notice me at all. Not until I turned the sink on to fill the kettle with hot water.
Mal started, nearly dropping the photo—he fumbled it a little, then set it on the coffee table with a grimace. “You scared me.”
“Sorry,” I said with a grin. “I do that a lot.”
Mal peered over his shoulder curiously at me. “Scare people?”
“No,” I chuckled as I flipped on the electric kettle. “Look at that picture. Ask Ankh for advice.”
With a heavy sigh, Mal leaned back against the couch. “I could use some of his advice right now.”
I fixed two mugs of tea, then walked to the couch and sat down beside Priest. “Can’t sleep?”
“Just a lot on my mind,” Mal said. He nodded gratefully for the tea, then wrapped his hands around the mug, with his gaze still on the picture on the coffee table. “What about you?”
Not like I could tell him I was tossing and turning fantasizing about him plowing Xavier. “About the same,” I said. “I’m no Ankh, but… what’s on your mind?”
Gazing into the depths of his mug, Mal suddenly looked exhausted. I wondered if I should’ve left him alone—if I was crossing some unknown boundary asking him to open up to me like this, in the dim, intimate light of my cabin. And yet, my hesitation wasn’t enough for me to withdraw my question. Not when Mal looked so tense. Tense and lost. He needed someone to talk to.
“I just… I’m not looking forward to this church meeting tomorrow,” Mal admitted with a grimace. “I just don’t think Xavier is that big of a threat. Certainly not big enough to warrant an emergency church meeting.”
I set my mug down. Whatever I was expecting Mal to admit was bothering him, it wasn’t this.
“Clearly, he’s a little unbalanced,” Mal admitted. “But he’s just one guy. This didn’t need to get escalated into a problem for the entire club. At the end of the day, it’s my personal business, and—and I can handle it. I should be the one to handle it, not the rest of the club.”
“Well,” I said, tamping down on the frustration flaring in my chest, “the rest of the club got involved when Xavier lied about wanting to prospect to get close to you.”
Mal exhaled, visibly frustrated. He tightened his grip on the mug. “Yeah, I can admit that was fucked up. But it’s still—”
“Come on, Mal,” I interrupted. “You know it’s club business. You know better than this.”
Mal said nothing, and the frustration inside me burned a little hotter. Sometimes I felt like I was the only person in this club with any sense. I understood that it was embarrassing, but the safety of the club was more important than Mal’s pride. And I knew somewhere in his head, he knew that. He just had blinders on—he’d decided that Xavier wasn’t dangerous and was ignoring the blatant warning signs so he didn’t have to reveal his hookup to the club. Not that it was anything to be embarrassed about.
“Our club has been through so much shit,” I said. “We’ve seen how things work out when we ignore situations like this or try to handle them on our own. Don’t you remember Dylan? Or Jono?”
“Of course I do,” Mal said. “This isn’t the same.”
“Maybe it’s not the same,” I said, “but it’s in that same realm. You’re the co-president, Mal, you can’t afford to look the other way on situations like this. And it’s not just personal anymore. You need to be an example of how to handle things maturely and responsibly, with the support of the club.”
“I see what you’re saying,” Mal said. “Does this really warrant a church meeting, though? We’ve blacklisted Xavier—what else is there to do?”
Again, my frustration flared. It seemed insane to me that Mal didn’t see why this was such a big deal. He’d been lying to the club—hiding months of harassment from a guy that knew where he lived. Which also happened to be club property. What if Xavier hadn’t tried to prospect? What if he’d done something worse, like break into the house, or follow Mal until he got him alone? We were lucky it’d gone as harmlessly as it had.
“I’ve had more than enough of seeing my loved ones put unnecessarily in harm’s way,” I said a little sharply. “He knows where you live! He could be out there tonight, waiting for you to come home so he can—I don’t know, break in and do something fucked up