I felt good. Really good. I couldn’t stop smiling as Sutton pulled up outside the diner. I pushed my things into the duffle I kept in my locker and smiled up at him broadly.

“Thank you.”

“Don’t. If Drew finds out about this, we’re both dead.”

I pulled the tie out of my hair and rearranged my ponytail before retying it. I chanced a glance at the man next to me and made a face, scrunching up my nose. “I know. It’s not a conversation I’m looking forward to having.”

“Well, when you have it, make sure he knows you’re the one that instigated it, and that I only agreed under duress. After weeks of nagging. And blackmail.”

“You are a drama queen. Just because you get along better with Drew now, it doesn’t mean you have to back down from confrontation. I actually think he enjoys your combative conversations.”

Sutton scowled at me and shook his head. “With anything else, I’d agree, but with you... the man is very black and white where you’re concerned. You need to tell him soon, Ayda. It’s only a matter of time before he figures it out.”

“I know.” I pulled on my work shoes and reached for the door. “Same time tomorrow?”

Sutton hesitated for a moment, rolled his eyes, which made him look too much like Sloane, and finally nodded in agreement before demanding I get out of his car. I did as he asked, pushing the door closed behind me before straightening my nametag on my uniform with a sigh. I hated lying to Drew about anything. Most days it would have been preferable to cut my own hand off than even utter a little white lie in his direction, but I knew if I told him what I was doing, he would stop me, and I didn’t want to be stopped.

I pushed into the bustle of the diner with a smile. The acrid smell of grease and burned coffee permeated the air in the building, but the smell was still one of those things that made memories rush into my brain and flash behind my eyelids. There was a time that the smell would have filled me with despair because arriving here meant it was the first of my three jobs for the day. Now… now I saw memories of Deeks in the booth teasing me mercilessly. I saw Tate and Kenny in the corner coming up with the evening’s festivities. Tate and Libby making out when they thought I wasn’t looking. Then there were those very new and treasured memories of Drew in his booth, legs stretched out, his long fingers wrapped around the coffee mug as he watched me.

Glancing over at the booth, I froze and blinked twice, unsure whether my memory was conjuring up an image that strong or if he was really there. Two more blinks and I realized that he was actually there and let my smile burst free. I practically skipped to his booth and kneeled on the bench next to him, only sampling the waves of something being off when I leaned in for a kiss.

I was so busted.

Shit.

“Hey, you,” I said, kissing the corner of his mouth and glancing over at Janette. She waved me off, obviously telling me to do what I needed before I started. This could possibly take longer than the fifteen minutes I had before my shift officially started.

Drew had many complex sides, but when he became as silent and still as he currently was, not many people, including me, knew exactly how to handle him.

He stared forward at the other side of the diner, ignoring me as he curled both hands around his cup, lowered his head down and took a slow, controlled sip of his coffee. His body was rigid, and the skin over his knuckles was strained, holding all of the tension he was trying to keep under control.

The rush of blood in my ears drowned out every other sound in the place and left me with white noise as I slid my feet under the table, sat back against the bench and blew out a sigh. I was in the wrong. I understood that implicitly, but being shut out like this with no inkling of the man I’d woken up next to this morning present told me how much worse this was than I’d imagined.

“Drew…”

He cleared his throat, rolling his tongue around the inside of his mouth until he took another drink of his coffee. When he placed the cup back on the table, it was careful and measured, as though he was scared of breaking the simplest of things without intending to.

Was he giving me an opportunity to come clean so he didn’t have to ask? Or would I hang myself by talking?

I didn’t care. I’d hidden this from him for a while, and now that the opportunity to come clean had presented itself, I was going to take it. It was the only thing I had kept from him in the longest time, and he could be as mad as he wanted to be. I was sorry for lying to him, but I wouldn’t be sorry for what I had lied about.

“I owe you an explanation,” I said, and sighed, wishing more than anything that I wasn’t nervous to touch him and risk pissing him off further.

It took him a while, but Drew eventually turned his face my way, doing nothing more than raising a single brow at me as his eyes burned into mine.

“Right then. So, do you remember after the… after the uh, warehouse incident? And after we went to see Pete? Do you remember I said I wanted to learn how to protect myself?” I stopped, hating myself for sounding so pathetic. Releasing a growl of frustration, I turned in my seat to face him. “Drew, I fucked up by lying to you. I know that. I knew that when I made the decision to, but I figured it was better to beg for forgiveness than ask permission.”

I wasn’t sure whether it was the fact that he heard me admit to lying about something, but the anger flashed in his eyes, followed by a fleeting look of sadness before he inhaled through flared nostrils and exhaled slowly, working the muscles in his jaw.

