Page 67 of Ride or Dies

She and Isabel exchanged another one of those looks, and it said everything else I needed to know.

The awkwardness between us. Not seeing them after those first few minutes. None of that had to do with me being in shock. They weren’t around. Not for me anyway.

“What do you want to do?” Jenna asked, anger sparking in those pale eyes of hers. “Because that’s what we’ll do.”

“Can I just go back to your place?” I asked, suddenly exhausted. “If they don’t want me here, then I don’t want to be here. Besides, it’s not like they have to protect me from anyone anymore.”

“Like they did such a great job in the first place,” Jenna muttered. “Stubborn assholes.”

“I’ll go let them know that we’re leaving, and that Evie is coming with us,” Isabel said, her own irritation with the brothers written on her face.

I didn’t bother hoping that they’d realize this was the time to speak up if they wanted me to stay. No matter what they’d said to me during our time together, I thought it was pretty clear that they didn’t feel the same way I did. They’d wanted me and they’d had me. And apparently, that was enough for them.

They weren’t the first people to think I wasn’t worth the trouble, and I doubted they’d be the last.

It still didn’t make it hurt any less when Isabel and Jenna took me out to their car and no one said a word. Not even good-bye.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Tucker

Evie was safe. That was all that mattered.

That thought had kept me sane when we went back to the clubhouse, and when Jenna had informed us that Evie would be staying with her and Isabel until the wedding.

Sane, however, wasn’t happy.

That first night, I assumed that Evie just needed to be someplace a little more normal than an MC clubhouse where she’d be moving between three bedrooms, shared with three men…

I did my best to scrub that video, but the damage had been done. Maybe, one day, people would forget about it, the same way the public had forgotten about Hugh Grant and the prostitute, or Kristen Stewart and the married director. Except those scandals only got forgotten because Grant and Stewart moved on. If Grant had decided to date the escort, or if Stewart and the director had gotten married, it would have haunted them.

If Evie had stayed at the clubhouse that night, it would’ve fed into the story. I accepted that. I accepted that she might not come back here for a while, but I didn’t expect to just not hear from her, not see her. Whenever one of us guys went over to Jenna’s or our mom’s, Evie wouldn’t be there, and the only thing either of them ever said was that she was working on things for the wedding.

Not that we spent much time trying to reach out to Evie. As much as I wanted to believe there was a logical reason for Evie going to stay with Jenna and Isabel, a part of me couldn’t help wondering if Evie just didn’t need us anymore. And since she didn’t need us, she didn’t want to be with us anymore.

After all, despite the shitstorm about the video, she had a career to get back to in Nashville. She could hire another publicist, someone who’d put a spin on everything and make her look great again.

“This is bullshit.”

My brothers looked over at me, as surprised by my outburst as I was.

“Something you want to share?” Mason asked as he went back to the gun he was cleaning.

We’d tried not talking about it and that hadn’t done any good. It was time to try something new.

“Evie,” I said. “The wedding is this weekend, and we have no idea what’s gonna happen after that.”

“Way I see it,” Levi said, “she’s made it pretty clear she’s gotten what she wanted out of us.”

“Has she?” I argued. “Did either of you talk to her after we took out the Cobras? Besides asking her if she was okay, did any of us tell her how worried we were? How we felt about her?”

Levi scowled and looked away. Mason’s silence was just as loud.

“Did any of us ask her to stay?”

I let my question hang there, because I knew I was just as guilty as they were. And I knew why.

“Jenna’s the only one of us to ever date seriously,” I said. “I never understood how she could do that, not after seeing what Dad’s death did to Mom. But with Evie…when I saw those assholes shooting into Rocky’s, and then after we knew Clayton took her…I was terrified.”

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