“Nobody there?” I asked, clearing my throat of the softer tones I’d just used on Ayda.
“I told you, it’s been empty for years now.”
“To say you’ve been away a while, you know a lot about the shit that goes on here in Texas.”
“A good leader has eyes and ears everywhere, son—Drew,” he corrected himself.
My face fell, and the two of us stared at each other, waiting for the other to speak first.
“Don’t,” I finally said coldly.
“Sorry.”
“Let’s save son for Harry’s memory from now on.”
“Got it.” He nodded, pushing both hands into his jeans’ pockets and staring at me, cool and hard. Sometimes, when I looked at him for a certain amount of time, it felt like I was looking at a carbon copy of myself in twenty years time. His eyes were just like mine, only more assured these days. His jaw was strong. His stance was… it was all Tucker. The two of us were born with arrogance running through our veins, it seemed.
And sometimes, when he looked at me for a certain amount of time, it felt like he was looking at one giant disappointment.
He never said it, but there was an echo of something in his eyes.
A lingering shame.
I took one last glance at the building behind him, looking up at the roofing and at some of the loose tiles that were slanted out of place. The dirty moonlight of the night showed me just enough, but I was also aware of how much that kind of night could hide.
“We should get out of here,” I said quietly.
“You’re too suspicious, Drew. Of everything. Everyone. Every—”
He didn’t get time to finish. The sound of the gunshot going off rang through the air like a thunderbolt heading in our direction. The two of us dropped down, knees buckling, arms behind the backs of our heads as we tried to avoid whatever and whoever was trying to use our skulls for target practice.
The bullet whizzed past us, and I saw my dad make the exact same move as I did, the two of us working on autopilot as we reached around for the Glocks in the waistbands of our jeans.
Another shot rang out in our direction, missing completely but bouncing off the framework of Eric’s bike with an almighty metal-hitting-metal clang. I’d never appreciated someone missing a shot more in my whole life. The second the two of us figured out which direction the shooter or shooters were coming from, we raised our guns, and we fired.
“This way… to the right, Drew!” Eric called out.
We moved automatically, crouched low and running to the side, eyes and ears on high alert, allowing us to hear the scuffling of feet and, finally, voices.
Whoever was shooting our way they definitely weren’t from Texas—the jumbled, panicked voices of at least three men drifting our way in a foreign tongue.
Within seconds, Eric and I had moved toward the side of the building, running around the back of it to find the clearing that led to nowhere. No shelter. No cluster of trees for anyone to hide in. Nowhere for the fuckers to run. Eric took one glance over his shoulder to look at me, and when our eyes connected, I felt that blood bond running through my veins, giving me permission to do whatever the hell we needed to do.
“Sick of hitting on the bags, Drew?”
“You know it,” I growled, fighting to stay in control.
“Let’s go hunting.”
We watched as three men tried to flee the scene, one with a gun raised pointing backward and no target in sight, his aim completely off. I raised my weapon, closed one eye and counted to three.
One. Wait.
Two. For.
Three. Me.
The ring of the bullet I fired swallowed the sound of the word Ayda in my mind, while the cries of the man I’d shot in the leg had my father and me running as fast as we could to the men who’d tried to kill us.
I had no idea who the fuck they were. I didn’t need to. All I wanted was to take a life tonight. Avenge Harry.
In the end, we took three. Three men we didn’t need to know or want to know. Three men, who looked like they’d been living in the Navs’ old property without permission. Homeless drifters, maybe illegal immigrants, hiding out to make a better life for themselves in the future.
If only they hadn’t fired first.
If only it didn’t feel so good to kill.
If I didn’t get a grip on myself, it wasn’t just going to be me who felt the flames of my rage deep inside.
If I carried on like this, the whole of Babylon was going to burn.
Chapter Nine
AYDA
“Gotcha.”
“Son of a bitch.”