“I really am sorry for lying to you. I hate doing it, and it never sits right with me because we have a good relationship that doesn’t warrant lies. That being said, I am not sorry for asking Sutton to help me. It makes sense really. Who knows better about all that stuff than him, right? He only lied to you because I asked him not to mention it, but, Drew, I had to do this. You do understand, don’t you? Not the lying part, of course. There’s no justification for that.”

I was babbling. The words just kept coming, and no matter how much I told myself to shut up, I just kept flinging words at him to try cushion the blow.

“What have you done?” He growled. Really growled. The sound was feral and scary as hell, but it was all Drew Tucker. His control was slipping.

“I asked for shooting lessons, and Sutton’s been teaching me with a gun I bought almost a month ago.” It came out like one long word, no breaths, no spaces, and the last word came out so high it sounded like a question.

I may as well have smacked him in the stomach with a shovel. His chest rose as though I’d winded him, but his face never changed. Not except for a slight rise of his brows before he quickly corrected himself. I couldn’t get a read on his emotions at all. I wasn’t even sure he’d truly heard what I’d said.

When his head began to nod slowly, his understanding sinking in and making his nostrils flare impossibly wider, all I could do was stare and wait.

All of two seconds…

“Drew!” I huffed out. “I know I lied. I know I fucked up even worse by lying about the gun, but I needed to learn. I need to be able to—” I cut myself off and threw myself against the back of the bench, my eyes on the tiled ceiling as I chose to chew the inside of my cheek instead. I wasn’t going to apologize for learning a viable skill to defend myself. I couldn’t. I’d bought the gun to protect me, to protect Drew, Tate, and all of the men I cared deeply about. Even if I didn’t need it, the peace of mind of having the gun and the education to use it helped me sleep a little better at night. That didn’t mean I didn’t understand why Drew was against it—I did. I knew every argument that would come from his mouth when he finally decided it was time to tear me a new one, but that nagging need in the back of my head and that protective portion of my heart knew that all the arguments in the world wouldn’t give me the security having that gun in my purse did.

“Move,” he pushed out, low and hoarse.

Resigned, I slipped from the booth and bit back the emotions that were always so damn close to the surface these days.

He didn’t look at me as he climbed out. Drew simply stood over the table, pulling a couple of dollar bills out of his cut and throwing them on the table for Janette. His head was bowed, his hand pausing as he rested and flexed his fingers on top of the table as if he was unsure what to do next. I couldn’t look away from the heavy rise and fall of his shoulders. Not until he turned his back on me completely, raised his chin, pushed his hands into his pocket and started to walk out of the diner.

Rusty came out of the swinging doors just in time to see him, and his face lit up with a smile until he saw Drew’s obvious anger shining back at him.

“Don’t send her home in a rush tonight, Rusty. She’s just told me she’s more than happy to work until close,” Drew told him from across the counter. His head went down as he walked toward the doors to leave me, his Hounds patch drifting farther and farther away with every step he took.

I breathed out in frustration, my hands finding my hips as my chin dropped to my chest. I was fighting the urge to chase him. Going after him when he was this angry was a really bad idea. The conversation would end in a larger argument that would have him sleeping anywhere else for the night. I’d known he was going to take this badly. I just hadn’t known it was going to be this bad.

“Sugar?” Janette said, coming up behind me and resting a hand on my shoulder. I rested my cheek on her knuckles for a second before straightening back up and watching Drew march down toward the center of town, hands fisted at his sides.

“My fault,” I said finally, drawing in a deep breath.

“Wanna talk about it?”

“Only if you promise not to lecture me.”

“You know I can’t promise you something like that. Come on. We’ll get some milkshakes and piss Rusty off, too.”

I laughed out loud and turned, pushing my arm through the offered loop of hers as she guided me toward the back office where we talked about everything. The first thing I did when I got inside was sit on the edge of the desk and pick up the letter opener that was shaped like a broadsword. I ran the metal between my fingers until the top of the blade was balanced on my fingertip. It had become a force of habit to scope out things to use as weapons when I was confined in a small space.

Janette left me to my own devices as she put Rusty in his place and fixed us both chocolate milkshakes, which gave me too much time to think and second guess my decision to stay there instead of going after Drew. Considering how well we’d started out the day, I hated that the afternoon had taken such a drastic turn. I hated even more that Drew had refused to confront me about my lies. Maybe that was my own guilt talking. Him outwardly showing his displeasure and vocalizing his anger would make me feel less guilty, and would only make him feel worse. I hadn’t figured out the mystery of what made Drew Tucker work by any stretch of the imagination, but I’d figured some things out, and him going to bleed his anger out before talking to me was a good thing. He needed to get his thoughts out of the chaos department and into some semblance of order before he told me what an idiot I was without hurting my feelings.

