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Relief left him sagging against the brick and instantly regretting it. He jerked away with a hiss, drawing immediate scrutiny from Axel.

“Did you wreck your bike?” Axel asked.

“Huh? No, what made you ask that?”

“Seems like you’re banged up and you’re walking,” Axel admitted. “I’ve never seen a biker on foot unless they were pushing their ride to the shop for repairs.”

“Mine needs some work I haven’t had the chance to do,” Scout said, because there was a kernel of truth there; it did need a tune-up.

“Creature fixes bikes,” Axel blurted.

“No one works on my bike but me,” Scout replied, bristling a little. “Besides, I can’t afford to pay him.”

“Don’t you work for the club?”

“Yeah, and I need every dime I make to help out my old man,” Scout replied.

“Does he live around here too?”

“No.”

“Can I ask you something?” Axel ventured after Scout had fallen silent and sucked in a drag.

“Even if I say no, something tells me that you’ll ask anyway.”

Axel shrugged and stifled a chuckle. “Pretty much. I’m just curious. Why did your brother charge the robber when I was already putting the cash in the bag?”

“He pointed his gun at me,” Scout replied, shivering at the memory of the moment and the split second when he was certain his life was about to end. “Sawyer would have left him alone if he hadn’t.”

“That’s fair,” Axel murmured. “He’s older than you, isn’t he?”

“Yeah.”

“I always wished I had a big brother,” Axel admitted. “Maybe then there would have been a buffer between me and my old man.”

“Does he get on your case a lot?”

“Yeah, and I fuckin’ hate it.”

“My pops is amazing,” Scout said. “After my mom left, he became mom and dad to us. Worked his ass off and still found time to help with homework, cook supper, and teach us to build things. Neither my brother nor I was into sports, but we loved machines, and Pops is a master mechanic. Sometimes he’d bring things in just for us to take apart.

Like, that was family time for us, working on some pieces of machinery together. ”

“I bet that was fun.”

“It really was. Better than being parked in front of the television watching movies and playing video games,” Scout said.

“He’d take us camping and fishing too. In the summer, we’d canoe down the river, fishing until we got bored and found a new place to pitch our tents.

Food never tasted as good as when it was cooked over an open flame.

I miss it. I miss being a kid and living out there with him. ”

“Why not go back?”

“Someday, I will, once I’ve made enough money to help us keep the place.”

“Shit, I have to get back inside; my break is just about over.”

“No worries, I need a nap before work,” Scout remarked before snubbing his cigarette out in the can of sand near his feet. “See ya around.”

“See ya,” Axel called before he disappeared inside, while Scout began the last leg of his walk.

Pinpricks of pain were his only companion as he wandered past the pool hall and glanced in, wishing his brother was around for a couple of games.

Their old man was handy with a pool cue and, admittedly, a bit of a shark in his younger days.

There were times, during his childhood, when he’d left Sawyer to watch out for Scout while he went into town with his stick.

At the time, he’d figured his old man just needed a night out and the company of other adults after weeks of it just being the three of them.

It wasn’t until he was a teenager that he realized that he only did it when they were short on cash for groceries.

His old man had put his whole life on hold for them, so when he’d gotten sick, it had been easy for him and Sawyer to do everything they could to keep the salvage yard running.

Yeah, maybe Sawyer had done a few things he shouldn’t have, which was how he’d come to be a member of the Hounds.

But he’d always kept those men away from their family business. Now it was Scout’s turn to do the same.

Damn, it was hard though.

Mark and the other Jokers he’d met were different from the Hounds.

Not better, not worse, just different in the way they went about things.

They had businesses and skills. Giving back to the community and helping it thrive seemed to be important to him.

Even at their rowdiest, they didn’t go tearing around smashing shit and fucking with people for fun.

It was like they were a family. A real, honest-to-God family.

Only family wasn’t supposed to throw you away the way they’d done to Teddy.

Fucking hell. It was all so fuckin’ confusing.

Even Kong was confusing, the way he’d looked at him in an almost pleading way when he’d peppered Scout with questions.

