Page 20 of Out for Blood

He sighed, shaking his head. “You can’t be serious, Sher. You want me to be okay with this?”

“You guys left,” I said. “Who was I going to run to?”

I saw the hurt register on his face, and immediately regretted it.

“I’m sorry,” I said to him. “I didn’t mean that.”

“Yes, you did,” he replied. “Why didn’t you call, Sher? You know he would have come running for you.”

“Do you think Donald would have been okay with that?” I asked him, sitting down on the chair by the door. He took the other seat.

“Ace needs to know, Sher. You know he’s going to lose his shit if someone tells him that isn’t me or you.”

“He left,” I said, quickly. “Again... What for? Because he found out I’m a mother?”

“I don’t think that’s what it is,” he said. “He wouldn’t care about that. I think it was more the shock that you didn’t tell him.”

“When, Casey? The only time I had with him, he was inside of me. I didn’t exactly want to start talking about my teenage girls then.”

He smirked. “Yeah, both of you have been wanting that for a while.”

“I wish he spoke to me. I want him to call me now and just tell me what’s going on.”

He sighed. “I can make it happen, but I don’t think you want that, Sheridan. I think you want to run away with those girls.”

I closed my eyes, knowing that I would have to bid Kilkenny goodbye, and that meant I would have to say goodbye to Cooper.

Again.

ACE

Snake, one of the Nomads who I’d put in charge of this chapterwhen we split away from it, met with me at the bar. He motioned to me when I sat down in the booth. Bear and Kendrick were sitting in the corner, in case this didn’t go well. The Nomads and us were still on good terms, but I’d noticed communication was starting to dwindle between Snake and I.

“You came alone,” I said, surprised.

“Not like you, Ace.”

“I’m in uncharted territory here,” I said. “Why did you come to Limerick? You know this is the Reapers’ territory.”

He shrugged, as if he were bored of the conversation already. My anger was mounting. As if I weren’t annoyed enough already, I had to deal with this shit.

“Look, I’ve been on the back of a bike for two hours and had a really shit day before that,” I said, garnering his attention. “You either fucking speak to me with the respect I’m due or I’ll be shaking up the nomads.”

Snake’s eyes darkened, the threat hitting him hard. He knew the men still respected me enough that his role was in danger. You didn’t leave the Ghost Rebels, you either died or you were ingratiated into the club somehow if you couldn’t ride.

He knew that.

“Where are you set up?” I asked him.

“Just outside of the city,” he replied. “I’ll lead you there.”

It was a power play and I knew it. I slid out of the booth and motioned for Bear and Kendrick to follow. They did without a word as Snake rode toward their makeshift clubhouse. The Nomads never stuck around for long, the longest we’d stayed anywhere was a year and even that made us itchy to get on the road again.

We followed Snake toward a quiet part of town just outside the city and through gates that led to an abandoned house they would have revamped. It was how we did it back in the day.

The men let us through, waving at us as we rode by. There were a lot of new faces, which made me wonder how many new members he’d welcomed in the last six months.

Bear joined me, his tension evident. “I don’t like that he’s not answering simple questions.”

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