“Okay, so what have you done?” Janette asked, pushing into the office and kicking the door closed behind her. She held out a glass filled to the brim and beading with the sweat of condensation. “I don’t think I’ve seen him that pissed off in a while.”

“No. Neither have I.” I dropped the letter opener, took the glass and sucked in a long mouthful of chocolate goodness. “But he’s going to have to get over it.”

Janette raised her brows at me but stayed silent, waiting for me to continue.

“Chief Sutton is giving me shooting lessons. I went to him for a concealed license application, and he started lecturing me on gun safety. You know what he’s like when he goes off on one of his lectures. So I shut him up by asking for shooting lessons so I would be aware of all of those laws.”

“Do you have your license?”

“I do.”

“Are you still taking the lessons?”

“I am because, surprisingly, I’m learning a lot. I thought just owning one would make me feel safer after… you know…” I trailed off as the scars on my back itched as a reminder. They were well hidden under my uniform, but when I thought about them too much, they felt exposed, like I was a hunchback. I wasn’t vain. I didn’t care about how the scars looked. I just hated the story that went with them. I hated that they were a constant reminder of that one night when I’d felt weak and helpless. The moment I picked up that gun, I’d felt some of my strength return, and when I hit that target right where I wanted to the first time, I felt some semblance of control return to my life.

“Drew doesn’t like it?”

“He didn’t know until today,” I admitted, suddenly finding the surface of my milkshake very interesting. “He’s pissed because I lied and never told him where I was, what I was doing or why. I understand that part, but I’m not going to apologize for being prepared or having the choice to defend myself or the people I love.”

“If you feel that strongly about having the damn thing, why lie in the first place? Surely he’d have understood if you wanted it that badly.”

I laughed once without humor and slid the glass on the desk with the letter opener. “Jan, that’s like flashing a red cape in front of a bull and asking it to understand that the red is just a color. I can understand why he feels that way. He’s explained it to me, but I’m done being the damsel hiding behind her man. I want to be the one who has his back, not hiding there.”

Janette shook her head and set her glass beside mine. Cradling my cheeks in her cool hands, she bent at her knees and held my eyes. It was a very maternal motion, something I’d come to expect from her. She always had been a good role model for me.

“Honey, men like Drew are brought up to protect what’s theirs. Whether that’s their club, their brothers or the woman they love. It’s all he knows. It’s not that he thinks you can’t look after yourself. It’s just that it’s his job.”

“But shouldn’t that make it my job to protect him? Or at the very least to defend myself so that he doesn’t get distracted? That night, outside the warehouse, if I’d fought them off, they wouldn’t have had me as leverage.”

“You can’t change the past.”

“No, but I can damn well make sure it never happens again.”

Janette released my cheeks and dropped her hands to her sides with a sigh. She rocked back on her heels before finding the next avenue to take. I could tell I wasn’t winning any wars today, and my opinion wasn’t going to be the popular one. I’d known that all along. I’d accepted it with the looks I’d received at the shooting range.

“Could you use it if you had to?” Janette asked softly. She didn’t know all the details of that night in the warehouse. She didn’t know I’d taken a life, so I had to force myself not to stiffen in response and keep my head down so she couldn’t see the truth in my eyes.

“If it meant my life or theirs, yes. It’s not a decision I would make lightly, but if it was between them and me or someone I loved, I’d do it. I knew the life Drew and the boys led, and I know how far I am willing to go to keep them safe.”

The silence was almost deafening as the last of my words hung between us. I suddenly felt tired. So tired that my arms and legs ached with the effort of leaning against the desk. My decision was always going to be a battle, but this was the first step, and I’d taken it. I didn’t have to convince anyone but myself, and I’d already done that. Everyone else would have to come around. Making them understand would take time and a lot of talking, but I wasn’t backing down. I wasn’t compromising and I wasn’t going to be forced into changing my mind.

“I should get to work,” I said, leaning forward and kissing her cheek. “Thank you for listening.”

Janette nodded and let me leave the room, choosing to stay there herself. I gave Rusty a weak smile as I passed the kitchen and headed into the dining area to help Sam with the condiments, another sad reminder of how quickly a great day had turned to shit.

As I was working side by side with Sam, I could have sworn I felt Drew’s eyes on me, but when I looked up no one was there. The empty corner was darker than it had ever been and devoid of any life at all. It was then that I realized the gaze hadn’t felt like Drew’s at all. He always made me feel beautiful and warm, like I was the only other person in the room. This felt insidious. This made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up and a shiver of ice run down my spine, and not in a good way.