Page 63 of Swan

At least I hadn’t disrupted anything.

“How you doin’, Birdy?”

“Thinking that I overreacted and should have just walked out.”

“Nah, you made the right choice. They had their phones out ready to record you. They would’ve made some shit up and put you on social media.”

“That’s what I was worried about. I’m not online, but I hoped that things were, um, settling after what it had been like.”

He brushed a hand through his messy dark waves.

They looked so soft.

“Did you see things when it first…?”

“Yeah. Not that I told Mum and Dad.”

“Fuckin’ sucks you had to see how people can hate someone over somethin’ they know nothin’ about.”

“It does. That’s why I mainly kept to work and the house. I-I haven’t been good company, Drake.”

He glanced over at me. “Birdy, you’re always good company. You’ve just been dealin’ with a lot. Understandable you wanted to pull back from everyone for a while to cope.”

“Thanks, Drake. I mean Dragon. Sorry.”

“Keep using Drake, Swan. Don’t care when it comes from you.”

My belly fluttered.

Stop reading into things.

“Things have settled online, babe. But just make sure next time you have people with you when you want to go out, yeah? Until you’re comfortable and I know nothin’ will happen to you. The club protects family, right?”

“Right.”

See, he’s just being himself and acting like any of the brothers would.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

DRAKE

Griz gave me a lift to the compound, where I had a spare ride to get me home. His hands strangled the steering wheel.

“She’s all right,” I told him.

“If this shit sets her back.” Hands tightening again, his knuckles turned white.

“It won’t. Over the last few weeks, we’ve all noticed a difference. It’s like she wants to live again. Like the heartbreak has settled enough inside her that she can breathe. Even after that crap happened and we got outside, she relaxed again.”

“She’ll have to tell us when she wants to go places. She’ll need protection anywhere else other than here, work, the compound—if she goes back there—and her therapist.”

“I doubt she’ll put up a fight about havin’ someone with her.” Now she’d do it so she didn’t worry the rest of us.

Griz grunted.

What he didn’t know was that I’d be at my little birdy’s beck and call every damn day if she gave me a chance.

But I’d been placed in the friend zone, which continued to be a knife to the heart. Still, I’d have her time, her smiles, her laughs in any way I could get them.

---