“Always pick up your phone, David. We were worried sick about you,” said Hunter, shoving away a plate of sandwiches to make space for his elbow. “Did you think I’d hate you because you’re gay? Is that it?”
David took a deep breath and nodded. “You were so excited about getting me a girlfriend. I didn’t want to disappoint you. And then the phone… Mom and Dad kept calling. I just wanted a few hours of not dealing with them. I’m so freaking stupid.”
Hunter rubbed his face and drank some coffee from the cup that sat in front of him. “You’re not stupid. You just lack experience. You can ask us anything, and we will help you with difficult decisions if that’s what you need. Raja really wasn’t... isn’t the man for you.”
Asty looked back from the cooker with a scowl passing across her face but tried to smile at David nevertheless.
“He felt… right,” David mumbled. “But if that choice was wrong, I think I’ll take some time before dipping my feet in again. I’ve got the job, a few projects…” He had to stop talking, because tears started falling down his cheeks again. Who was he lying to? He couldn’t imagine being with anyone but Raja.
Hunter knocked his fist against the table. “I’m gonna kill this-” he started, but when a buzzing sound came from the street, Hunter got up immediately and rushed toward the door. “Motherfucker...”
Chapter 21
Raja’s heart raced. With David neither picking up his phone nor replying to messages, he had no options left but to check at Hunter’s. Yes, the meeting took far longer than he’d anticipated, but he hadn’t expected David to just disappear on him. It was so out of character that as time passed, the craziest of ideas started coming to Raja’s mind. What if David left because the time away from Raja made him reconsider and feel bad for his parents? Why else would he have left without a word? Anything could have happened to David, and Raja refused to just accept this turn of events. If he had to tell Hunter the truth about what had been going on between David and him, so be it. Hunter was bound to be pissed off, but he could at least call up his parents and find out if David was at theirs.
He parked in front of Hunter’s house, and seeing light in one of the rooms downstairs, he quickly rushed for the door, which opened wide before he even reached it.
“You shiteating son of a bitch!” Hunter came at him, fists first, and despite dodging the punch to his face, Raja still got one in his stomach.
He stumbled back, holding on to his midsection, but as soon as he could speak again, he tried to straighten up. “Is David here?”
Hunter grabbed Raja’s hair and shoved him to the ground. “You think you have the right to ask that question?”
Raja glanced at the house, breathless. He didn’t want to fight Hunter right now, but he did grab Hunter’s wrist to keep him from pulling on the hair. “He fucking walked out on me and wouldn’t pick up the phone. Is he okay?”
David appeared in the doorway, only half his body visible as he peeked out with his eyes and face red. He looked so cute in the big hoodie that Raja wanted to pet him, no matter how much David had scared him this night.
Hunter grunted at Raja and let go of his hair. “He’s fine. Without you. I don’t want to ever see you around him. Understood?”
Seeing David so upset unlocked a whole new layer of rage within Raja. He growled and twisted Hunter’s hand. “He’s an adult. You can’t police him for his sexuality, you bigoted fuck!”
Hunter frowned and shoved Raja back, but Raja wouldn’t take it, and as soon as he could, he pushed Hunter as well. Who did he think he was? Raja extended his hand to David.
“You don’t have to stay here and take his bullshit, David.”
But instead of taking a step forward as Raja expected, since David usually only needed a nudge in the right direction, David hugged the doorframe. His eyes were so utterly sad Raja wanted to steal him away and shower him with kisses until he’d see a smile.
“Say it’s not true about the bet,” David said.
Raja’s mouth opened, instantly dry as paper. His brain was empty. How had David found out about the bet? “W-what?” he asked in the end, already sweating like a pig. Shit. Fuck.
“He can’t!” Hunter shoved Raja back again, long hair falling into his face. “Because he’s a lying piece of shit.”
David put his forehead against the doorframe and sobbed. Raja’s chest felt as if something was trying to push its way outside, and he ignored Hunter, stepping toward David. “How... I mean... why did you leave? David, don’t cry.”
