He rubbed Max’s back, brushing out the leaves and twigs with each long stroke of his hand. “The Jacks have marked her because of me and the choices I made. She’ll be safer if she leaves Conundrum.”
“Christ.” Zane gave an exasperated groan. “What does she have to do to prove herself to you?”
The opposite of what his mother had done.
Stay.
TWENTY-TWO
Members wishing to leave the club must have served five full years and turned their colors over to the president.
“So … you’re leaving Conundrum?”
“Yeah.” Arianne stared out the window of the Sinner SUV as Wheels pulled away from the curb outside Banks’s Bar. Banks waved from the doorway, and then disappeared inside, but she’d caught his slight wince as he raised his arm. He was injured because of her. If she’d just left when she’d planned, none of this would have happened.
But then she would never have met Jagger. And she wouldn’t have known the truth about Jeff.
“Hey.” Wheels reached over and squeezed her hand. “You okay? That wasn’t good-bye forever, was it?”
Her chin dropped to her chest, and she crumpled under his scrutiny. “I promised I’d stop by the bar and say good-bye to him and Dawn before I left. It’s just … when I look at him…”
Sympathy creased his face. “It’s not your fault.”
“Of course it’s my fault.” She wrenched her hand away. “I should have thought about what would happen if I got anyone else involved. Once Banks heard the whole story, what happened this morning was a foregone conclusion. And that’s what kills me. I understand why Jagger did what he did. It was a matter of honor for the club. That’s our … their way.”
“You don’t think of yourself as a biker?”
“Do I look like a biker?”
Sweat trickled down his forehead and he wiped it away. “Frankly, yes. You walk with the same confidence. You share the same attitude. You’ve got the same edge. You’ve got a kick-ass bike. You ride and shoot better than most of the guys. Everything about you gives your biker roots away, just like someone would know I was American if I went to France.”
She gave him a sidelong glance. Wheels sure didn’t talk like any biker or prospect she knew. He talked like someone who’d spent a lot of time in the biker world. Maybe he had biker roots, too. “Just because I was born into it and forced to live the life, doesn’t mean I have to embrace it.” She twisted her mother’s ring around her finger. “We have a choice. I chose to turn my back on biker life and find a place where I can be happy and not afraid. I just never thought I’d be going alone.”
“If my dad and brother threatened to kill me, I’d probably run, too.” His hands jerked the steering wheel and he muttered a curse. “I mean, if I had a brother.” He cast her a sidelong glance and then looked back at the road. Arianne tilted her head to the side, trying to reconcile the odd tremor in his tone and his even stranger reaction, with what she had first taken to be an innocuous statement.
“Viper never threatened to kill me.”
“But he put that picture in Gunner’s cut,” Wheels said. “Jagger took it as a death threat. He went crazy. You saw the result.”
Indeed she had, and she would never forget the sight of Banks tied to that chair. But as for Viper … She scoffed. “That was Jeff. Viper doesn’t threaten. He doesn’t do furtive. And he doesn’t know his way around a dark room. He’d see an action like that as cowardly. If he wants someone dead, he kills them. No messing around. That’s why the members of his club follow the rules. If they screw up, there is no warning. There one day. Dead the next.”
Wheels stared at her with a scrutiny that was unsettling, particularly because his eyes were supposed to be on the road. “Do you wonder if maybe Jagger released his blood claim because he wanted you to leave? So you could go somewhere safe?”
“Maybe you should watch where you’re going.” She pointed to the windshield, even as she shook her head. Jagger was protecting the honor of the club, not her. Love wasn’t part of the “club first” equation.
When they reached her apartment building, Wheels pulled over to the side of the road and turned off the engine. “What are you going to do now that you’re free?”
Free. She’d dreamed of being free, but not like this. “I’m leaving town before Viper hears Jagger released me from his claim. If I don’t, I’ll never get away. I’m almost at the point where I’ve exhausted all my escape options. This tiny window, where he thinks I’m with the Sinners, is pretty much my last hope.”
“So you’re leaving the biker life?”
Arianne gave him a half-hearted smile. “I’m going to be normal … happy.” But for the first time since she’d made up the little speech that had seen her through the worst of times, she didn’t feel any conviction behind her words.
Wheels clicked his fingernails against the steering wheel and shifted in his seat. Puzzled, and no small bit apprehensive, Arianne pushed open the door.