Page 19 of Wiley A.F.

“To find Malcom’s brother.”

“Not Malcom. His name is Garrett and before you argue the fact, he’s my younger twin.”

“But he doesn’t have a twin.”

“How the fuck else do you explain me?” He scooped his fork into his hand, and I did the same, both of us taking a bit of food and chewing it as we thought.

Of course, that would make the most sense of this situation. Hate and pain enveloped me, and I wasn’t sure which outweighed the other. Families being estranged, I understood, but purposefully neglecting to tell the woman you professed to love about a whole twin wasn’t something I could fathom. I had spent every day since Malcom died wishing for him to come back to life, but as the evening progressed, I wondered if I really even knew him as well I thought I had. Yes, my gut told me he was hiding something, but him not even trusting me enough to tell me his birth name fucking hurt.

“Well, until about an hour ago I thought either Mal…er Garrett faked his own death, or you were a hallucination.”

“He is very dead,” Grey said in a serious voice, his eyes focusing onto a spot of sauce that dripped onto the table.

“Did you kill him?” I nervously asked, not sure whether I wanted to know the answer or not.

“Pass.”

“I didn’t know we were allowed to do that.”

“You’re not. I am,” he bluntly said, cleaning the sauce off the table with a paper towel.

“How’s that fair?” I wasn’t answering another damned thing if that was how he was going to be.

“I. Kidnapped. You. How the fuck do you think there’s fair and not fair right now?”

I shrugged. “You said you wouldn’t hurt me.”

“I did.”

“So, how are you going to keep from hurting me and force me to stay here?”

He drew a long breath and blew it out just as slowly. “I said that to calm you down. I’m still deciding what to do with you. You,” he pointed his fork in my direction, “followed me, remember? I walked away from you. How did you know where I was by the way?”

“Dave told me your jackets said Cleveland, Ohio.”

He coughed, choking a little on his food, and hit his chest with his balled fist. “Jackets? You mean my cut?”

“I have no clue what he meant. Your cut?”

“The jacket Dave was referring to is my leather vest, also called my cut, and sometimes my colors.”

“Why do you wear a vest?” I asked instantly curious. The only people I knew who wore vests anymore usually only had them on their body because their job required it to be there. Either that or their favorite people called them grandpa.

“Bikers wear leather vests.”

“You’re a biker? Hmph. Dave didn’t mention that.” He might have if I had given him the chance to do so before taking off in the middle of the night without telling him. If I told him he would have stopped me, and I wanted to meet Malcom’s brother. I didn’t have any reason in particular now that I actually sat and tried to figure out why I was here in the first place.

“I am.”

“You said you saved me in more ways than one?” I swallowed the last bite of my food, carefully placing the fork closer to me in case I needed it as a weapon. It was incredibly easy to talk to Grey, but reports said the same about Ted Bundy. It was alarming how much I wanted to trust this man because he’d already saved my life when he didn’t have any reason to do so. When I looked at him, I didn’t get the sickening feeling I had on occasion around Malcom, but maybe it was entirely based off his looks. Yet when it came down to it, I didn’t have any true reason to trust him. I would have to be a fucking idiot to do so. He avoided the answer when asked if he murdered his brother and the local cops conveniently hadn’t found his killer. I’d heard of whole police departments bending to the will of motorcycle gangs. “Did you bribe the police or are you blackmailing them to cover up Mal—Yeah, I can’t call him Garrett—Malcom’s death?”

“This isn’t some fucking crime documentary,” he laughed. The man truly thought my question was funny, me not so much. I glared at him, crossing an arm over the other, and tucked my hands in the bends of my elbows. “Sorry. Okay. Those things do happen, but that isn’t at all the case with my brother’s killer still being at large.”

“And the saving me bit?” I continued eyeing him intently, blaming my lapse in judgement of being nice to him earlier on temporary delirium.

“Look, that’s a story for another night. It’s getting late.” He reached for my plate, and with lightning speed, my fingers snatched the fork. When it made contact with the back of his hand I paused. That was all it took, one moment of hesitation, and Grey’s hand overlapped mine. He applied weight to our hands, his skin dimpled beneath the four silver prongs, and he didn’t wince nor cry out in pain as I without a doubt would have. “Is it Ezilynn or Z?” the tone of his voice deepened, and a massive clump of nerves hung in the back of my throat.

“Either, depending on the situation. Formal or Informal,” I stammered as he rounded the table, only lifting our hands as he positioned himself behind me.

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