David looked up at him with his eyes glistening in the faint sunlight. “Is it true about the bet or not?” he hissed, staying where he was.
Blade. It must have been Blade who told him. Who else?
Raja wanted to deny it so bad it hurt. It would have been so easy to shake his head, especially since he lost the bet on purpose because it hadn’t felt right to deceive David anymore. But when he looked into David’s sincere, shimmering eyes, the lie got stuck in his throat. He’d been more sincere with David than with anyone else in a long time, and this was not the time to break that streak.
“It wasn’t like that... Blade made this joke, because I was telling him that gay guys have no problem getting laid, and he bet me-”
David’s eyes opening wider distracted him so much that he didn’t see the punch coming this time, and the impact of Hunter’s fist smashing into his face felt like being hit by a truck.
“Get the fuck off my front yard before I shoot you!” Hunter yelled at him. “You made a bet over my little brother?”
Raja shook his head, as if it could possibly stop his brain from rattling in his skull. His jaw stung, and for a brief moment he thought he’d fall to the lawn from the vertigo, but he managed to keep himself up. “I didn’t know who he was back then,” said Raja and spat bloody saliva to the grass. “Who do you think I am? This is a fucking conspiracy against me!”
When he looked up to the door, David was gone, but instead, Asty was heading his way, looking no less menacing than she usually did, despite wearing skull-print pajama pants and a tank top. The baseball bat in her hand was enough for Raja to take a few steps back and raise his hands. Sure, he could fight back, but he did not want to deal with the fallout of possibly hurting the daughter of the Detroit chapter’s president.
“I’ll show you a fucking conspiracy, you cunt!” Asty yelled at him.
Raja glanced at Hunter, backing away. “Whoa, keep her on a tighter leash. Christ!” he added when Asty swung the bat at him.
“Get off my property!”
“David!” called out Raja, ignoring the fact that it was around five in the morning, and most people were still asleep.
Hunter sneered at him. “Shut the fuck up! You broke his heart, asshole. Don’t you dare make contact with him ever again. He’s eighteen, for fuck’s sake. Straight out of Catholic school. He can’t handle your kind of bullshit. He needs a good guy in his life!”
Heat flushed Raja’s head. “I’ve done nothing to him. He was fine just hours ago, until he disappeared on me. Who do you think he called over when your parents ganged up on him with the priest? You or me?”
“He would have called me if he knew what a giant ass you are!”
Asty scowled at Raja. “Of course he called you. He’s got teenage hormones raging inside of him!” She was one to talk. Barely twenty herself.
Raja poked himself in the chest, staring straight at her. “I’ve been treating him with the respect he deserves. You should let me talk this through with him.”
“You’re not coming near him, Raja. And I’m not breaking your nose only out of respect for our past friendship. Fuck. Off.” Hunter squinted at him.
Raja panted, unsure what else was there to say. He looked toward the house, hoping to spot even a hint of David, so that he could somehow communicate that this whole bet thing was nothing like they all seemed to think, but there was no one to communicate that to.
David was slipping from Raja’s gr
asp, and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it right now. His throat ached when he thought of just how much damage the misunderstanding could do to David’s fragile self-esteem as a gay man, and he couldn’t stand the fact that his hands were tied as a result of this clusterfuck.
He stepped back and shook his head. “This is a mistake...”
A raspy voice shouted from behind him, and when he glanced over his shoulder, there was an elderly man standing in front of the house across the street, clad only in his pajama and a thick robe. “We’re trying to sleep. It’s not even six yet!”
Asty walked past Raja. “I’m very sorry. This man’s leaving.”
Raja hissed and rushed toward his bike. “Fuck all of you.”
Once he got on and revved the engine, he took one more look toward the house, and there David was, quickly hiding behind the curtain in his room once he’d been spotted.
Raja didn’t remember the last time he felt so bitter.
