Mortified didn’t even begin to touch the way I felt. The heat flared in my cheeks so suddenly I became dizzy. I swallowed compulsively and painfully, trying to wet my mouth as those words sank in too slowly.

He’s still alive…

I opened and closed my mouth as a myriad of emotions paraded through my head and chest, not one of them matching, really only succeeding in making me feel even more stupid. What to do now? Did I apologize? That would make sense, but how the fuck did you apologize for giving the man you love’s father an early grave when he was alive and well? It sounded kind of lackluster. Useless.

The rush of blood pounding through my veins drowned out my inner monologue for only a moment before I finally sucked in a breath and looked around the small group we’d been talking to. Slater, the rat bastard, looked overly amused by my faux pas. Harry and Deeks just openly stared like I was a strange bug sat on their beer. Jedd… well, he at least had the decency to look sympathetic… and then there was Drew. His face was unreadable, his skin pale and his hypnotic blue-green eyes full of questions I’d suddenly lost the ability to read from him. I didn’t think he was pissed at me about this. He would have reacted by now if he had been. Then again, I wasn’t so sure.

“Jesus, I’m so fucking sorry… I just assumed—I mean, the way you talk about him, I…” I snapped my mouth shut and wanted to kick Slater in the nuts for tittering like a toddler into his whiskey. “I don’t know why I thought that he was dead, Drew. I’m so sorry.”

Drew, turning his back on everyone, spun on his stool until he was facing me completely, one hand dragging my own seat closer to his while his other hand rested on my cheek, creating a space where it was just the two of us. His eyes found mine, and he held them for a while.

“I don’t know why I thought you knew,” he whispered. “I thought…” He trailed off, his nostrils flaring as he closed his eyes and pulled in a deep breath.

I brought my hands up and cradled his cheeks, my forehead pressing against his as I fought the sting of tears that threatened to pool with embarrassment. “I’m a fucking idiot. I should have asked. I know better than that. Jesus, I’ve lived through it.”

I sucked in a breath, my eyelids slipping closed as the first tears of embarrassment slipped over the precipice and traveled quickly to my chin.

“I sure know how to put my foot in my mouth, huh?” I sniffed, letting my eyes flutter open, trying my best to ignore the uncomfortable shuffle of the men around us.

“Why are you crying,” he asked quietly, his thumb catching the path of stray tears.

“You want a list?” I asked with a huff of pained amusement. “I embarrassed you, and myself, and more than anything, I’m mad as hell at myself for being such a tool.”

“You’re fucking adorable when you’re dramatic.” He smirked. “Want to get out of here? Have this conversation somewhere where four hairy men aren’t pretending not to listen in?”

“Busted,” Slater grumbled somewhere behind him.

Pulling my head back so I could look at Drew’s eyes, I offered him the biggest smile I could manage. I’d never wanted to leave a room quite so desperately before… well, not a room filled with friends, anyway. As much as I loved those guys, they had absolutely no idea how to blend into the background at times like this.

“Yes, please,” I muttered, slipping back so he could get up from his stool and lead me out of the mess I’d once again managed to get myself into. Even through the horror of what I’d done, I still had a million and one questions about his life to ask him. So much had happened over the time we’d had together, I always forgot just how little we knew about one another’s pasts. We always seemed to be looking ahead, which wasn’t a bad thing, but it unfortunately didn’t stop moments like this from happening.

Grabbing my hand, Drew towed me to the front doors and out into the cool February night where the stars were starting to burst from the darkness. I sucked in a deep breath and let him lead me from the porch to where his bike was parked. Thinking better of the idea, he marched past and headed toward the end of the row where the van was parked.

The silence wasn’t uncomfortable, but it was loaded. I was starting to think he had just as many questions as I did, and once he’d closed my door and checked in the back, he slid in behind the wheel and plucked the keys out of the cup holder in the middle console. No one would dare steal the van from outside The Hut.

“You okay to drive?” I whispered, feeling the heat in my stomach from the whiskey.

He kept a flat smile on his face the whole time, one I knew was for my benefit, before he gave me a small nod, started up the van and began to reverse it out of its parking spot. “Trust me,” was all he said as he began to drive us out of the yard, flashing me a reassuring wink before he made the usual left turn that would take us through Babylon.

“Always,” I replied without hesitation. Drew was in a reflective mood, but he wasn’t upset or angry. Wherever he was taking us, our destination would be what the situation called for.

I watched as the darkness swallowed everything beyond the reach of the lights and studied the shapes that were subtly silhouetted against the midnight blue of the sky beyond. It wasn’t until the run of trees on my side of the road thinned a little that I realized where we were heading, and I turned to look back at Drew, my hand sliding over the bench seat of the van to squeeze his thigh.

We’d come to see Pete.

The big tree stood dark against the sky, its limbs all stretched out protecting the ground below while casting deep shadows over the trunk and grass. As the van came to a halt, I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the beauty of the scene. The moment Drew pushed his door open, I followed him out and wandered toward the thick, sturdy trunk, even as Drew headed to the back of the van in that silent, thoughtful way of his.