A part of him would love to tell them about the scrapyard, if only so they’d know he wasn’t trying to run some kind of a scam on them.

What Kong had said, about not having his trust or his protection until he did, had left Scout longing to tell him everything, including the reason he was disappearing into town all the time.

But what if he was only feigning concern to get answers?

Teddy’s warning, about not trusting Kong because of the way he went through men, echoed in Scout’s head. His shoulders slumped as he trudged up to the gate, punched in the code, and waited for it to roll back and let him in.

He was too tired for a shower now. He just wanted a nap and to stop trying to sort out all the complicated people who’d recently entered his life. Things were easier when it was just him, Sawyer, and their old man.

The moment he cracked the door open, he realized that his wish for Teddy to be asleep or out had gone unanswered. The man stood in the kitchenette frying something that smelled delicious. Scout’s stomach gave a halfhearted rumble, reminding him that he was as hungry as he was exhausted and sore.

“You okay?” Teddy asked as Scout trudged from the door to the couch and flopped face first on it.

“Define okay?” He muttered as he crammed a pillow under his head.

The couch wasn’t as comfortable as the mattress in his room, but it was closer to the food he knew Teddy would share once it was through.

“What happened?”

“Bad choice made with the best intentions,” Scout admitted.

“Isn’t that always the case?”

Chuckling ruefully, Scout started to roll, instantly regretted it, and groaned instead. “Unfortunately.”

“You’re not in any trouble, are you?” Teddy asked, the note of concern in his voice almost leading Scout to tell him the truth.

Almost.

When it came to Teddy, he never quite knew what to think.

Most of the club seemed to have turned their backs on him, which set off warning bells for Scout, especially after the whispers he’d heard about why.

Had Teddy really turned his back as a club member was thrown in a van and kidnapped?

If so, that was seriously fucked up. While he didn’t want to make an enemy of the man who’d brought him to the Jokers and helped him get a job that didn’t involve him being on his hands and knees, he hesitated when it came to trusting him after what he’d learned.

“No,” he said and left it at that.

Sighing, Scout tried rolling again and found that if he was careful and scooched down so an old spring wasn’t poking at his hip, he could attain a comfortable position that would allow him to see Teddy.

“Kong asked me about the scrapyard the other night,” Scout said.

The moment the words left his mouth, Teddy’s eyes narrowed. “Of course he did.”

“Why is it so important to them?”

“Like I told you before, they love to cut out the middleman,” Teddy said. “If they can buy direct, they’ll have no reason to keep you around any longer. That job you have at the clubhouse can easily be handed to a prospect when they kick you down the road.”

Sighing, Scout rubbed the back of his neck because Teddy did have a point about that. Ms. Kat and Mark, for as much as they praised his efforts now, hadn’t wanted to hire him. He knew how uncertain his position was, and hadn’t his old man always said that knowledge was power?

“They are buying direct,” Scout insisted.

“I know,” Teddy said. “But if they knew that, they’d just keep pressuring you to give them access so they can go traipsing through the place themselves.”

“Might make my life easier,” Scout admitted.

“And when has easy ever worked out for you?” Teddy asked.

His words hit home, though the man couldn’t possibly know just how spot-on he was.

When Scout had signed that contract to shoot twenty videos, he’d done so thinking the job would be a quick and easy way to make some of the money they needed to get out of the hole.

Sex was just sex, and if people were willing to pay him just for fucking, well then, he’d take all the green they were willing to shove at him.

Only there had been nothing easy about today’s shoot, or some of the others he’d participated in.

“Yeah,” Scout replied, sighing heavily and nuzzling the pillow with his cheek.

“Trust me, keeping your mouth shut is the best thing you can do around this place,” Teddy said. “And unless you want your heart stomped to dust and run over by a Fat Boy, don’t make the mistake of falling for one of them.”

As if it would take much effort , Scout muttered beneath his breath as Teddy turned his attention back to the food. Closing his eyes, he decided to slip in a power nap while he waited for the food to be ready, hoping his dreams would be better than his fuckin’ day had been so far.