*
Raja was approaching Toledo with a brain as busy as a hornets’ nest. He couldn’t believe what had happened. Blade had set him up. Got him to look bad in front of Hunter, and messed up whatever it was that Raja had with David. Raja’s hands hurt from the way he squeezed the handles of his bike every time fury burned through his body. Just when last night with David had been so hot and sweet. He thought the bet thing was long forgotten yet it still came back to bite Raja in the ass. What kind of fresh fuckery was this?
He was fuming with rage. This wasn’t even only about David. Something like this could really affect Raja’s relationship with the Detroit chapter, as if he didn’t have enough on his plate already with the first round of cargo coming any day now. Blade hadn’t been drunk last night, so an accidental slip was out of the question, and the guy wasn’t dumb enough to treat it as a joke either. No matter how Raja turned this situation in his brain, he came to the same conclusion.
Blade had told David the truth out of spite. Was he secretly angry about being under a gay man in the chapter’s hierarchy? If that was the case, pushing Raja at Hunter’s brother of all people did make some sense.
He parked his bike in front of the clubhouse which looked much worse in daylight than it did at night. Judging by the sounds inside, the drinkathon was still going strong, and he hoped Blade was there so he could whip his ass in front of everyone.
He rushed through the door, and the cigarette fumes made him cringe. Pete. Of course. He could have at least opened the damn window. But the choking air became a trivial problem as soon as Raja settled his eyes on Blade, who looked up at him along with the others. As if nothing had happened.
“You piece of shit,” hissed Raja and tackled the motherfucker as soon as he started rising from the sofa. The world spun, and they fell to the floor, bringing the beat-up piece of furniture with them.
The vodka breath coming off Blade in clouds made it easier to pack a punch in his gut, but the fucker still wriggled under Raja like an agitated maggot.
“What is this?” Spin yelled somewhere behind them.
“What’s going on?” Smurf added in a voice suggesting he’d just woken up.
Raja ignored them and grabbed Blade by the collar, slamming him down on the hard floor. Staring at him with wide eyes, Blade punched Raja in the forehead, but Raja headbutted him even before the ringing in his head was over.
“How dare you? What kind of friend are you that you told him about the bet?”
Blade bared his teeth, and his fingers went for Raja’s eyes, but they slipped down his face, tangling into the beard. “It slipped out,” he hissed, spitting some blood. Motherfucker knew exactly what he’d done.
“What bet?” Spin bellowed all too close.
Raja punched Blade in the face and held him down, exhaling deeply before he was calm enough to speak to his VP. “This fucker told Hunter’s brother we bet on him before I knew who he was. If he spills something like this into the boy’s face, how can he keep secret important club business?”
Smurf held his hands up with a deep frown. “Wait, wait, wait… Blade was trying to bed Hunter’s brother?”
Blade screamed and began twisting under Raja again, his wrists trapped in Raja’s firm grip.
Raja clenched his jaw and kicked the fucker in the nuts hard enough to make him squeal. He got to his feet and kicked Blade’s side for good measure, pacing around the room. “Fuck. No. Not him. Me. He got me to fuck Hunter’s brother, and then he told the guy it’d been on a bet!”
Spin groaned and twirled a finger in his beard. “This is not good at all. Fuck, Blade, are you against this club or something? There’s five of us. We’re brothers. We should be building each other up.”
Smurf shook his head. “That’s not on, man. If you had beef with Raja, you should have settled it with him only, not make our whole club look like a bunch of lowlifes.”
Raja rubbed his face, frustrated beyond belief. Blade’s sheer presence in the room was like a sore wound that wouldn’t stop bleeding. “And all that after I lost the bet because I found out who the guy was. And you were pissed off when I did. What’s your fucking agenda, Blade? Do you have a problem with me? Because if you do, let’s settle this like men, not through this kind of backstabbing. That’s not what we all stand for here!”
Pete spat out his cigarette and put it out with his boot on the tiled floor. He too scowled at Blade and shook his head. “Why now? We’re starting a new operation within days. We might need assistance, and this is creating a stink between us and Detroit.”
Blade was panting and seemed at least half-sobered up by the punches thrown his way. “I’m the problem? He’s the one who fucked another member’s brother!”