I rested my hand on the rough bark when I finally got there and looked up into the canopy, smiling as the gentle breeze rustled the bare branches as though in greeting. “Hey, Pete,” I whispered, flattening my palms against the tree. “You’re never going to believe what I went and did tonight.”

Drew followed a few steps behind me. I heard the thump of his bag as it hit the ground right before his arms wrapped around my waist and he stopped to rest his chin on my shoulder. “Turns out Ayda is worse than Slater.”

I let out a small laugh and nodded in agreement. “I just don’t have feet as big as his.”

“But that mouth,” Drew pushed out, making an ooh sound under his breath.

I don’t know that I would ever be able to explain my reaction to this man, but my heart swelled in my chest and the love I felt for Drew wrapped around me, surging through my bloodstream. I pulled my hands from the tree, cupped his cheek and twisted my body so I was facing him, my head buried against his shoulder so all I could smell was leather and Drew. A smell that was the closest thing to home I knew I would ever have.

“I’m so sorry, Drew. I’m an idiot.”

He didn’t respond straight away, instead choosing to hold me while he did his usual thing of breathing in and out slowly. Gone were the days when he treated me with anything other than the tenderness he seemed to think I deserved. That meant he didn’t always react the way he would have done. He took his time these days. He thought before he acted. Or at least, he tried to. He was better at this relationship stuff than he realized.

When he moved, he maneuvered both of us so he was sliding his back down the trunk of the tree, sinking onto the ground and pulling me in between his parted legs so my back was resting against his chest. Drew’s arms slid around my waist, and when I allowed myself to lean back and look up, I saw the true beauty of this place at night. The night was too cold for the insects that normally serenaded us here, but there was the distant hoot of an owl, and the stubborn, sparse leaves rubbed together to keep the night from being completely silent. The twisted limbs of the tree were fascinating when they were this bare. The intricate way in which they wove around each other still gave the impression of shelter above us but allowed me a peek at the stars speckling the cloudless sky beyond.

“I wish you’d quit saying sorry for things that aren’t your fault,” he eventually muttered, his breath falling against my hair as he spoke. “I’m annoyed at myself for not telling you this before now, especially after everything we fought about the other day, and how I pushed and pushed about us being truthful with one another. I just…” His arms squeezed tighter around me. “Shit. I don’t think I’ve talked about Eric for over ten years.”

I rested my hands over his where they lay over my stomach, and dropped my head against his shoulder, tucking myself in under his chin. “When did you see him last?”

“Ten years ago. I was told not to speak about him again, so I didn’t. Not unless I knew it was safe, and there hasn’t been a day that’s gone by since where I’ve thought it’s been safe. If I want to speak my father’s name, I have to make sure there are no rats around. Even in The Hut,” he admitted.

I let that hang in the air for a moment, my fingers rubbing circles on his wrist before I spoke again. “Why were you not supposed to talk about him?”

“Because if anyone finds out where he is, he’ll probably end up dead within the hour. That’s what they told me, anyway.”

I tried not to react to that, but I knew he’d felt me stiffen when his arms tightened around me. I couldn’t imagine not being able to talk about the people I loved most in the world. Then again, I wasn’t even sure they had been close. Did Drew consider it a loss?

“Bear with me. I have so many questions. If I hit something you’d rather not answer, I’ll honor that. Just tell me.” I sucked in a breath, nibbling on my bottom lip for a moment before I asked the first question. “Were the two of you close, before he left, I mean?”

“In this life, you look up to those you’re told to look up to when you’re young. My dad was the president of The Hounds of Babylon. He was busy. His life was… it was like me trying to live the life I lived before prison, but with a kid and a wife in tow. The guy had his arms full and was up to his eyeballs in responsibility. Did he love me? Yeah. He loved me. Did I love him? Yeah. I loved my old man. Were we close?” Drew took a moment, inhaling slowly again before he pressed his cheek against my head and blew out. “He would have taken a bullet for me in a heartbeat, and I would have done the same for him, but if you’d have asked him what my favorite color was, or whether or not I liked whiskey at fourteen, he wouldn’t have known. He didn’t have time to know. That’s why he had me. I was born to take some of the weight from his shoulders. I was born to be the VP who would become the president.”

“That’s a lot of weight to put on a kid’s shoulders,” I said quietly, lifting my eyes, but only catching the underside of his chin. “If he had it all planned out, though, what went wrong? Why is his life on the line? He obviously planned to be around a lot longer than he was.”

“You can’t plan properly when you’re at the front of a group of men. All you can do is put shit in place and hope for the best. A leader lives a lot of his life in isolation, even when he’s surrounded by men. You know what you’ve got to do. It just doesn’t always fall in line with what the rest of the club wants you to do. Dad hoped he wouldn’t get in trouble, but then… like things went wrong for me, things went wrong for him. Do you want to know the worst part of it all?”

I shook my head, knowing he would feel my response. It was much safer to let him just talk. Sometimes just having someone listen to what you were saying was needed more than words of advice or encouragement. The airing worked to get that mental weight out in the open so the burden was off your shoulders for at least a little while. His train of thought was on such a definitive track I wasn't willing to derail him, so I squeezed his leg, encouraging him to go on.

