Breanna lowers herself to my bed, and I pause. Damn, she looks good there and leaving is the last thing I want to do, but in order to help her, I need Pigpen. He knocks again and I cross the room, open the door and step out onto the porch.
Pigpen leans against the railing and nails me with his stare. “This is the second time you’ve gone AWOL on the club. Let me tell you, that shit got old the first time. Next time I fucking text you to see if you’re alive, you text back.”
Hell, I’m so caught up in Breanna’s problems I forgot about Friday night. After the board laid it out for me in regards to Mom’s death, I split as I needed time to digest.
“Do you hear me?” he demands.
“Loud and clear.”
“Good. So what’s this 911 Oz sent out on your behalf?”
“I’m against the ropes on a problem.” Quick and to the point. Hopefully less painful.
“Knock and the door shall open...”
...ask and you shall receive. How many times has he said this to me? Breanna might consider this a betrayal, but it’s one person, not the whole club. “Breanna’s being blackmailed by some guys at school with a picture they took of me and her. I thought I could nail them and erase the picture by using the backdoor program, but they found it.”
“Thought I taught you to move fast when you work with hacks like that.”
He did. “I couldn’t figure out one of the guys. I was waiting for them to slip his name in an email. If I moved before I had the last of the group, I would have tipped my hand.”
Pigpen crosses his arms over his chest, clearly pissed that I’m not following his set rules for hacking. “You should have come to me when you hit that snag.”
“I fucked up.”
“You did, but now you’re playing straight. What was your endgame?”
“Figure out who was involved. Go through their phones and computers, then wipe the picture clean in one swipe.”
“It’s a hell of a risk to take that they haven’t stored the picture someplace else. I taught you to never underestimate.”
Until they found my hack, I was convinced they were minor-league players. I crack my neck as I do something I hate—repeat myself. “I fucked up and Breanna’s suffering for it. If you can’t figure it out, I’m asking for help.” And doing so is like offering a pound of my flesh.
“Give me what you know and we’ll get it taken care of.”
“I promised Breanna this would stay out of the club. I’m asking this as a personal favor.”
Pigpen shoves off the railing and studies me like I got caught knocking over a liquor store. “I told you, no more personal favors. You have a problem, then you lean on your brothers. That’s the point of the whole fucking club.”
“I promised her—”
“You made a promise to us first,” he cuts me off. “Here’s the thing, I know the past couple of months have been tough. Fuck, I’m not going to even pretend what the past couple of years have been like, but you have a family willing to take the same type of bullet that you did for us. You expect us to trust you, but it’s a shitty position to be in when we’re the one giving all the blind faith. It’s a two-way street with us. You either start trusting us or you need to give up your patch, because without trust, those colors on you don’t mean shit.”
“That how it is?” I ask.
“Yeah,” he says like it’s simple addition. “That’s how it is.”
We glare at each other as it crawls under my skin that he won’t look away.
“And another thing...you say you love her, then you better figure out quick if you can trust us, because if you want to get her out of this mess, you’re going to need the club. Just so you know, brother, you think it’s impossible to trust us with you, it’ll probably kill you to trust us with what you love the most.”
A muscle in my jaw twitches. “If you help her, I want in.”
Pigpen shakes his head. “We offered that help the night you brought her to the club. We saw you weren’t budging. This is it, kid. End of the road. The stakes are high everywhere and it’s time for you to go all in or to fucking fold. Which one is it going to be?”
Breanna
I’VE BEEN DRAWN to Razor—like a possessed moth to an inferno. So many reasons explain why: his beauty, his understanding, the way he protects, but it’s not until my chat with Clara that I understood what attracted me to him emotionally...at least initially. He understood what it was like to feel as if you had possibly driven someone to take their own life.
The guilt.
The self-hate.
The feeling that your existence is absolutely worthless.
I saw it in his face the night outside of Shamrock’s and I hurt for him because I still hurt for me. Clara pulled the knife away from her skin. She sank to the floor, tears streaming down her cheeks, telling me that she would do it if I ever told anyone what I saw.