Page 4 of Ice
Ryder was driving his old lady’s crappy old car, and I was in the passenger seat, glaring resentfully at every car we passed.
“I could have taken my bike.”
He cleared his throat. “Pres has it locked down for now, Ice, but the prospects are giving it the once over for you, since it was left unattended like that. No way he’d let you out anywhere alone right now anyway.”
I turned to glare at him instead of the poor passers-by, and let’s face it, he deserved it more than some fucking strangers.
“He doesn’t fucking own me, Ryder.”
He steered down a road into a commercial estate.
“He owns us all, and you fucking know it. That’s how the club works. We all agreed to trust him to do the right thing by us. That means helping us out of shit we can’t get out of. If you knew the pressure he has…” He trailed off, and I wanted to slap him.
“What pressure? Other than me being a fucking addict… what else is going on, man?” Being kept out of the loop really sucked, but I also found it hard to care about so many things right now.
He shrugged. “The usual. You’re aware the club voted against Alicia being his old lady?”
I hadn’t had a damn clue, but again, would I have cared if they’d mentioned it?
“But he married her. In front of everyone.”
“Yeah… but he can’t let her wear a club tattoo, because a couple of our brothers were assholes about her.”
“What did she do?”
He parked up outside a smart office building.
“Jesus… there’s so much you missed, you know, while you were taking a long old nap.”
I felt my lips twitch, an almost grin. An almost response.
“Did she hurt the club?”
“It looked like she’d been the cause of what happened to you.”
Fucking hell. I unlatched my seatbelt and rubbed at my hair. It was driving me nuts lately. It used to be my fucking pride and joy, and now I hated the way it felt, not just to my fingers, but on my head. Everything about my body felt wrong. Everything was out of sync.
“She wasn’t.”
He nodded, getting out of the car, and walking with me to the door. He pressed a button on the intercom and announced our arrival, and then we were buzzed in. The waiting room was smart, and empty.
For a drug rehab centre, it was far less crappy than I’d expected. Normally they don’t waste money on makingsomewhere like this so nice, just for people like me to mistreat the place. I knew that, because I’d been in rehab before. It hadn’t worked then, and it wouldn’t work now.It was a waste of fucking time.
“Yeah, well… enough brothers got in their heads that she’s bad for the club, so even though Reacher married her and moved her in, she can’t officially be classed as his old lady. She really cares about the members of the club, but unless she can win them over, any re-vote will just go the same way.”
“I could punch them in the nuts until they change their minds.” My offer was a joke. Nothing more. I didn’t care enough. I didn’t care about anything except how my body and mind felt, and how my environment felt jarring, and abrasive. Everything did. How the hell would talking to some stranger make any of that go away, or improve? It was bullshit, but at least it’d look like I’d tried.
“Mr Silver?” The prim-looking woman who stepped out into the waiting room looked from me to Ryder, and then her eyes came back to mine. How did she know? Did I look as strung out and destroyed as I felt?
Ryder nudged me when I didn’t move.
“Yeah, it’s him. I’ll wait here.”
He was already sitting down when I turned to flip him a middle finger. A delicate sound of a throat being cleared made me turn back. Her lips quirked for a fraction of a second.
“If you’re finished here, we can go to my office. I’m Doctor Chase.”
Jesus. I followed her into her office.
