My face burned. I couldn’t look her in the eye about this. It was just too weird.

“Well, answer me, Sara! I want to know.”

I heaved a shrug. “I don’t know! I’d tell him to stop.”

“Then you’re an idiot,” she snapped. “You’ve kissed him before, obviously. Right?”

“Yeah…”

“Did you ever want to keep going?”

Any second my cheeks would burst into flames. “I-I don’t know. Not really. Sometimes I’d want to put my arms around his neck.”

She looked at me pathetically. “Arms around his neck? What the hell? Poor Jordan if that’s all you’re willing to do…”

My jaw dropped, and she raised her brows challengingly. “I’m sorry I’m not out screwing him as we speak!” I sarcastically said with a roll of my eyes.

“What if he wants more? Are you going to keep stringing him along?”

“If he wants more, he can wait until I want it too.”

“You’ve been with him over a year, Sara–”

“And what’s another four?” I was being a cheeky little wench. I had to bite my inner cheek to keep from smiling at my ridiculous words.

“Sara, I’m being serious,” she replied. She ran a stressful hand through her blonde hair and stared out the windshield for a few moments. Her blue eyes were lost in some kind of thought that turned the atmosphere into something heavier, sadder. “There are only so many times a man can hear no. Only so many times before his self-control reaches its limit. A reasonable man would walk away, but a man obsessed will take you however he can until he can’t hold back.”

Whoa. Jordan was just a fifteen year old. Nothing we did was serious. We’d kissed like crazy and made out on occasion, but when I stopped, he did too. He’d been shy about his sexuality and would turn away to hide his bulging erection in his pants as if it was the most humiliating thing ever. Talk about awkward…

“You need to be prepared. You need to be protected. Just in case, Sara.”

I exhaled in defeat. “Fine. You want to drug my body with hormonal crap, go for it.”

“God help us when you’re on it,” she muttered as she exited the car. “You’re already a little witch.”

Ten

Once a month, every Jackal in Gosnells showed up at the clubhouse for a barbecue. I don’t know why they called it a barbecue, though. There was no actual fucking barbecue; just a lot of home-made meals from the old ladies.

I noticed this particular “barbecue” had more Jackals than I’d ever seen before. When I asked Remy about them, he said they’d been kicking around lately for “business.” These men were from different chapters, and their new faces made me uncomfortable. They seemed looser than the others, coming in through the doors screaming and howling like a bunch of obnoxious men. They brought an absurd amount of alcohol, and judging by how rowdy they were sober, I dreaded to think how much worse they’d get when drinking.

One man in particular, by the name of Edge, was the scariest one of them all. He was a huge, bulky man, at least six and a half feet tall. Wearing only his jeans and his patch vest with nothing underneath, his physique reminded me of Damien. But where Damien had a caring nature, this man did not. Without a trace of humour, his eyes reminded me of steel: cold and hard.

As they socialized, I walked around, keeping an eye on Mathew and Jake as they chased each other around with water pistols. I felt two sets of eyes on me. The first set of eyes came from Frank, but I was far used to them by now. Every time the old man kicked around, he’d watch me like a hawk with an indecipherable expression on his face. It actually got worse the day Darcy celebrated my birthday. She was the planner in the clubhouse, and a birthday forgotten in her eyes was the biggest sin in the world. When Frank had walked in on the mini-party, he had a look of anger so sharp it made my heart skip a beat. He’d turned around and left. Since then, he kept his distance, but stared and stared. While I’d been self-conscious about it at first, its regularity no longer fazed me. If he wanted to be a creep and stare at me then he could knock himself out.

However, I’ll admit it was comforting at a time like this because the second set of eyes was coming from Edge. He was seated at one of the round tables next to a fat man with a beard that reached his chest. It was a stiff looking beard too, as if he’d put aside an hour to hair spray that shit or something.

“You got yourself a fan,” said Tessa, emerging beside me with a bottle of beer in each hand. She offered me one and I took it.

“Does he come around a lot?” I quietly asked her, though I doubted it because I’d been around for months and hadn’t seen him once.

We were facing Edge’s line of sight, and I hated that Tessa was freely eyeing him uncaringly. Could she make it any more obvious we were talking about him?

“Sorta. He comes around every now and then. He’s the VP in the chapter at Northam, which is right at the border, so you can imagine how important they are to us.”

I reflected on Remy’s words. That to be a VP young wasn’t easy. Judging by Edge, he looked to be in his thirties, and that was young for his role. He was a thing to be feared, I was sure of it.

“Yo, Sara-bara,” Logan said from behind me. I turned around, rolling my eyes at the stupid nickname he’d been calling me lately.

“What?”

“Remy wants to talk to you.” He held out his cell phone.

I took it and put it to my ear. “Hey, Rem,”

“I’m at the shops. What the fuck did you say you wanted again?”

“Yeah, I need some tampons.”

“What the fuck are tampons?”

“You know what tampons are.”

“What brand?”

“The ‘Ladies Comfort’ ones.”

I heard some shuffling on the other end. “There’s no ‘Ladies Comfort’ shit here. It’s a goddamn nightmare in this section. Weird grannies everywhere, lookin’ at me like I’m some tampon creep. Am I wearing somethin’ that belongs to you?” I heard a startled gasp in the background. “Yeah, walk away.”

“Relax, Remy, and stop scaring women in the tampon aisle. I’d have gotten it myself if you let me out–”

“Doesn’t Darcy have some shit lying around?”