“Bit of a sore thumb, I’m afraid.” She smiled and held up both palms as if to sayguilty, and earned a smile from him in response. And a quick check-out: his gaze traveled down her torso, the sensible black t-shirt she wore under her unzipped jacket, and back up, lingering a moment on her mouth. Little pervert.
“Nah, it’s…” He trailed off. Wisely.
Unseen, Axelle mimed gagging.
“Anyway. You were saying: the Lean Dogs?”
He blinked, refocusing. “Yeah. They suck.”
“You called them ‘trash.’ That’s harsh.”
He leaned forward, earnest – excited about this line of questioning. “Yeah, it’s like – I dunno if they have MCs like that where you’re from” – if only he knew – “but those guys should all be in jail. They deal drugs, and they’re, like, pimps or something. If they see a girl they like, they just take her, and then force her to have sex with all their friends. It’s sick.”
“Sounds like it,” she said, dryly, not at all surprised when he missed her tone. “But why would the city allow people like them to roam the streets, doing what they will?”
“That’s what I’m saying!” He’d shouted, and his cheeks reddened; his head lowered along with his voice. “I think everybody’s afraid of them. They totally kill anybody who gets in their way.”
Eden said, “Goodness. How do the people of Knoxville sleep at night?”
~*~
“Laying it on a bit thick,” Fox murmured to himself, a smile tugging at his lips. He and Tenny had settled into the booth behind Eden’s, and each question sounded more and more like a line delivered on stage. Fortunately, Jimmy Connors was an idiot; plus, he trusted Eden to read the boy correctly and adjust her acting accordingly.
Across the table, Tenny was slouched sideways, his back to the wall, his long legs sticking off the end of the booth while he ripped open sugar packets and poured them one after the other into his coffee, his expression one of performative boredom.
Speaking of laying it on thick…
“Would you like to pretend to read?” Fox asked, tapping the magazine he’d spread out in front of himself for show. “Or are you determined to give yourself diabetes?”
His only response was a flicker of dark lashes as Tenny darted him a glance and then plucked up another sugar packet.
The thing about Tenny was: no one liked him. And he was probably keen enough to know that himself. It was his own fault, Fox knew: he wasn’t just prickly, but outright cruel. Sneers instead of smiles, cutting insults instead of good-natured ribbing. He was a perfect actor, and he was perfectly miserable.
Though, Fox had seen some changes in him since they got back from Texas. Small things, like saying “yes, sir” when Ghost gave an order; things like being respectful of Eden. Even she’d noticed, and had commented.
But mostly, the changes pertained to Reese.
Fox had asked once, and Tenny had denied it with one of his uglier sneers, but Fox wasn’t the sort who failed to notice things. TennylikedReese. Even when he was insulting him, or bad-mouthing him, or telling him he needed to work on “being human,” Fox could see the glimmer of true affection in his eyes. Around Reese – which he always was – some of the tension had dropped from his shoulders; his sneers had lost their sharp edge, and some of them had even resembled true smiles. Fox had heard the whispers from some of the other Dogs, the lifted brows and throat-clearings; he knew that Tenny had introduced Reese to the delights of the Lean Bitches – and then kept introducing him, again and again, and that neither boy ever took a woman alone. Fox didn’t care about gossip, and he damn sure didn’t care what direction Tenny’s bedroom leanings took.
But the last few days, the tension was back, and the sneers were lethal, andsomethinghad happened. If it had been the sort of thing you could bring up within an MC, Fox would have called it alover’s spat.
“Were there any Lean Dogs at your party the night of Allie’s disappearance?” Eden asked behind him, and Fox refocused on the task at hand.
“Were there…what?” Jimmy stumbled, caught off guard.
“The last place Allie was seen was your party,” Eden said, voice going crisp and professional again. “That was two weeks ago. On the fifth, correct?”
“Er…I guess. I think. Maybe?”
“Few too many keg stands that night?”
“I…”
“That’s alright. Her parents have already confirmed it was the fifth. You do remember her father showing up, don’t you? He says he remembers you. That you were very upset.”
“Upset about what?” A note of tension stole into his voice; a prickling of defensiveness. “I don’t know–”
“Allie turned you down. Very publicly. In front of your whole party. Her friend Nicole said it was, quote, ‘brutal.’ That you begged. Quite pathetic, really.”
