Under Locke(13)

Those hazel eyes that were an exact replica of mine, narrowed. And then he quirked a little smile. "His kneecaps too?"



I shrugged. "Why not? Call him a friggin' idiot while you do it."



Sonny shook his head, full out grinning by that point. "To think I used to call you a good girl. My little sis telling me to break someone's kneecaps. You might make me cry, Ris." He leaned forward across the armchair I was sitting in and ruffled my hair. "Thatta girl."



I snorted and batted his hand away.



His face sobered a moment later, his gaze serious. "Nobody talks to you like that, you hear me? I don't care if it's another member of the MC or some asshole on the street. If somebody takes their anger out on you, I'll beat the shit out of them."



Lord. Where had he been when I was fifteen and got made fun of? I pushed the thought out of my mind and nodded, settling in just to make him feel better.



"Yes, father." I gave him a little smile. "Quit stressing, would you?"



By the way his jaw clenched, you could tell he wasn't exactly happy with staying quiet but he didn't argue against me.



"Fine, but wear whatever the fuck you want, kid. Wear a three-piece suit just to piss him off," he grunted. Sonny leaned forward again to mess with my hair until I swatted at him.



He stood up, grabbed his phone out of his pocket and disappeared down the hall that led toward his bedroom, silently.



Wait...



Sonny wasn't the silent type.



"What are you doing?" I yelled out after him.



His answer, "Nothing!"



A minute later, from the confines of his bedroom, he started yelling.



What did I do? I tip-toed into the hallway that led toward his bedroom and tried to listen in. Just for a minute. That was it.



"—the fuck is wrong with you?...She's shy with strangers, Dex. Shy. You think your attitude helps that any?....No. No. Imagine if she was your sister. How the hell would you feel if somebody called her a bitch....Well, that's Lisa. That's not Ris. Imagine if it was Marie...Did you hear me? What if—no. Fuck you, Dex. If something crawls up your ass, don't take it out on her. You act like a bitch—"



I might have smiled. Big.



Chapter Five



I wore my usual clothes the next day. Khaki pants and a white, long-sleeved button-up shirt were my big "fuck you" to Dex. Throwing all those "fuck you" comments around sort of made me feel empowered. Just a little, at least.



He'd taken a long look at me when I showed up at the door fifteen minutes until four and didn't say anything. Neither did I.



My silent treatment—and eye aversion—lasted exactly eight work hours. For eight hours, I managed to dodge Dex during business hours by bothering Blake. We'd only spoken when he needed me to schedule something and when a customer came in for him.



Each and every single time, I’d feel this incredibly nauseating pressure on my neck. It was my body’s wordless reminder of how carelessly mean he'd been, and how he'd made me feel like I needed a tetanus shot afterward. I'd stayed up the night before wondering why it bothered me so much that he thought I was stupid. It was really his fault I didn't understand what I was supposed to do, wasn't it?



Such a beautiful man, and he was a complete friggin’ asshole. Go figure.



Only a very small part of me wanted to drop the issue. Pretend that he hadn't lost his mind briefly and said something that I'm sure Sonny and the rest of the Widowmakers more than likely said casually. But I couldn't. I just couldn't. When had I become the type of person who couldn't let things go, I had no idea.



Even when Lanie had taken my car without permission and wrecked it, I hadn't stayed mad for more than a couple of hours. When Will lost my cell phone, I think I'd gotten mad for all of an hour. And when I'd gotten fired, I'd been more sad than mad. Stuff was replaceable, so I didn't bother holding onto my frustrations.



Except every time I saw him, Dex, something ugly churned inside my chest.



I only let myself look at him below the face when he’d walk by, and by that I mean that regardless of whether he was a dick or not, I considered looking at his tattoos—and body—as a lesson in learning about body ink. You know, occupational research and all. After occasional and close observation, I was able to figure out that his sleeves were complete opposites.



His right arm was a matting of solid black ink, broken up by a spiral of rectangular tiles surrounded by an inch of the most beautiful black, gray, and skin tone flower outlines. Outside of the flowers it was flat, almost shiny black ink that made my arm hurt to look at.



Dex’s other arm was as colorful as I figured a guy who wore black shirts three days in a row could be. Trying to be discreet wasn’t exactly a strength of mine, so what I was able to distinguish were the tracings of what seemed to be a black wing that wrapped around his bicep and the upper part of his forearm, with the brightest red, blue, and gray triangles that clustered together at the shoulder and eventually faded out toward his wrist.