herself over,” he points out.

“She did that for her family. Not because she wanted to.”

I heave out a heavy breath and run my hand through my hair. Eve looks out the window, but she can’t see me from this angle well enough to know it’s me without actually knowing it’s me.

She just seems to be taking in all the sights around her, not studying them for potential threats. My life is bars, strip clubs, and lots of business with shady fuckers from all over. Her life is camisoles and daisy picking.

It’s easy to forget all that when she’s submerged in my world with nothing else around. It’s hard to ignore it when I get to watch her from afar in her own element with all the other innocent people.

Dash appears in front of us, wearing his own set of street clothes, and he leans against a pole while pocketing his hands.

“What’re you doing here?” Axle asks him.

“Figured I’d lend a hand in case Benny tries something.”

I don’t speak to him. It’s not hard to figure out that I’m still royally pissed. He finally addresses it.

“I’m sorry, D. How many times are you going to make me say it?”

My eyes tear away from my girl to narrow on him. “You shouldn’t have to be apologizing. You’re supposed to have my back. Not Pop’s. If I’m unconscious, you don’t fucking threaten my girl; you take care of her. That’s how it’s supposed to work. She was fucking scared enough; she had miraculously survived my house getting sprung full of fucking bullet holes; and she risked her life to try and keep me safe. Then you threaten her?”

My jaw grinds and my fists start to ache from their tight squeeze. He looks away, moving his eyes toward the window.

“I do have your back, brother. That’s what I thought I was doing. I didn’t know I was getting played.”

I open my mouth to retort to that, but a breath hisses out of Axle’s lips before he mutters a curse. My eyes dart back to the window just in time to see a familiar face hugging my girl.

“Whatever you do, don’t shoot him in public,” Dash says, grimacing when Ben Highland—Benny’s bastard son—kisses my girl’s forehead.

Axle is jerking me back down to the bench before I even realize I’ve stood up.

“Let’s watch how this plays out,” he says quietly, almost regretfully.

My stomach is in knots, but I do sit down. They’re just friends.