Total pages in book: 61
Estimated words: 56628 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 283(@200wpm)___ 227(@250wpm)___ 189(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 56628 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 283(@200wpm)___ 227(@250wpm)___ 189(@300wpm)
“It’s been a fucking year, Adelaide,” Joey snapped down at me.
I narrowed my eyes at him, fire lighting up my dark eyes. Joey clenched his jaw, a look of regret passing through his eyes before he smothered it, evenly meeting my enraged gaze, not intimidated by me in the slightest. Not like his other men would have been. “You really want to do this?” I snapped at him, my words still slurred but that one sentence from him had sobered me up a tiny bit.
It was my birthday today—my twenty-first birthday, at that—which meant it’d been exactly a year since I’d lost my rock to cancer. It had been an entire year since I’d walked into her apartment and found her dead—lifeless—on her couch.
Joey clenched his jaw. “We’ve all been waiting for you to come around, Adelaide, but enough is fucking enough.” I could have breathed fire at that moment as I glared up at him, my hands tightening into fists at my sides. “You’re twenty-one fucking years old today. It’s time to get your shit together.”
I sent a right hook against his face, not giving a fuck about the consequences. Joey could be violent if he wanted to. He’d never hit me, but he was an MC president, and shit like I’d just pulled couldn’t go unpunished.
His face swung to the left, and I instantly saw blood well up on his lip and trickle down his jaw. He turned his blazing, dark eyes to me, danger glittering in their angry depths. I swallowed thickly, knowing just how volatile Joey could be. Jessie quickly grabbed him, pulling him back from me before he could retaliate like I knew he wanted.
Large, calloused hands settled over my bare shoulders, sending a shiver racing down my spine as familiar cologne that I hadn’t smelled in three fucking years wrapped around me. I would know those hands anywhere, too. Could pick up the smell of that cologne in any setting. He hadn’t changed.
Tristan Groves.
My dead best friend’s brother that I had once been madly in love with.
But that was before he shattered my heart on my eighteenth birthday.
After last year, I was beginning to think my birthdays were cursed.
“Why don’t you go cool off, Joey?” Tristan suggested from behind me, his voice filled with so much coldness that some of the people around us stopped dancing and turned to see what was going on. They never paid Joey and I much mind. They knew we fought all of the time. But someone daring to stand up against Joey, another MC president at that?
It was very possible that blood was about to be spilled.
I flung Tristan’s hands off my shoulders, stepping closer to Joey. He reached out and turned me, pulling my back flat against his chest, his left arm wrapping around my shoulders, holding me protectively to his body. We might have been oil and water, but he didn’t rip my goddamn heart out of my chest. I could always count on Joey when it came down to it.
Tristan? He took one of the worst times of my life to fuck me up.
“How about you get the fuck out of my clubhouse, Grim?” Joey snarled at him, using Tristan’s street name. “And keep your fucking hands off of my woman.” His arm flexed around me. I slid my hands over his forearm, trying to keep him calm, to get him to hold me with him.
That was the one promise he made to me—that I would always be able to keep him with me, no matter what happened between us.
I squeaked in shock when Tristan quickly grabbed me and pushed me behind him before he stepped toe to toe with Joey, both of their heights evenly matched, though Joey was just a bit more muscular—and a little older. “I was here to make a deal, Joey,” Tristan snarled at Joey. “But I can always change my fucking mind and instead spill blood all over your fucking carpets.”
What the hell was Tristan talking about? A deal?
Joey had cut ties to the Sons of Death as soon as he found out what Tristan did to me. I hadn’t even been under Joey’s care for a week when he found out, but Joey quickly cut all connections, and they’d been enemies since.
Before I could begin to voice my questions, to try to figure out what the hell Tristan was on about, I leaned over and vomited all over the floor.
“Fucking hell, Adelaide!” Joey snapped as Jessie quickly gripped my shoulder and held my hair back out of my face. “You’re cleaning this shit up!” he barked at me.
“Ignore him, sweetheart,” Jessie told me softly, rubbing my back soothingly as I retched again. “You alright?”
I nodded at her, not admitting weakness. I never would, especially not in front of Tristan. Standing back up to my full height and taking a step away from my own mess, I glared up at Tristan. “Why are you here, Tristan?” I demanded. “This club doesn’t make deals with the Sons of Death. They’re actually loyal to the people they care about.”