Free Shades of Love (Mad Jackals Brotherhood MC Book 3) by Evelyn Glass Page B

stare.
     
    “There are a lot of things that I need to tell you and I need you to listen.” He jams his hands in the pockets of his jeans, giving her that intense look of his.
     
    “I’ve heard that before. I didn’t much like it the first time round.” She crosses her arms over her chest, trying to summon some of the anger she’d felt that night in the apartment, needing some kind of defense against the way her body and her heart responds to him. She comes up with nothing. “But if you want to talk to me, I’ll listen.” She watches him as she waits, the guarded expression slowly seeping out replaced by resignation.
     
    “I have to get out of town before the Jackals do anything worse than they already have. I don’t need any more deaths on my conscience.” He scrapes his fingers through his dark blonde hair.
     
    “You didn’t kill that man the other night, Ray. They did. It’s not on you.” Mia shakes her head dismissively at his words. If he wants to blame himself for everything bad that happens in the world, that was fine, but she was damned if she was going to do the same.
     
    Ray looks at her with a surprised expression. Whatever he had expected her to say, it clearly wasn’t that. “Regardless, they’re here now and I know if I leave town, they’ll follow. I wanted to let you know they won’t be bothering you anymore and neither will I.”
     
    Mia bites her lip hard, looking down at the floor so Ray won’t see the pain in her eyes at his words. “Bothering me? Is that what you think you’ve been doing?”
     
    “Well I sure as hell haven’t been making you happy.” Ray rocks back on his heels watching her, but she refuses to meet his gaze. He clears his throat, stalling as he starts to say whatever is on his mind. “There’s something else.” She looks up at him, wondering what else there could possibly be. “It’s about Eli.”
     
    She frowns at him as thoughts of the way he had behaved over the past few days fills her head. She’d finally turned her phone off after telling him she was going to Cassie’s and not to wait up. Seeing the inevitable list of missed calls from him was becoming more than irritating; it was entering the territory of creepy. “What about him?”
     
    Ray sighs deeply. “You may want to sit down for this.” She stubbornly remains standing and he nods as if that’s what he’d expected. “You remember I told you that I suspected he was involved with what happened with my mom, that he was somehow involved with the Jackals?”
     
    Mia nods, not trusting her voice.
     
    “Well today I found out what I needed to know.” He takes a deep breath before he starts to retell the story Donnie had recounted to him that morning. It still didn’t feel real, but he knew it was the truth and, right now, that was all that mattered. “Eli’s dad has been involved with the Jackals for a long time. Haven’t you ever wondered how his little hardware store has grown into a mini empire so fast?”
     
    Mia nods again, not liking where this is going, but forcing herself to listen.
     
    “He’d been in bed with the Jackals for years, paying them protection money to get rid of his competitors. The Jackals firebombed stores, cleared the way for Eli’s family to get a monopoly on the market, and they were paid well for it. Eli knew all about it.” Ray shakes his head like he can’t believe how low his old friend has sunk. “He’d always been in love with you; you must have known that?”
     
    The look on Mia’s rosebud lips tells him she had no idea.
     
    “Well, that makes you probably the only person that didn’t know how he felt. I don’t think he ever really forgave me for taking you away from him.” Ray rubs at his forehead in frustration.
     
    “You didn’t take me away from him. Eli and I were just friends. I didn’t feel that way about him.” Mia shrugs, again absolving Ray of any blame.
     
    “Anyway, he saw me as the reason you two weren’t