Tex (Hell's Ankhor #5) - Aiden Bates Page 0,39

were some guys in there that didn’t like Hell’s Ankhor,” I said. “And, you know. At a certain point I couldn’t let it slide. But fighting led to stints in solitary. Which was a lot worse than the fighting.”

“Jazz,” Tex said, and his eyes were suddenly soft.

I couldn’t hold his gaze. I kept talking, but it felt like someone else was saying the words, filling the silence so I wouldn’t have to just stand here letting him look at me. “That’s why I had to learn more self-defense in the joint—to try to de-escalate the fights or stop them before they caught the guards’ attention. Just trying to stay out of solitary.”

“You really have grown up a lot,” Tex murmured.

“Yeah, well,” I said, and I opened the door to my bedroom and stumbled backward, away from him, before I did something fucking crazy like lean forward and kiss him. “It was by necessity. And overdue.”

“Still.” Tex’s cheeks were pink. “I’m still proud of you.”

“Can it,” I said automatically.

“Make me,” Tex shot back.

I felt a little unmoored, a knot sitting dangerously in my throat. Better turn this conversation away from jail, away from challenges and concern and Tex looking so soft and kissable—I latched onto the only thing I could think of that would adequately distract him. This wasn’t exactly how I intended to go about this, but I had to pull the chute.

“Come in here. I have something for you.” I picked up the cardboard box that had arrived at the clubhouse last week.

It’d been an impulse purchase, bought online after I’d come back from a shift at Custom to find the fridge stocked with my favorite pilsner. I’d considered hanging onto it until his birthday or something, but I’d been staring at the box for a week, imagining his reaction, and I was impatient these days.

Besides: good distraction.

“What is it?” Tex closed the door to my bedroom behind him.

Why did he close the door?

I shook myself a little. There didn’t have to be a reason.

“Here.” I tossed the box at him, and Tex started, but caught it.

He opened the flaps of the box, looked inside, and then looked up at me with his mouth slightly open. “Jazz. Come on. You didn’t.”

“What?” I shrugged, like it was nothing.

But we both knew it wasn’t. Tex didn’t let anyone touch his hat, and no one else in the club would dare imply that he needed a new one.

“What for?” he asked, half-incredulous, half-pleased.

“Your old one’s beat up,” I said. “And I know you’re not going to buy a new one for yourself.”

Tex shook his head, looking fond and disbelieving at the same time. He lifted the new hat from the box as if it were a Faberge egg. It wasn’t much different than the one I’d given him all those years ago—same shape, slightly wider brim, a little more curve to it. But the selling point for me was that rich, inky-black fabric. Just imagining the contrast of the dark color against Tex’s fiery red beard and sharp green eyes.

He took his old hat off, set it on my bed, and pulled on the new one.

He adjusted it a little bit, until it sat just the way he liked it, low enough to block the sun when he was outside but not enough to obscure his face. He ran his forefinger over the brim and grinned. “What do you think?”

Well, I thought I needed to get in the shower before what I really thought was visible in my shorts, despite having come down in the gym.

It looked even better than I had imagined. He looked so… Elegant, in a way, with the dark color of his hat and his dark shirt, like he’d stepped off an album cover. I’d spent so much time today already tearing my eyes away from Tex, and I’d intended this gift to distract him, to stop him from asking about jail, but now I was distracted in a different way. I couldn’t stop looking at him. Like I’d just finished a long run and he was the drink of water I’d been dreaming about for miles.

I couldn’t tear my eyes away, from the skin visible at the waistband of his sweatpants, to his tapered waist, the stretch of his dark shirt across his pecs, the definition of his bicep in his raised arm where he touched the hat.

Then I finally met his gaze.

His green eyes burned.

I’d never seen that expression on his face—definitely not directed at me.