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Chapter Seventeen
Ruby
Everyone is on edge, a simmering of anger and sorrow so palpable, it coats your skin like sludge as we move through the club. I feel weighed down and dirty from it.
“Ruby!” Jackie, the club mother, screeches, racing over to me from behind the bar. Her sweet perfume reaches me before she does. “I was so worried about you,” she coos, stroking the hair back from my face before pulling me into her chest. Despite being easily in her late fifties, she still dresses like the bar sluts forty years her junior. I’m pretty sure her areola is squished against my cheek right now. “You,” she barks, releasing me and pointing a long red fingernail at Lily. “You were supposed to be helping out around here while Halo did his welfare check and you snuck away.” She thins her lips, narrowing her over-shadowed eyes. “It’s too dangerous for you to be gallivanting around.”
“I don’t work for free, and you may be the club mother but you’re not mine so back off,” Lily grinds out, folding her arms and waltzing off toward the bar.
“Lily,” Jameson warns, but she ignores him. Most of the brothers in her path avoid her like the plague, none of them wanting Jameson’s wrath directed at them. Lily has been known to flirt to get a rise out of him lately.
“That girl. What happened to the quiet bookworm she used to be?” Jackie huffs, wrapping her arm around my shoulder.
“I don’t know,” I sigh, an unsettled pit taking root in my stomach. I’ve never seen the club this packed. Not that I’m allowed to come here often. Usually when the club locks down, Jameson keeps us at the house.
“What do I do with her?” PB asks, my mother slung over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. I’m positive I see her eyes open and quickly close. She’s remaining deathly still. Another one hoping to avoid Jameson’s fury.
“Find a room with a bar on the window and a lock on the door and put her in there,” Jameson sneers at her motionless form.
“Halo’s room doesn’t have a window and there are handcuffs on the bed post.” Jackie winks to PB, and my eyes enlarge at the implication. Halo is half her age.
“Jackie, feed the girls, will ya?” Jameson nods to her while patting my shoulder to usher me away. The farther from Ezekiel I get, the bigger the pit in my stomach expands.
“Sure thing, darlin,'” Jackie purrs, batting her lashes and gestures for me to follow her. I scan the room catching a peek of Ezekiel before he disappears toward a back room. I want to go after him. Stay by his side and make sure nothing goes bad in there, but I know I’ll never get through the wall of brothers standing outside it.
“Damn, that man is easy on the eyes, huh?” Jackie winks, linking her arm with mine, following my eye line.
“You know him?” I ask, watching her face for her answer.
“When you’ve been around as long as I have, darlin,' you know everyone. He was just a kid when Viking found him. Running from something bad like all the brothers here.”
“He had a hard life,” I muse, thinking about what his parent put him through. Something tugs at my core, wanting to bring them back to life so I can kill them myself.
“Most of us have. That boy is volatile, though. You stay away from him.” Gone is the flirty party woman as her tone turns serious.
“What do you mean?” The chatter around us makes it hard to focus on the sound of her voice. I pull her into the hallway where it’s quieter. It’s natural to be defensive, and that’s the only violent reaction I’ve seen from Ezekiel—a reaction to an action.
Leaning against the wall, she folds her arms and takes a look back into the main room before turning to me. “I mean, he carries a darkness inside him even Viking was wary of. That’s why he doesn’t settle in one place. A man like him can’t be around people. He has to be free, alone.” She says it as a warning, like she senses I have feelings for him. It’s irrational to be invested so quick, but it’s there all the same, beating wildly in my chest and filling me up.
“Maybe he just needs the right people.” I don’t like the way she’s ruling him out.
Her drawn-on eyebrows nearly reach her hairline. Her fake lashes batter. “He’s not normal, Ruby.” Her hands flap around for emphasis.
“You’re saying the other brothers are normal?” I jest, but the light-heartedness loses its mark.
“I’m saying he carries demons, and those demons are hard to contain. Once unleashed, no one is safe from them.”
We all carry demons, some more aggressive than others, but there’s also the man who controls them—the man who deserves to live, love, and to have someone love him, be there for him, trust in him.
