Low Sided A.J. Downey (ebook reader macos TXT) 📖

I startled slightly because he was right, I mean, it was like he knew… I didn’t like things going on behind my back. I wanted to know everything and, I mean, could you blame me? Lack of control meant that I couldn’t and wouldn’t feel safe. I had for a time when I was with Mace and then he had to go and pull the rug out from underneath me – had to go behind my back.

I swallowed hard and stared at Sauley.

“We’re on your side, Raven. You helped one of us and we’re here and want to help you. You just have to trust us on certain things and one of those things is that we’re moving the same direction as you. Toward freedom and our own type of security and safety for those we love.”

“By doing dangerous and unsafe things?” I asked. “Isn’t that, like, an oxymoron or something?”

He shrugged again and said, “I think it’s more like a paradox, but it’s no less true. We do things our way. Yes, sometimes our way isn’t perfect or legal by citizen standards but by the same token, you think anyone is going to fuck with us or you? By default, you know how much of a fucking bad idea that would be. With us, you couldn’t be safer and thus you can’t know all the things, or you would be unsafe. Irritating, I’m sure, but no less true.”

“You’re making me tired and you’re making my head hurt,” I complained finally, and he chuckled.

He came over to me and touched my face. I froze like a deer in the headlights.

“Mace is lucky,” he said. “I’m glad you two found each other.”

“That’s… charitable of you,” I concluded after a long pause to find the words. I spoke carefully and Sauley grinned, looking so much younger, a man in his twenties with still so much ahead of him. It made my heart hurt for a moment for the girl I was. Before Max. Before all the pain and the heartache. For the girl who thought she’d been miserable and alone who didn’t know what true misery was… not yet.

I looked up at Sauley in that moment, holding my breath, terrified he was going to do something stupid like kiss me, and half self-destructively wanting him to because the truth was, I was scared. I didn’t think I deserved Mace, or this unexpected tribe of men and women that he was surrounded with who were willing to accept me warts and all. The truth was, for as much as society looked down on them, I still felt they were too good for the likes of me.

There was a certain amount of comfort in the sadness and melancholy of my aloneness.

“You deserve good things, Raven. You and Mace both, and I see what kind of peace you two bring to each other. Sure, he pulled a dumbass move, and if I were any less devoted to the club, I would probably blow my shot all to hell and gone and kissed you right now because I wish so hard to find someone like you.”

“Like me?” I echoed, confused.

“Yeah,” he said breaking into a grin and dropping his hand. “You’re wonderful.”

I shook my head, speechless, and he put an arm around me, almost brotherly, and walked me the rest of the way home.

“Do me a favor,” he called as I unlatched the stairwell door. I looked back over my shoulder and a flash of guilt crossed his face.

“Keep this conversation between you and me?” I asked softly, and he cracked a smile.

“Yeah, if you would, please.”

I nodded.

“I don’t know if I can ever trust Mace again,” I said and swallowed hard. Sauley nodded.

“I get it. Trust is in short supply, but Raven?” I looked up. “He would never do anything to hurt you. Me either. Not on purpose… and truthfully? We wish a motherfucker would try.”

He looked scary then, so why did it warm me to my toes?

“Goodnight, Sauley. Thanks for walking me home.”

“Anytime, gorgeous. Anytime.”

I shut the door behind me and ascended the stairs, my mind reeling. I had a lot to think about.

23

Mace…

“She good?” I asked, straightening up at the bar. Sauley opened his mouth and looking behind me, closed it.

“Off you fuck, Prospect,” Maverick declared, and I turned to our president a little irritated.

“She’s good.” Sauley stood up a little straighter and put me out of my misery, stepping back out the front door of the club. Mav took a stool next to mine and raised eyebrows at Ms. Momma Kat. She rolled her eyes, put a beer in front of him and fucked off, too.

Mav turned to me and my cheekbone gave a throbbing ache from the punch Glass had laid my hungover ass out with a few nights before.

“We ain’t really talked about it yet. You paid your price and all, and this conversation ain’t about that… at least not really, so put your hackles down, bro.”

I eased myself out of my unintentionally ready stance, perched on my own barstool and asked Mav, “What the fuck you talkin’ about?”

“What you did for your woman, not a one of us who has one blames you for going there. Still, going there leaves a stain on the soul. How you doing with that?”

“Fine,” I answered, clipped.

“You keep anything of this fool’s?” he asked.

I pursed my lips and got into the small pocket in the front of my jacket meant for a lighter or pocket change or whatever. I slid the gaudy gold cross on its chain down the bar a few inches and Mav looked at it. He swore in what I think was Russian and shook his head.

“A real Chad motherfucker, huh?” he asked.

I nodded.

“Yeah.”

“Ask you why you kept it?”

“To give to Raven at some point… when the time was right. So she could know she didn’t have to be afraid anymore.”

Mav nodded.

“You trust this woman enough to hand her the keys to the