“Now, now, sore loser.” Tate was grinning broadly, and Kenny’s smug smile was tight as he threw the Xbox controller onto the cushion he was sitting on. I’d been watching the two of them running up and down the virtual football field for over an hour, and I was still unsure how they managed to press seventeen buttons at once. I didn’t do too badly at role-playing games, but this was just over my head.
They were in the midst of a shoving match when something pulled my gaze from them to the open door, and it was purely by chance that I saw a streak of black rush past, a streak that could only have been Drew.
I rose to my knees and rolled from the bed, waving off Tate’s inquiry to where I was going. My heart was pounding for reasons I couldn’t really explain as I wandered into the room I shared with Drew, my hand trailing against the wall as I moved.
The bedroom door was still open when I stopped in front of it. Drew was perched at the end of the bed, hunched over, his hands moving quickly over whatever he was holding in his lap. He wasn’t his usual cool and composed self, and if anything was going to scare me, it was that. The man I was looking at now was frantic, irritable energy rolling off him waves as it warned anyone close enough to stay the fuck away.
I wasn’t just anybody, and as I’d said to him earlier that night, I wasn’t afraid of him... no matter how broken he thought he was.
“Drew?” I asked gently, not wanting to startle him.
His head snapped in my direction anyway, his blue-green eyes wide and framed by splattered blood that coated his face like someone had flicked the ends of death on him with a paint brush. His leg tweaked up and down furiously, but he never looked away. He just let me stare at him. Take in every inch of it in.
I slid inside the room, my back against the wall as I pushed the door closed. No one else needed to witness this. His wild eyes were so feral that I just watched him, unmoving, waiting for some sign that my Drew was still behind that cold stare.
“Everything okay?” I asked, in the most normal tone I could call from my trembling body.
“Does it look okay?”
“No. It looks anything but.” I paused and took one step closer, my eyes searching the drying blood to see if there was a wound below it. “Is any of that blood yours?”
He shook his head once, his eyes following mine like I was the enemy. “Not a single fucking drop of it belongs to me.”
“Thank God,” I spoke before really thinking about the implication of my statement. Taking another step forward, I watched his hands continue to move, an old rag rubbing against the barrel of his Glock, coming away with smudges of red. He barely noticed. He was still tracking my slow movement as I moved farther from the wall. “What can I do to help?”
“What can you do to help?” His brows rose. “You want to make coffee? Sandwiches? Talk about this? My feelings?” Drew shook his head, clipping his snark with his teeth. “Fuck…” he suddenly hissed.
He chewed the inside of his mouth, his head still shaking as he narrowed his eyes even more at me.
“Look at me, Ayda. Fucking look at me!”
“I am looking, Drew,” I kept my voice calm and took another step toward him. “I’m looking, and I see.”
“And if you’re okay with what you see, you’re even more fucked up than I am.” He looked down at his gun, dismissing me altogether. His jaw was ticking, th
e thoughts about himself or whatever had happened taking over. He was anywhere but there with me. He wasn’t my Drew.
I moved closer, my steps a little faster now his attention was on his hands, and the gun. Gun. I was walking toward a frantic man who was unrecognizable and holding a gun in his hands. I was moving to him. Not away. I should have left him alone, but there was an alarm inside my head, warning bells screaming that if I turned away now—if I left the room or left him alone—I would lose him forever. This was the turning point. I could feel it in every part of my body, which was exactly why I was gravitating toward him.
“Drew.”
It was like a goddamn pattern. His name again, just his fucking name, but I knew he was reading between the line of every last syllable I wasn’t saying. That I was too afraid to say.
His hand froze over his gun, and he moved the second he thought I was too close, sliding off the bed and walking backward. Drew’s eyes were crazy wild as they blazed with a fire that reminded me of the first version of him I’d met.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” He stopped when there wasn’t anywhere left for him to go. His body straightened out, pushing him to his full height, and I saw the mess of evidence left on his skin and clothes. So much blood, visible even against the black. The white threading on his well-worn presidency badge was now tainted with dark pinks, streaking browns, and nauseating reds.
