Page 35 of Brooks (Dirty Misfits MC 1)
“So… beers?”
The guys hissed and chuckled to themselves as loud bootsteps echoed down the side hallway. I gave the guys one last look before pulling away from the group and heading into the kitchen. I didn’t want to be anywhere near Chops at that moment. Not after the kind of stunt he just pulled in that fucking church meeting.
Who the hell did this man think he really was?
Now, more than ever, I knew Chops was guilty. Of what, I wasn’t sure. But I knew he had a hand in all of this. In putting me away. In getting Gage killed.
In murdering Hyde.
It was a police shootout.
“Yeah, with drugs conveniently in a sober man’s house,” I murmured to myself.
“What was that!?” Chops asked.
I ripped open the fridge. “Want a beer? I could sure as hell use one.”
“Since when do we drink at ten in the morning?”
I didn’t skip a beat. “Since when do we sell women off for money?”
The room fell silent as my brain whirled at eleven million miles a minute. My club had been completely turned upside down, and it sounds like it was at least partially supported by men I once respected. The Black Flags were, for some reason, after me and they were terrorizing the only person that hadn’t stabbed me in the back yet. And now, I had a club ready to commit mutiny and overthrow our president while looking to me for secretive tutelage I didn’t have the energy to give.
Though, the idea of running this club the way it deserved to be run did sound appealing.
Nevertheless, I opened my beer first and chugged it back. The deeper I swallowed, the more I hoped the alcohol would wash my sins and my guilt away. I had just fucked my best friend’s wife. Didn’t matter that he was dead, what mattered was that I had desecrated his memory by taking a promise I made to him and turning it inside out. Gage and I always had an understanding between the two of us: we took care of the other’s family. And when I found out that Gage died in that exchange the night I was arrested, I vowed to him to do everything I could to make sure Raven was fully and completely taken care of.
You’re a disgrace.
“You gonna pass us any beer?” Porter asked.
I tossed cans over my shoulder and the guys scrambled to get them. I counted them out, one by one, even going so far as to throw Chops one. Things needed to look somewhat put together on the outside. Even though I was secretly planning to get rid of him for good, that didn’t mean I had to clue him into exactly how I felt on the inside. All he needed to know was that I didn’t agree with any of the bullshit he brought forth.
He didn’t need to know anything else beyond that.
I cracked open a second beer and turned to face the guys. Chops studied every single one of them. Attempting to read them the way Hyde could always read us. It made me grin, how he thought he could be like him.
You’ll never be like him.
Because for starters, Hyde always had respect for women.
The guilt still raged on, though. The more beer I sucked down, the worse it became. Part of me rejoiced at the fact that we had finally gotten together. Countless years had gone by where I hadn’t smelled the faint lavender odor of her conditioner. Countless years had flown by without so much as hearing her voice in my ear. Or seeing her on my doorstep. Or listening to her laugh at her favorite show, The Golden Girls.
I had missed so much of her life. Even if it wasn’t mine to miss or enjoy in the first place.
But she was still Gage’s girl. Yes, it had been five years. Yes, he was dead. But brothers like him and myself had pacts and understandings that went well beyond the club. Gage and I had been bro-mates. Soulmates, meant for one another in the most platonic of ways. We did everything together, talked about everything together, and made almost no decision without one another.
Except his engagement.
He never talked to me about that before he proposed.
Distance. That’s what I need.
I crumbled up my second beer can in my hand and tossed it into the trash. In the five years that Gage had been gone, the only thing keeping me away from Raven was prison. The distance between us, actually. And that was what I needed to do again: in order to keep fulfilling my promise without backstabbing my brother was to keep distance between myself and Raven.
I couldn’t make that kind of decision about her life without speaking with her first, though.
I owed her at least that.
“Got anything to say?” Chops asked.
