“Working on it,” I say honestly. I ain’t got shit to hide when it comes to Nic. She’s good people, the club likes her, and she knows the score.
The squeaking of a door silences the entire room. Looking around, I find Trigger in the hallway. He’s wearing blue plaid boxers and that’s it. His hair is all fucked up, and he’s wiping his nostrils. Fuck. I wonder how much coke he did.
“Who ya got in there, man?” Fish asks. He leans back in his chair and eyes Trigger as he plops down in the Lay-Z Boy at the other end of the coffee table. Trigger doesn’t say anything. He just leans forward and places his elbows on his knees and sets his face in his hands. The rest of the guys haven’t picked up on it yet, but I have. My heart stops for a good long time, so long that I think it might not actually start again, and my veins all feel like they’re shriveling up the longer I stare at Trigger.
“You fucking bastard,” I say, shaking my head. Diesel and Bear look at me curiously. Wyatt just shakes his head slowly with the realization of what Trigger’s done. One by one, my brothers and the prospects start to figure out why I’m so mad and Trigger looks so fucked up. Still, Trigger doesn’t say anything right away.
He lifts his head and stares at me with reddened, pained eyes. Shaking his head back and forth he says, “I let her go.”
Once more, a door creaks, and out steps Princess into the hallway. Her eyes are bright red and her hair looks like a hornet’s nest—like somebody was handling her roughly. She walks slowly into the room. Trigger takes a hit from the joint he had Rink roll and light, and he refuses to look at her. His entire body has tensed the fuck up since she walked in, but his eyes stay trained on the coffee table.
“Duke’s going to take you home,” Trigger says in a bored tone. Still, he doesn’t look at her. My eyes fall closed for barely a second before I look from Princess to Trigger and back again. What a fucking asshole. Trigger’s always had some kind of dysfunction in his brain that makes him a bastard, but this takes the cake. Of all people to fuck with like this, he really messed up. Sure, I get it—he had to do something to get her to understand it wouldn’t work between the two of them—but this is above and beyond. Looking at him and narrowing my eyes, I bite my tongue from saying all the shit I want to say. But what’s done is done and there’s a code. He’s my brother, and I’m not going to call him out in front of everybody in the room.
“Just fucking do it, or she’s going to have to take a cab,” Trigger says. He turns to me and blows out the smoke from the joint he’s got.
Standing, I point a finger at him and say, “We’re going to fucking deal with this later.” Fuck. I hate this shit. I called it way back when she rode on the back of his bike for the first time. He just told her she’d be riding with him, and that was all there was to it. Technically, it should have been Grady taking her, since he’s our Sergeant at Arms and the one responsible for that kind of shit. But no, Trigger didn’t even give Grady a chance to get off his bike before that fucker was at the van, offering Princess his hand and acting like he’s some charming fuck that he ain’t. Well, she knows that now.
I cross the room and place my hand on her back and lead her out of the house, saying, “Come on, Princess.”
I give her my helmet and climb onto my bike then help her get on before I peel the fuck out of there. She’s hurt, so of course she calls me on my shit and doesn’t let me off the hook for nothing. I slip and tell her that she’s just like her mother—and she is—but it’s not my place to drop that bomb. She’s got enough going on right now. She holds on, but barely enough to be safe. I don’t say anything though. I can feel the slight jerking of her body as she withholds her sobs. Crying a-fucking-gain. With every slight movement, a part of me breaks into a fuck ton of pieces. Over the last few months that she’s been here, Princess has become one of us, even if Grady can’t accept that. She’s family in more ways than one, and Trigger just fucked with my family.
Chapter 15