“He may as well have been dead all these years,” Drew said calmly.

“Because you haven’t spoken to him?”

“Haven’t spoken to him. Haven’t spoken about him. Have no idea where he is, if he is, in fact, still alive. I can’t remember what he looks like, sounds like…” He trailed off, taking a breath. “He’s not here anymore. He’s not where he was born to be. For a man like Eric, that’s worse than death.”

I frowned out at the night. I knew how he felt in some ways because I felt the very same way about my parents sometimes. Those expressions they wore when they were dancing with one another in the kitchen. The way Dad would look at Tate when he was talking about football. Every little thing that had been so familiar to me was slowly slipping away through my fingers until I was left with impressions. I was so scared of forgetting, but I couldn’t imagine feeling that way knowing my family was still out there.

“Do you know what he’s running from? Why he’s running? Being gone as long as he has, it has to be something substantial.”

“The less I knew the more chance we both had of staying alive. I know he’s gone. I know some shit went down. I know he had to make the decision to run and that would have been the last decision he wanted to make. Ayda, the reason I never talk about him is because I don’t have anything to say. He’s a ghost now. All that’s left are memories.”

Dropping my hands to his thighs, I rubbed gently, my head falling back so my lips reached his Adam’s apple, brushing over it reverently. My mind was churning, full of thoughts, but I understood that he couldn’t give me much more than he already had because he didn’t know much more. From the way he’d described it, the transition had moved quickly, and that was that.

“Sometimes memories are better. At least we have those to look back on.” I rubbed my cheek against his shoulder like a cat and smiled. “Thank you for talking about this with me, and I really am sorry that I said what I did.”

“If you say sorry one more time, I’m going to flip you over, push you against this tree and do some very unsavory things to you, Hanagan. Quit it.” He pressed his smirking lips to my head and held me in place. “Damn. Now I’ve put those thoughts in my head, I’ve forgotten what the hell we were even talking about.”

I smiled again, this time one corner of my mouth lifting as the imagery came to my mind. He had such a way with words and they never failed to make my own imagination rise to the challenge.

“I can fix that for you if you like,” I teased, wriggling my ass against him. Angling my body away from his, I met his eyes and let him know what was going through my mind. Licking my lips, I smiled right at him and said, “Sorry.”

His eyes held mine, darkening as he narrowed them and studied my face. There was nothing more intimidating yet exciting than when he looked at me that way. I could see the thoughts in his eyes. I could hear the low growl rumble in the back of his throat as his hands slid down beneath my ass cheeks, squeezing hard and slow as he gritted his teeth and worked his jaw.

“Don’t make me fuck you in front of Pete.”

The excitement of the shift in mood had pulled deeper anticipatory breaths from me, and as I rolled to my knees to face him, I placed my hands on his shoulders, feeding him back the smirk he so often gave me. “Weren’t you just saying I could blow you in front of an audience?”

Drew raised a single brow, working his jaw hard as he gazed at me. “Demon,” he whispered through tight lips.

“You love this demon.” I grinned. “If you don’t want to give Pete a show, maybe you should take me to the van because I don’t think I want to wait to get back to The Hut.”

I pushed to my feet and bent to grip both sides of his cut, tugging gently.

He continued to stare at me through wide eyes until his hands reached out to grab me, and before I could even tell what was happening, he was pulling me back down to the ground, pressing my back against the grass and rolling on top of me in one swift movement. I kicked out and laughed roughly, but Drew’s body had me pinned, and so did his hands as they pushed the stray strands of hair away from my face. His lips hovered over mine. His hips rotated against me. His nostrils flared as he inhaled and then slowly, ever so dreamily, exhaled and tilted his head to one side.

“So, to sum up…” he moaned, low and deep. “Dad isn’t here. I don’t know where he is. Shit isn’t always easy in this MC life. I’ve suddenly quit giving a shit what Pete sees.” He paused, his eyes falling to my lips as he trailed a hand down my cheek, my neck, across my shoulders and back again, bringing a trail of goosebumps to life. “And you aren’t going anywhere, lady.”

“Where else would I want to be?” I asked, lifting my hands to cup his neck. My eyes searched his for the longest time. My smile froze impossibly on my lips as my love for this man made my chest ache. I wrapped my legs around his hips in one swift and unusually graceful movement and unleashed that overwhelming feeling on him. “Let’s make our own memory tonight.”

“I even brought blankets.” He winked, driving his hips into me.

That small thoughtfulness was all it took for me to lose any shred of control I had. Drew and I always enjoyed our fast, animalistic and impulsive lovemaking—that driving need to be closer and under one another’s skin was encouraged by our mutual hunger for one another. But under the stars and Pete’s tree that night, Drew took his time. He tasted every inch of my skin, running his fingers over the most sensitive spots on my body, driving me wild enough to orgasm before he’d even so much as glanced at the apex of my thighs. He took his time as he drove me higher and higher, and only pulled back when I ran headlong for the edge of my sanity. When he finally thrust deeply into me, he took his time there, too. I felt every stroke, every twitch, and every inch as he took and took until neither of us had anything left to give, and I screamed his name in reverence.