I was trying so hard to hide the trembling of my body and the violent shaking of my hands. Drew was so lost in his own head, in the horrors of what he’d just been through, I was struggling to reach past those walls and find him.
“How can you look at me that way now? How the fuck can you say my name like it’s all okay?”
“Because you’re alive. You’re here.” I swallowed back the sting of tears in my eyes and stepped closer to him, pushing myself through the fear that was trying to take control. “You’re breathing, and that’s the only thing that means anything to me right now.”
Drew looked down at my moving feet, then back up at me. “I’m alive, but others aren’t. They’re dead. They’re cold, rotting six-feet beneath dirt.” His bloodshot eyes searched mine as they narrowed and darkened, and he took a step closer. “But it’s okay, ‘cause I’m alive, right? You like me dangerous, do you, baby? Is this the man you really want? The man you get to fuck is bad, and that’s what gets you off?”
I blinked and shook my head. Somehow, I was managing to keep my voice calm, placid and reassuring, even when I felt utterly panicked in my head. Even when my heart was thundering in my chest with so much fervor my head was swimming. Even when my legs were reluctant to hold me up.
“Stop trying to push me away.”
“I’m not trying to push you anywhere. I’m trying to wake you the fuck up.” He continued to walk closer, his towering form soon hovering over me until I was too close to death.
“I’m wide awake, Drew. I’ve never been more awake in my life.” I could inhale that coppery smell of blood on him as I dragged my eyes up his chest to his stubbled jaw and finally met those beautiful eyes. Eyes that were so close to being completely devoid of emotion, I mourned the life in them. “I fucking love you. You and I both knew that I understood what came along with this ring, and I’m not fucking changing my mind.”
He leaned closer, his face only an inch away from mine. “Stop,” he warned in a cold whisper.
“I love you. I’m never going to stop that.”
“Your love isn’t doing me any favors. Your love is feeding the killer in me. I need you to hate me.” He curled his lip, his disgust at himself, even though it was aimed at me. “Your ridiculous need to love me when I’m wrong will lead to bad things, don’t you see? This is just the beginning. This is just the rolling mist, the warning before the storm.” He bared his teeth to me, his face so close to mine, there wasn’t anywhere left for either of us to go. “Hate. Me.”
I pushed onto my toes, my lips practically resting against his as his harsh breaths washed over me in the waves of the rage that swirled around him. For the first time since I’d fallen in love with him, I realized just why I’d been put in his path. Why I’d been chosen for him.
“No.”
“This blood-splattered version of me repulses you. I see it in everything you’re trying to hide. Preachy little Ayda with her angelic eyes and her beautiful morals. How can something so white love something so dark? Tell me you hate this...” His hand rose between us—the one currently gripping his Glock with angry, pulsating fingers—and I felt the tip of the cool, heavy metal press against my stomach. “Tell me. Tell me I’m wrong.”
I lifted my eyes to meet the rage in his. The blast of cold that emanated from them almost made me buckle, but I held my head high and met him toe to toe, eyes rock steady. “You’re so fucking wrong.”
“You sure about that?” He took one step then another, and another, moving the two of us without effort, just pure manipulation until I felt my heels and ass hit the nearest wall. Drew glanced down between us, and he rested one hand high on the wall behind me, leaning all his weight on it. His wrist hanging down between us twisted and turned slowly, the gun touching me and moving away repeatedly before he drew a line with the tip of it from the lowest part of my stomach, right up to the bottom of my ribs. “I’ve been told there isn’t anything I can’t do. Pretty sure I could make you hate me…” His eyes snapped up to mine, low and dark as he studied me through his heavy brows. “It wouldn’t take me long. Just a few truths that could make you sick.”
I’m not sure how I kept the outside of myself so steady when there was a part of me inside that was trembling like a dog that shit on the rug. Like this, he was so big, so imposing, and so intimidating. There was a tiny part of me that was cowering in fear, and willing to concede to his threats. But the rest of me, the large part of me that knew my life was Drew Tucker, squared her shoulders, looked him dead in the eyes and said, “Prove it.”
