Tex (Hell's Ankhor #5) - Aiden Bates Page 0,26

made coffee, and then sat outside on the clubhouse’s back porch to drink it in the cool early morning air.

Tex’s remark from the night before itched at me like a bug bite in the center of my back, just out of reach. I thought we’d cleared the air between us in Monterey. I thought I was getting a new start with him, and with the club—that they trusted me to prove myself to them, that I wouldn’t let them down.

But apparently he didn’t really believe I’d changed. Not enough to trust me as an enforcer, at least. He still thought I was the gullible kid, the pushover, the one who would do anything for a pat on the head. I sighed and took a slow sip of my coffee.

The back door opened. Gretel, the fucking adorable puppy that had also somehow been adopted into the club in my absence, scampered out, nosing at my knees. I scratched at her ears obligingly. Then Raven stuck his head through the gap of the doorway and lit up when he saw me. “Jazz! Thought it had to be you. No one else wakes up earlier than me.”

“It’s a fluke,” I said. “Won’t happen again.”

“Hope it does,” Raven said. “I agreed to take Gretel from Logan for the night, and she apparently likes to jump up on the bed without warning at 4:00 a.m. I’m exhausted. And this is the first time in weeks I haven’t been the one to make the coffee.”

“Don’t get used to it,” I said fondly. “You gonna stand there all morning, or sit down?”

Raven laughed warmly and sat down at the edge of the porch, leaning his back against the railing with one foot dangling down the stairs leading to the backyard. He’d grown up a lot since I’d last seen him: he’d filled out a little in the shoulders, and his formerly anxious, high-octane energy had settled into something a lot closer to self-confidence. It probably helped that he and Gunnar had worked out whatever was keeping them apart. They were sweet together, and funny, Raven drawing a more playful side from Gunnar, and Gunnar grounding Raven in reality when he got too caught up in his projects.

“You doing all right?” Raven wrapped both hands around his coffee mug. “Settling back in?”

“Yeah, it’s fine,” I said, and rubbed at my chin.

“Thought you’d be in a better mood,” Raven said. “With the whole enforcer thing.”

I hummed in agreement. “I’m happy about it. I’m just—I don’t know, Tex made a little dig about it yesterday. Got under my skin.”

“A dig?” Raven raised one narrow brow. “You two are always talking shit to each other. What’d he say?”

“It wasn’t like that.” Our banter was different. It had unspoken boundaries that we both knew, and skirted up against, but never crossed. “He doesn’t think I’m ready to be an enforcer. He thinks I’ll just repeat the mistakes that landed me in San Quentin.”

Raven grimaced. “He said that?”

“In so many words.”

Raven sipped his coffee and looked out over the backyard. “He was different when you were gone, you know.”

The low, sad tone in Raven’s voice made my heart clench despite itself. “What do you mean?”

“It was like he was only halfway here—distant. Distracted. He worked a lot, and he was a major asset to the club, but it was like he couldn’t connect with anybody. His head was always somewhere else.” Raven glanced back over, sipped his coffee. “Now he’s getting back to how he was.”

“What do you mean?” I asked again, even though the answer was clear.

“He’s just scared,” Raven said. “Scared something will happen to you—that you’ll disappear on him again.”

I exhaled hard and scrubbed my hand across my forehead. “If that’s true, he could’ve just said that.”

Raven gave me an unimpressed look. “You really think he’d say that?”

Of course Tex would never come out and say something like that. We always talked in a teasing sort of code, emotions kept far at bay. So I said nothing.

“Exactly,” Raven said.

“And it’s just—” I stopped.

Raven’s sharp blue eyes fixed on me. He waited for a long moment, and the unfinished sentence hung in the air between us.

“What’s going on between you two?” Raven asked. “I know that look.”

I scowled. “What look?”

“That one,” Raven said. “The one where you’re trying to pretend you’re not feeling what you’re feeling. Seen that one in the mirror plenty of times.”

Raven turned his gaze back out toward the backyard. He was giving me an out, I realized.