Page 35 of Surrender (Angels Halo MC Next Gen)

And those damn college girls kept on giggling.

I drank my beer, took my shot when it was my turn, and kept my cool.

My crazy was safely locked away.

Mostly.

Until it wasn’t.

It wasn’t Elias’s fault. I knew that—kind of. But it still hurt when I got the notification on my phone.

I only tracked one contact in his phone. I’d been doing it since the first time I’d followed him to the club in Oakland years before. An establishment like that didn’t stay in business long if the members weren’t discreet. When I’d found out Elias was a member, I’d become one as well. It hadn’t been the easiest thing to accomplish at the time.

It wasn’t the club that sent him the text, though.

It washer—the one who had initially invited him.

I tried not to think about all the people Elias had hooked up with over the years. That only stirred the crazy, festering my sickness. But for some reason, I couldn’t shake her.

He liked to self-deny so much that he didn’t have all that many women in his past. I knew the exact number, and it was fairly low, considering his brother’s track record. They were typically one-and-done partners who rarely made a reappearance. They didn’t contact each other again…because reasons.

But not her.

She’d been around for years.

Elias hadn’t hooked up with her since the first…date, but they still talked and had gone to the club together a few times. I was well aware of their friendship.

He didn’t look at his phone as soon as he got the message, but my phone was in my hand as I pretended to peruse social media while keeping the giggling college girls in sight. I got a quick notification that appeared on my screen in code.

I clicked it, and my fingers tightened reflexively around the neck of my beer.

Berkeley: Taking a trip tomorrow. Want to join me?

Draining the contents of the nearly full bottle, I set it on the corner of the pool table and picked up the half-empty one beside it, wishing it were something considerably harder.

I should have killed her when I’d first found out she was in his contacts. He wouldn’t have missed her.

Would he?

Don’t show your crazy.

Out of the corner of my eye, I watched him pull his phone from his pocket. He had no reaction on his face when he read the text. He was still laughing with Tanner when he typed out a reply.

I received his reply in real time.

Elias: Not this time. Have fun.

That was the same response he gave eighty percent of the time when she texted. But it wasn’t a direct no. He wasn’t cutting her off. She was still in his contact list.

“Not this time” meant there was the possibility of a next time. And every time he told her that, it only spiked my crazy higher.

But this time?

It was so much worse.

We were on a date, damn it.

He was out with me. He was randomly touching me like he couldn’t help himself. No more than five minutes passed, and he would find a reason to brush against me. Or look at my lips. Even when he was shooting pool. He was so attuned to my presence that his dad and uncle had been giving him shit about his lacking pool skills all evening. Every time, he would wink at me, not even bothering to make an excuse for his lack of focus.

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