He licks his bottom lip. “So? The old Bailey would have loved this shit. The old Bailey made Anna look like a saint. Have you changed so much?”
I stare daggers at him. “I grew up, Adam, perhaps you should try it?”
He makes a scoffing noise but says nothing while I awkwardly straddle the bike and reluctantly wrap my arms around his waist.
I have one question running through my mind.
Why did he want me to leave with him?
FIVE
WHEN we come to a stop, I almost want to kiss the ground. Anna and Lana come over to me as I fumble off the motorcycle and take off my helmet. They obviously made it here before us.
“You okay?” Anna asks, glancing between Adam and me.
“She’s fine,” he answers for me.
The jerk.
“She can speak for herself,” I snap, turning my back to him and facing the girls. “I’m fine. I just want to go home. Could you give me the address for this place so I can call a taxi?”
Anna and Lana turn their heads to look at each other.
Are they not going to help me? It’s Anna’s fault I’m here in the first place.
“They can’t save you, Bailey,” Adam rasps, coming up next to me. “I warned you; you didn’t listen. Now you gotta deal with me.”
I lift my head to look at him. Was he always this damn tall? “I don’t have to do any damn thing I don’t want to, Rake.”
I need to remember that that’s what he goes by now. Also so I remember that I don’t know the man standing next to me.
He laughs without humor.
And I’ve had enough.
I turn and start to walk down the road, pulling out my phone. There has to be a street sign somewhere around here. Suddenly I’m grabbed around the waist and pulled back into a hard body.
“We’re going to talk, Bailey. Then I’ll take you home, all right?” he murmurs in my ear.
“We don’t have anything to talk about,” I reply, tilting my head away from his lips.
“Yeah,” he whispers. “We do. So you can come inside of your own accord, or kicking and screaming. At this point, I don’t care which one you choose.”
He wraps his fingers around my nape and squeezes firmly. “What do you have to lose? I never told Anna what happened that night. In fact, I never told a single soul. Trusting you is my burden to bear, and not a mistake I’ll ever make again.”
His comment sends me straight back to that night, just the place where I didn’t want to go.
“Fuck you,” I grit out, turning around to face him. “You don’t know shit, Adam. Just let me go. I won’t see your sister, or anyone connected to you again.”
He studies me and rubs his palm along his jaw. Then, in a simple move, he bends down and throws me over his shoulder.
“Adam!” I yell, squirming around. “Put me down, you asshole! Anna, I’m going to kill you!”
I ignore the men’s catcalls as he walks with me through their clubhouse. From upside down, all I can see is scary-looking leather-clad men, and all I can hear is music and laughter. All I can feel is anger and embarrassment. I’m wearing a fucking dress, and who knows what everyone can see. I punch the back of Adam’s thighs, but all he does is slap my ass once and I freeze.
“No one better have seen that,” I growl, trying to push my hair out of my face. A door is opened, a light is turned on, and then I’m tossed onto a bed.
His bed.
His very large, black, could-be-a-porn-set bed.
Images rush through my mind, me on that bed, underneath him, but I shake my head and push them away, knowing that they have no place being there. I look away from the bed and study the man in question instead, causing more memories to flash through my mind. I miss the old Adam. Before everything went to hell. The Adam who I would lie with in bed, staring at the ceiling, just talking for hours. The Adam who was my best friend in the world. He paces the room, stops, gives me a cutting look, then takes off his jacket and throws it on the ground, bringing me back to reality
“I never wanted to see you again,” he says, running a hand through his short blond hair. “Yet here you are. In my fuckin’ clubhouse. Christ.”
“You brought me here,” I remind him.
“I know,” he grits out between clenched teeth.
I cross my arms over my chest, hugging myself. “Anna and Lana wanted to see me. I didn’t seek them out. And I didn’t want to say no, even though I knew I should have. I couldn’t hurt their feelings. I still care about both of them.”
“I know you do, but this isn’t fuckin’ working, Bailey,” he says, shaking his head. “It’s too fuckin’ much. You’re in my territory, everywhere I go, when all I want to do is forget that you even exist.”
Ouch.
Why do I do this to myself?
I can’t have everything I want, and it looks like a friendship with my old friends is going to be something to add to that list. I totally see where he’s coming from. Anna and Adam are a package deal. I can’t be in her life without being in his. It is too much. Too much everything. Pain, emotions, memories. Just everything.
“I’ll stay away,” I say in a small voice. “I don’t want to be here either.”
Being reminded of everything I lost, everything that happened, isn’t a good time for me. I understand when he says he wants to forget. When you’re stuck in a place where you can’t go back, when you can’t fix the past, you need to let it go or it will eat you alive.