“It’s a good idea,” I murmured before she could argue.
I knew how she felt, but I wasn’t going to let her pride take her back there.
She glared at Lucky then glared at me and was silent.
Lucky took this as a yes. “You won’t be swinging your ass around any pole until you’re better. What’s wrong with you? Have you been to the doctor?” he frowned at her, his eyes trailing over her sunken form, her pale skin. He was smart. He wouldn’t stay ignorant for long. Especially, if he was interested in the way I thought he was.
“I’m fine,” she ground out.
His brows furrowed further. “Bitches around here need to stop saying they’re fine when they’re obviously not. Every man worth his salt knows that if uttered by a woman, the word ‘fine’ could signify a fuckin’ apocalypse,” he muttered.
He got three female glares at his words.
He held his hands up in surrender.
“We haven’t seen the last of them,” Asher ushered the conversation back to the more pressing matter than the semantics of women’s vocabulary. “Carlos knows you’re my Old Lady. For him to authorize this, for them to do that with my bike in the parking lot…?” he paused, hands around me tightening, “they’re not fuckin’ around.”
“If what they said to me was anything to go by, they most certainly are not,” I said quietly, almost to myself. My stomach dipped. Or more accurately it felt like I’d swallowed razor blades. When it rained, it poured. Then it stopped raining and lightning set everything on fire.
Asher went rigid. “What exactly did they say?” he clipped dangerously.
“That we haven’t seen the last of them,” I paraphrased.
He glared at me. “Don’t get cute, flower, now is not the time. What specifically did they say?”
I scrunched up my nose. “Not something I’d care to repeat,” I hedged. I didn’t need any more alpha released tonight, if someone struck a match this place might explode the air was already so thick with it. Plus, Bex’s state of mind was already delicate, to say the least, I was not letting these lowlifes be the catalyst for something taking away my best friend.
Asher’s silence told me I wouldn’t be able to get away with my own.
“They said when you got tired of our … snatch, they’d take it for themselves,” I said finally, my nose screwed up.
As expected, alpha anger rose to epic proportions the moment the words left my mouth.
Though I wasn’t focused on that, neither was Rosie. Both of us were focused on Bex and her reaction. She seemed outwardly calm. That didn’t mean much. She’d seemed outwardly normal when she’d been injecting herself with poison for six months. As much as I needed Asher here, I needed him gone. I needed to talk to my friend. Figure out how to get her through this.
Asher had other ideas.
“You’re going to the club,” he declared tightly. “Both of you,” he added.
“No, we’re not,” I replied quickly and firmly.
No matter how much Carlos and his “boys” scared me, I was even more terrified at the prospect of losing Bex. Taking her to a biker clubhouse where no one knew what she was going through, where it was unfamiliar, and who knows what was on offer, had a distinct promise of shattering the precarious road she was on to recovery.
Two determined sets of male eyes told me my protests were in vain.
Bex surprised the living hell out of me by not releasing her inner banshee. “We’ll go, Lil,” she said quietly.
Both Lucky and I gaped at her in disbelief. He had been expecting the banshee also.
“That’s the second time you got hurt as a result of my shit,” she explained in a guilty voice. “It’ll be the last,” she promised, glancing at Asher.
I felt his form tighten around me. “Damned straight it’ll be the last,” he repeated the same promise in his voice, slightly more masculine and firm.
“I’ve got school here. And work. I can’t exactly commute back to Amber at two in the morning. And I need that job,” I protested.
Asher’s face turned hard, and I knew he would have something to say about this. He wanted me out of the bar, and this was his perfect excuse. He’d get to exert all of his protectiveness over me, and I’d lose what little self-sufficiency I had left.
“Well, I can solve that particular problem,” Rosie chimed in from the corner. “Gwen and Amy have been itching to get you back, but they were waiting for the right time to ask. For things to … settle down with you….” she paused, gazing around the room. “Things aren’t looking to settle down anytime soon, so I’m declaring this the perfect time,” she exclaimed with a smile.
Asher’s form relaxed and a satisfied, edging on smug look replaced the tight one that had been there before.