“Nothing,” I grunt as I start pacing. “Sorry.”
He rolls his eyes. “I don’t want a half-assed apology. I want to know what the fuck is going on with you lately.”
“Nothing.”
“Zak.”
I stop but don’t look at him.
“You’ve been a royal cocksucker since you left Blondie’s place, but you won’t tell me what happened. I thought you liked her?”
“It has nothing to do with her.” Not Theo directly, anyway. She’s fucking perfect and I more than just like her.
“Bull-fucking-shit.” Jackal walks in, grabs the chair from my desk and flips it around before he plants his ass with his arms resting on the back of it. “Spill it, brother.”
He may be my best friend but I’m not about to tell Jackal all the ways I’m not man enough to be with Theo exactly how I want to, not going to share my feelings and insecurities and shit, not without a fuckton of liquor anyway. Instead, I walk to the desk, yank open the drawer, and pull out thelove noteI found on the handlebars of my bike.
“Hey, freak. Thanks for showing us where your old lady lives. Be seeing you both soon.” He reads it aloud as soon as the note is in his hand. “Fucking Cobras followed you to Blondie’s?”
I nod and start wearing a hole in my floor again. “It was there when I left. That punk ass prospect is starting a war, man. He laid the groundwork at MACs by provoking us and now—“
“He’s threatening your old lady.”
“Right.” The only reason I don’t correct him is because if I’m going to go to Prez with this, which I’m seriously considering at this point, they’ll need to know I’m serious about Theo as more than a quick fuck, which I would be in a heartbeat if I could actually be with her. Club protection only extends to members and their families unless it’s a deal worked out between allies, so if I want someone else helping me watch Blondie, that’s what it’s going to take.
“She know about this?” Jackal asks as he scans the note.
I shake my head. “Haven’t told her yet. Was hoping that laying low for a while would throw them off, make them think I wasn’t seeing her anymore.”
He pins me with light blue eyes. “But you’ve been watching her.”
“Yeah. Drive-bys mostly, occasionally sitting on her building for a few hours here and there, but this morning when I was getting ready to leave, I saw a truck slow down in front of her place and I’m pretty fucking sure that prospect was riding shotgun.”
“Fuck,” Jackal grunts. “He try anything?”
“Blondie wasn’t home. Went into town to run errands.” The first time she’s left her place since I did.
Something else that’s had me worried fucking sick.
Theo scrapped her entire routine and just holed up in her apartment for almost three fucking weeks and I have no idea what the fuck caused that shit.
Which is why I took my stalking to a new level, graduating to peeping Tom because I thought maybe she was sick or had hurt herself and wasn’t able to get help, but she wasn’t. No, Theo was decked out in circus tent size t-shirts, those ratty ass sweatpants, and a bit of an adorable mess, but she seemed to be fine. Ate a lot of ice cream. Spent a lot of time on her laptop or desktop, sometimes both. Cried a lot during a four-day John Hughes marathon. Also cried a lot during a slasher movie binge which I definitely don’t understand. I saw her texting several times so I’m sure she at least talked to Summer, but that was the extent of things until this morning when my beautiful blonde angel took Fabio with her into town and I’m hoping it means she’ll be out most of the day. At least long enough to figure out a way to protect her from those Cobra assholes.
“You really think they’d go that far?” Jackal asks. “Fuck with a woman just to get under your skin?”
I pace harder. “I don’t know, man. I don’t know hardly anything about that club. It could be a bluff, but the fact that they went by today in a truck and left when she wasn’t there makes me think they would at least try to scare Blondie, if not actually fuck with her.”And I don’t fucking like it.
He gets to his feet with a nod. “We need to go to Prez. He might have some insight on the Cobra Cons and he needs to know a couple of their prospects have a hard-on for you. We can figure out the rest once we talk to him.”
Thank God for this asshole because that’s exactly what we do.
* * *
An hour later,I’m sitting in the back room with Prez and our VP, Marbles, along with the rest of the EC; Sgt. At Arms, Brick, Jackal and our Treasurer Crunchy, our club Secretary Spider, my second as Enforcer, Pork Chop, and Pope, our Chaplain. We are the Executive Committee, the inner circle, the heart and soul of Wulven Kings MC, and right now I am grateful as fuck for these bastards. More grateful than I have been for the last seventeen years.
Prez has some knowledge of the Cobras but not a lot. He knows they’re new, they’re younger, they’re unstable, and give bikers everywhere a bad reputation because their number one source of income? Prostitution and sex trafficking. Fucking sick shit, man.
“Then they were the ones Little John was telling me about?” Prez asks. “The ones you boys got into the scuffle with?”
