Motorcycle Man (Dream Man #4)(90)

“What’s the matter?” Tack asked immediately.

Damn. I could never pull one over on him, not even on the phone.

“Nothing,” I lied then quickly moved on. “What’s Tug’s ETA?”

“I’ll tell you when you tell me what’s up.”

“Nothing’s up. I’m in your room about to grab the envelope. Is Tug going to be here soon?”

Silence then, softly, “What’s the matter, Red?”

“Nothing, Tack,” I lied again. “I talked with you maybe ten minutes ago. How could something be the matter in ten minutes?”

“The how is that you’re you. Something could be the matter in ten seconds.”

He wasn’t wrong about that. Our run was going well, it was fun, it was stress-free, we had easy but that didn’t mean I wasn’t me and Tack wasn’t Tack so the banter had not died.

But this wasn’t about him being a bossy biker, me being sassy and us trading slightly heated words that were mostly lighthearted.

This was something else. I just didn’t know what and I wasn’t going to explain what until I knew why I was feeling the edgy I was feeling.

So I hid behind a veil of sass and snapped, “Well something isn’t the matter now but it will be if you don’t quit asking me what’s the matter.”

This brought more silence that Tack didn’t break.

“Kane,” I called then prompted, “Tug?”

To which he said quietly, “Hop.”

Oh hell.

I supposed, being the president of a motorcycle club, having your finger on the pulse of absolutely everything and being able to read people and figure them out was a good thing.

Being that man’s woman and him having all that sometimes was not. And one of those times was now.

“Yes, Hop,” I confirmed because if I didn’t, he wouldn’t let it go which was something else I decided in that moment I wasn’t all fired up about. “Or, more precisely Hop, who has an old lady and two kids. Added to that is Hopper’s old lady, Mitzi, who isn’t my bestest bud but she is in the sisterhood, considering she has a vagina. So, clearly, seeing Hop doing what Hop was just doing, something I’m guessing you knew he was in the middle of doing and that’s why he’s not on his way to you, didn’t make me want to do cartwheels since we sisters need to band together no matter if we’re not best buds. And, incidentally, seeing what I saw at all wasn’t much fun. Hop has his own brand of hot but I don’t want to see a brunette riding it. And last and mostly what’s the matter is that brunette was your brunette.”

“She’s not mine, baby,” Tack replied quickly and gently.

“No, apparently she belongs to Chaos. What? Do you pass her around?” I clipped back.

“We don’t but she does.”

Ohmigod!

I might need to learn the ways of the biker world but that, that was something I didn’t need to know. At least not now, alone, in the Compound, two doors down from a skank and a cheater and nowhere near a bottle of wine or, better yet, one of tequila.

He might know all, see all and figure it all out but he also had to learn when to shut up and let it go.

“Okay, handsome, before I didn’t want to talk about this. Now I really don’t want to talk about this,” I warned.

“This is another way of our world, Red, and if you keep control on that attitude long enough, when I have time, I’ll explain it to you,” Tack replied.

I’d heard that before.

Way, way, way too often.

And just then, with that brunette’s catty, knowing smile burned on my brain, I’d had enough.

“Would that time be later?” I asked sarcastically.

“Uh… yeah.”

“Seems you’re going to explain a lot of things later and it seems you avoiding doing that, that means those things are like that brunette. Shit you aren’t explaining because you don’t actually want me to know.”

“Tyra –”

“Ignorance is not bliss, Tack.”

“Red –”

“Sometimes it’s lies in the form of keeping something from someone with bullshit promises of ‘later’,” I kept ranting.

“Darlin’ –”

“And in the end, any lie is a hurt that burns and sometimes that burn can kill.”

Tack was silent.

I was not.

“Call Tug. Tell him I’m getting a taxi. And as for you, you need to send someone else to get that envelope. I’m thinking I need a little time so I’d prefer to wake up alone tomorrow. When I’m ready to talk, I’ll call you. But you need to know, whenever I’m ready, it’ll be later.”

“Goddamn it, Tyra –” I heard him ground out but I flipped my phone closed.

This time we would talk my later.

I yanked open the door and stomped down the hall. I didn’t look into Hop’s room and I avoided it so studiously, I didn’t even know if the door was open.

I would discover Hop was done when I walked out of the Compound, my phone open in preparation to make a call to the taxi company, and I saw him on his bike.

When he saw me, he lifted his chin and called, “Cherry! Yo!”

I didn’t know if, when I saw him in his room, he was so in the throes of what was happening he didn’t see me. Or if he didn’t care. Or if he expected me to get the way of their world and not care because he didn’t look embarrassed or, indeed, anything except Hop.