He stands from his position, strutting toward me. He slides his finger into my mouth. “Do I need to slide my cock between these lips to remind them that bad things can come out of them?” he gloats, leaning down until his lips are a whisper away from mine. “Or maybe I just need to fill your cunt with my cock and fuck you so hard that your secrets beg to run from me.”
I still, the fist he’s punched into my gut throbs with unbearable pain. Cool air blows through my blood, my body shivering with frost. He is already judging me. “Fuck you!”
His hand is at my chin and his nose pressing against mine. “Tell me who the fuck your little boyfriend is, Jade, and I promise I won’t make you watch as I cut him up into little tiny pieces and scatter his limbs all over the fucking Pacific Ocean.”
I push away from his grip. “He’s not my boyfriend. I can’t tell you anything else, Roy. You can’t make me talk.”
He exhales, pulling out another cigarette and putting it between his lips, just as the door opens in the background and Wicked waltzes back in, now with his MC vest over his hoodie.
“We got a problem,” Wicked interrupts, doing a quick scan of me before going to Royce. “The boyfriend heard us talking about what just happened. Before I could get my hands around his neck, he bolted.”
I watch in horror as the color drains from Royce’s face and his thick black brows curve in around his eyes. His pupils dilate, baring his sharp teeth. His anger crackles through the room like a thunderstorm.
“Royce…” I reach for his hand. I need him. I need to feel his forgiveness even if he technically doesn’t want to give it right now.
He recoils away from me. “You are coming back to my fuckin’ house, and you are not leaving unless it’s on the back of my goddamn bike, or in my car.” He turns his face toward me completely. His sharp jaw twitches, the tattoos beneath the skin on his neck stretching. I’m momentarily lost in how much he has changed over the years. His skin remained soft and features still too pretty, but the tattoos and muscles douse his looks in something deadly and flammable. “Do I make myself fucking clear?”
The room comes back into real time as I nod. “Yes, okay.” I don’t want to agree to this, but there’s a little bit of me that wants to be near him right now, another part of me that is hoping to calm him down, but the biggest part of the fight that’s happening inside of me right now is fear. I’m genuinely afraid of what James might do to me now that he knows I know that Royce is in here.
Did he know that this was Royce?
The muscles in my face instantly release, my mouth falling open slightly.
“What?” Royce snaps. “What the fuck is going on in your head right now?”
I clear my throat. “Nothing.”
Lying never felt so wrong.
I scowl at Wicked as I go back to Jade. She’s fucking hiding shit from me, I know it. Orson knows it, Storm knows it, and most annoyingly of all, Wicked fucking knows it.
Jade stands from the sofa, and all eyes are on her when she moves. “Bathroom?”
I nudge my head over my shoulder. “Back room. If you’re not out in four minutes, I’m kicking down the fucking door.”
Jade ignores me, brushing past and disappearing through the door.
“Are you always this hard on her?” Wicked asks.
I cock my head, studying him closely. I have two options right now. I can put him back into the place he so conveniently seemed to have crawled out of, while still being able to salvage what’s left of our friendship, or I can play the trick.
“Oh, you’re clearly new here.” Storm snickers from behind the bar. “That’s timid compared to what she’s used to.”
Orson is quiet on the other side of the room, but my focus hasn’t waned from Wicked. I’m like a shark sensing blood now, and that blood spilled from Wicked.
“You notice the dismissive nature that girl throws at him?” Orson finally adds. “That comes from years and years of built up resilience after putting up with Royce Kane’s straight-up bullshit.”
I flip him off. He ain’t wrong.
“She’s hiding something,” Wicked points out, leaning against the wall. “We need to find out what that is.”
“I know that,” I hiss, a little too quickly. I know why I’m more threatened by Wicked than I am of any of the others here, and that’s because the other two have always looked at Jade as their own sister. None of them have ever tried to get with her, nor would they. Jade Olivia Kane had my name stamped over her fucking ass as a newborn baby, and there wasn’t a damn fucking thing she could do to remove it. I knew it. Our friends knew it. Hell, our fucking parents knew it. “No one knows Jade better than I do.”