He tilted his head to one side and studied me. I saw his flicker of doubt before he smirked and leaned to whisper in my ear. “I always told you we’d go up in flames, Hanagan.”
Then Drew moved his gun, trailing it up and over my breasts at a torturously slow pace, before he brought it back down to trace the curve of my waist, over my hips and to my thigh. With his lips still hovering near my neck, I could feel his every breath.
When my own exhale fell from me in a stutter, he must have thought he’d won. The gun inched higher, the sight on the barrel pressing against the seam of my jeans in the most intimate spot he could have hit. The whole world seemed to spin around me as pleasure and fear mingled and flooded my body with adrenaline. Whether bravery or stupidity, I raised my hand, fisted his hair and moved my lips to his ear.
“I love you. Pull the trigger.”
Those words were his awakening.
The reminder of what we’d almost lost once already—what neither of us wanted to lose again.
Drew’s eyes widened, his body going stiff as I held him in place. There was no way to tell how he was going to react until a few heartbeats later when he hitched in a sharp breath, and the edge of it caught in his throat. Then he moved quickly. My body was slammed back against the wall, my collarbone gripped with his free hand while the gun stayed between us, and Drew’s lips crashed against mine aggressively.
I kissed him back, our teeth grinding together as we pushed and fought against one another in a bid to get closer, to fill in the gaps and finally fill in that space that lingered between us. When the gun pressed against my hip, I groaned, my hand finding his and pulling the Glock easily from his grip.
Irrational anger seemed to come with the transfer of power, and before I’d really thought about it, the safety was off, the gun was cocked, and I’d pressed the barrel against Drew’s temple.
He froze, his eyes opening to look at me while his mouth was still resting against mine, open and, I assumed, stunned.
I had his attention now, and I intended to keep it until I was
finished saying what I needed to say.
“If you ever question the way I feel about you again, you will feel every ounce of pain that you’ve put me through. You fall, I fall, and that’s the deal from now on. You don’t get to decide if you’re worthy of my love. That’s my choice.”
His eyes drifted to the side only briefly, as if he was checking to see if there really was a gun pressed to his head before he looked back at me. The silence lingered. It always did with him, but I held my position, and when I saw a flicker of recognition and familiarity in the spark of his eyes, I knew I had him.
“Fuck,” was all he whispered.
It was all I needed. All I wanted.
Slipping the safety on with my thumb, I released the clip and slid the gun onto the closest surface all within the space of a breath.
Once again, we were on even ground, and I wasn’t going to waste a second letting him second-guess himself.
Pushing both of my hands into his long hair, I fisted my fingers and pulled him back to me, the adrenaline now ebbing through me.
His arms and his mouth claimed me like it was the very first time they’d ever been allowed to touch my skin. Drew bent at the knee and pulled me against him, dragging my body up against the wall and hooking his hands under the tops of my already-bruised thighs. He didn’t care that he was still in his cut and his heavy, bloody clothes. He didn’t care that there was blood on his face, his hands, in his hair. Neither did I. It felt like we’d been apart forever. With just one test, I’d passed and brought something of him back.
Drew’s mouth moved everywhere, his lips sucking and his teeth biting along my shoulder, my neck, and trailing up to my ears. He was a starved man, and I was all he wanted to make himself feel full again.
“I’ve missed you,” he muttered as if he hadn’t meant to say it out loud—a thought he should have kept private which tumbled over his lips as he devoured me.
He wasn’t the only one who’d missed this. I would love Drew Tucker however I could get him, but he’d scared me tonight. I knew he wouldn’t have hurt me. I knew his threats, though very real, had been just that: threats. No, he’d scared me because I knew how close I’d come to losing him entirely to the demons that walked around hidden in every shadow he’d created.
WITHOUT SHAME: Babylon MC Book 4 Page 8