Somebody is pissed.
I sit up in bed. My door is locked, lamp off, and the clock on my phone says eleven-forty. I pull Saber’s t-shirt down over my thighs and press my ear to the floor.
“—just sitting here while they ride through our territory as if they own it!”
Another voice. It’s lower and controlled.
Saber.
I can’t hear his words, but I know the rhythm. He’s a man who doesn’t need to raise his voice to fill a room.
The first voice comes back louder. “You want to wait? Wait for what? For them to roll up to this building and put a bullet through the front door?”
Saber’s response is short. One sentence, maybe two.
“Bullshit.” The word cracks through the floor. “You’re not protecting the club. You’re protecting her. And that makes youweak. You’ve got your head so far up that girl’s ass you can’t see what Nitro is doing right in front of you.”
Silence. Long enough that my breath stalls.
Then another voice. Joker, I think. “Sit the fuck down, before we make you sit down.”
A chair scrapes. More voices, lower, overlapping. Then Saber, and this time I catch the words because he’s not keeping them down anymore.
“We move when I say we move. Anyone who has a problem with that can turn in his cut and walk. Right now. The door is right there.”
Nothing. No one speaks. No chair moves.
Then a door slams hard enough to rattle the lamp on my dresser.
Then there are heavy, fast boots on the stairs. Saber’s door opens and shuts with enough force that the wall between our rooms shudders.
I sit in the dark with my knees pulled to my chest.
Someone is mad because he is protecting me.
I stay in bed for five minutes. Ten. The clubhouse goes quiet. The men downstairs either left or dropped to murmurs, and behind the wall, Saber’s room is silent.
I get up. I unlock my door and step into the hallway.
His door is closed, and there’s no light underneath. I lift my hand and knock twice.
The door opens fast. He’s in jeans and nothing else.
No shirt. No cut. No boots.
Tattoos cover his chest, his ribs, his shoulders, crawling up his neck and down his arms. His hair is wrecked from his hands, and his jaw is tight.
His eyes land on me, and the anger drains into something worse. Exhaustion.
“You heard that.”
I nod. “Enough of it.”
He steps back and leaves the door open.
I walk in and close the door behind me.
His room is bigger than mine. Darker. A bed shoved against the far wall, sheets tangled. A desk with paperwork and a half-empty bottle of whiskey. His cut is draped over the back of a chair.