Smurf kicked the sofa with so much force it moved. “Don’t try to turn this around. Raja’s our prez, and you fucked him over. If you have a problem with him, you could have backed out of the club during the patchover. This is such bullshit!”
Raja leaned against the wall, trying to calm down. Seeing the others support him like this was a huge pick-me-up for him, especially with how dreary the last few hours had been. “I tried to straighten things out, and Hunter’s woman chased me away with a fucking baseball bat. I can’t touch her. She’s the Detroit president’s daughter, and I have no doubt that she’s gonna mention this to her papa. What a fucking clusterfuck,” he said and kicked the wall behind him.
Spin gave Blade a stern look as he was slowly picking himself up from the floor. “We need to be able to trust each other. To have each other’s back.”
“True,” hissed Raja, holding Spin’s gaze for a few seconds. The immediate fury was gone, but the raw ache in his bones that replaced it wasn’t any better. He looked at Blade, who rolled over and got to his knees, clenching his jaw so hard his teeth could break from the sheer power behind it. “Take a hike. I don’t wanna see you here for the next three weeks.”
Chapter 22
Three weeks later, Raja still hadn’t heard back from David. After two days, he was done sending messages that wouldn’t even be read and moved on, but the way David had looked at him from the door back at Hunter’s house was still haunting him. Like a shard of glass stuck in Raja’s heart, it let him live a normal life but irritated his flesh every single day, not letting him forget what he’d done.
As time passed, Raja slowly got used to the fact that Hunter would never consider him a friend again, and David would think of his first sexual experiences as a traumatic mistake, just as Raja remembered some of his own to be. A part of Raja believed that maybe it was for the better. David had been infatuated with him, up to the point of declaring his misplaced love to a man who fucked his way through life and felt just fine about it. Raja wasn’t looking for a relationship. Maybe he would once he was too old to find hookups as easily as he did now, but he didn’t want to be tied down yet. That wasn’t what he was about, and at some point he would have had to tell David that it was normal for guys to think they were in love with the first guy they fucked. It was no bi
g deal. They would have moved on anyway.
As he sat in the waiting armchair at Lucky’s barber shop, a new message popped up on his phone. Grindr.
[Wanna fuck tonight?] came with a chest and dick shot attached. Raja browsed through a few more pictures of the user, and the guy was definitely attractive enough to be worthy of Raja’s attention. If it weren’t for the fact that Raja didn’t really feel like going out, he might have answered. An evening with Netflix and food sounded much more appealing than faking interest in what some rando had to say as a prelude to sex.
Lucky was busy chatting to the customer he was working on, a guy who, judging by his tattoos, had spent a long time in prison, yet his thick white beard was beginning to look classy under Lucky’s ministrations.
The place was small, only had space for two customers at a time, but the size gave it a cozy feel. Black and white tiles, black leather upholstery on the armchairs, the smell of fresh coffee, and a hint of cologne in the air. That was the kind of environment Raja found relaxing.
Despite the hands-off policy, Raja couldn’t help but let his gaze settle on Lucky’s pert ass in a pair of skinny jeans. An ass he wouldn’t mind grabbing...
It hit him that he hadn’t gotten any since the disastrous night when he popped David’s anal cherry. And David’s ass was fine. Soft to the touch but tight and shaped as if it had been lovingly carved by the world’s greatest sculptor. There was something about those moments they’d spent in the sweaty sheets that just wouldn’t go away, no matter how much he wished it to be out of his mind. David had trusted Raja and completely opened up to him, only to be burned so badly. It had felt good to touch him and know he’d listen to what Raja had to say. Raja wanted to listen to David’s soft voice and watch him smile just as much.
David was so young. He could change so much within the year that maybe Raja wouldn’t even recognize him when they finally met by chance. But with things as they were, David would grow into a man away from Raja’s eyes. Raja drew in a sharp breath and squeezed his eyes. Who was he even kidding? He’d enjoy seeing David so much more than fucking a random guy, who was interchangeable with at least 50 percent of people on Grindr.
Heart Ripper Page 22
