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Chelsea was six when her parents died and she had been left with nothing.
“You’re a fucking idiot,” I snapped as I approached the table.
Chelsea’s eyes looked up to me, they were red and puffy. “Optimus… don’t, please,” she pleaded, reaching out her hand to me.
I took it, helping her wiggle out of the small booth. She instantly wrapped her arms around my waist and buried her face into my chest like a small child who needed comforting.
Deacon’s jaw ticked in annoyance. “Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize...”
“Let’s take this outside shall we,” Blizzard urged. “May’s gonna ban us from this place if we cause a damn scene.”
I nodded in agreement.
Deacon threw some money onto the table and followed us out.
“Optimus, just leave it alone.” Chelsea’s voice had grown harder now that she’d found her strength.Me.“He didn’t mean to upset me. They’re just photos, I overreacted.”
“Like fucking hell,” I growled. “You haven’t seen your parents since you were six years old, and he expects this to not upset you somehow? Get in the car with Blizzard, I’ll bring yours home after I’ve had a little chat with Deacon.”
“Op—”
“Now,” I ordered, looking her directly in the eye.
On a heavy sigh, she tiptoed up and kissed my lips before stepping away. There was a tightness in her features letting me know that this wasn’t done, but she would give me this. One thing about Chelsea was that she wasn’t afraid to tell me what she thought, but she’d spent long enough in the club to know that our business is our business, and we don’t have arguments in front of outsiders or brothers. She respected the rules we had in place and she respected me and my position within the club. That was one of the things that made her the perfect Old Lady.
She gets her say, and in the bedroom she can yell and scream at me until the damn cows come home, but not here, and not now.
“Bye Deacon.” She offered him a smile to which he returned. “Thank you.” She tried to hand him back the photos, but he held up his hand.
“Keep them. They obviously mean a lot to you. My dad won’t mind.”
Her eyes sparkled and she nodded, turning to walk to Blizzard’s truck, but not before throwing me a warning glare, which I ignored.
I waited until Blizzard was on the road with her before I turned my attention and frustrations on the man who I held respect for, but that continued to be a pain in my fucking ass. “You’re a fucking dumb ass, you know that?” I growled, folding my arms across my chest.
He leaned against the side of his cruiser. “Yeah, apparently.”
“Chelsea is hormonal and fragile and stressed right now.” I felt like I was telling off a damn toddler, but obviously he needed to hear it, or he wouldn’t have done something like this in the first place. “You know that when it comes to her mom and dad, it’s a sore point. You should have come to me!”
“We aren’t exactly BFF’s, Op. We can barely hold a fucking civil conversation without you looking like you want to rip my head off,” he challenged. “I thought you trusted me.”
I groaned, running my fingers through my hair. “You’ve had our backs recently. I get that, and I’m thankful to have you around. But when it comes to Chelsea, you’re her best friend and her worst enemy all rolled into one. You’re a reminder of the one thing she wished she had, especially right now, her mom and dad.”
His body tightened but his head bobbed. “I remember her dad telling me once when they came to visit,‘you’ll watch out for her, won’t you.’We were going out the back of the house by ourselves to play on the jungle gym my dad had just built for me. And being so young, I took those words so seriously. And I still do.”
Part of me understood where he was coming from, and appreciated the fact that she had someone else on her side. But the caveman part of me wanted to tell him to go to hell and find his own woman to watch out for. I tried my best to balance the both.
“I get it. You feel like you owe him that much. But what you’ve gotta realize, is that she’s with me. I know that woman better than anyone else in this damn world.” I made sure I had his eyes, I needed to know he was hearing me. “So next time you think of doing something like this for her, throw me a goddamn heads up. I’ll either let you know it’s fine or tell you to fuck off. But my priority is her.”
I could see the tightness in his face. He didn’t want to lay down and take what I was telling him. He wanted to punch me in the face and yell at me about how I don’t own her, how she’s her own person.
But he’s wrong.
I own her heart. That’s a piece of her he will never have.
“We can respect each other, work together on shit if we need to, but we ain’t ever gonna be friends unless you give up this obsession with her, and thinking that because you have a past together that it means you’ll have a future.”
I laid it out flat.
He could take it or leave it.
But if he continued to go behind my back and do shit like this, he wasn’t going to like the consequences.
“I hear you,” he ground out through tight lips. “Just so you know… she had some pain in there. It looked intense.” He pushed off from the side of his car and rounded to the driver’s door, lifting his chin at me before he climbed inside.
I wasn’t sure if he got my message, or if he would even pay attention. But at least now, we were both on the same page, and I wasn’t about to let him try and rewrite the story.
