Page 2 of Merciless
“Yeah.” His face was pale, eyes looking away from us as he hurried to his feet. “I’m heading back to the house. I don’t feel good.”
“Do you need anything?” Noelle was quick to ask, doting on him like our mother had.
“Just for all of you to give me some space,” he snapped before storming off.
“The fuck is his problem?” I muttered, tapping my pockets in the hope that I had my cigarettes.
“For real?” Jandro stared at me. “Dude deals with seizures all the time that give him weird visions, and you wonder what his problem is?”
“I’m just saying, it’s not like him to stomp off like a toddler.” I found a smoke and stuck it in my mouth.
“I wonder if he saw something bad.” Noelle worried her lip between her teeth.
“Both of you leave him alone like he asked,” Jandro huffed, returning to the grill. “Swear to fuck, I don’t blame him for running off when his siblings are always pecking at him.”
“We watch out for him, ‘Dro,” I corrected. “He’s the youngest of us.”
“Yeah, well I’m the youngest too, so I know how he feels.” He pointed at me with his metal tongs. “And sometimes, having my siblings act like my parents is fucking annoying. So just leave him be ‘til he’s ready to talk.”
“Jesus, what crawled up everyone’s ass today?” I lit up and turned my attention to the bottles of orange juice and vodka on the counter, considering making myself another drink.
“If everyone around you’s an asshole,” Noelle hip-checked me on her way inside the clubhouse, “might want to take a look in the mirror.”
“Takes one to know one,” I grumbled.
She was just upset that the guy she had a thing for didn’t stick around. What she didn’t know was that he used her to try to needle his way into the Steel Demons. I took one look at the bastard and knew he didn’t have it in him. He bailed on her once I wouldn’t even entertain the notion of making him a prospect.
Noelle would get over it. There was a guy out there worthy of her, one who wouldn’t try to weasel into my club like a little bitch.
I got my belly filled with food and another megadose of vitamin C before heading back to my house. Hopefully Daren had enough time to cool down and the girl in my bed had seen herself out. Even in the stifling desert heat I walked slowly, biding my time and enjoying a post-breakfast cigarette.
Daren waited for me on the front porch—my mirror image in some ways but also my polar opposite. The outburst earlier was strange coming from him because he was usually so relaxed and easygoing, not a cantankerous hothead like me.
I tossed the butt of my black clove while he lit up a fresh, white menthol. “Hey, Reap.”
“Hey.” I paused before the first step on the porch. “You alright?”
“Yeah, sorry about that.” He scratched his forehead with his thumb. “Told your girl to get lost.”
“Thanks.” I approached him and leaned against the side of the house. “Want to talk about…anything?”
He was quiet for a long time.
“I saw my own death, Reap.”
That was fucking weird—both that he saw something so grave and also that he said it in such a concrete way, not in a riddle or random innocuous detail like usual.
“Oh. Shit, well.” I ran a hand through my hair. “Is it cool, at least?”
He huffed out a mirthless laugh. “No. About as uncool as it gets.”
Fuck, he was serious. And seeing it had obviously shaken him. His fingers trembled as he took a long drag off his cigarette.
“Well, we can prevent it, right?” I was no good at emotional support, so the president in me sought to figure out a solution. “What good is this fucking gift of yours if we can’t use it to change the course of the future?”
“No, it needs to happen. Itwillhappen.” Daren tossed his cigarette and quickly fished for another.
“Bullshit. Says who?”
