Page 5 of Priest’s Sunbeam (Renegade Souls MC: Next Generation #2)

Sebastian

He wouldn’t have hesitated to do it to guard Sunny.

He was thinking only of murder, cold and calculated, even though he’d never been close to killing anyone before. After idling at the side of Seb’s truck, the red car sped up and took a different turn.

“Has he gone?” she asked tentatively, still clinging to the back of the hand he had locked around Sunny’s thigh.

He should let go, but he couldn’t find the will to. When he was touching her, he knew she was safe. He squeezed her thigh to gain her attention, and she turned those devastatingly light blue eyes on him, full of worry.

“You’re getting home safe, Sunny, I promise.”

“I know that,” she smiled like she had all the confidence in him to do that. “That was scary. My heart is racing. I’d make a horrible spy. I’m getting way too hyped up.”

Seb rumbled a chuckle at her attempt at a joke. Sunny’s nervousness manifested as rambling. However, he didn’t want to frighten her, hearing her speak to him again felt good.

Her chatter somewhat calmed Seb down.

With everything coming to light days earlier, and his hasty trip to Texas yesterday, he’d had his foot on the metaphorical gas pedal, feeling more unhinged than ever. That someone could hurt Sunny or try to use her against Hawk was unthinkable.

He wanted to punch through walls and burn the fucking world to the ground; his fury was teetering on the brink of insanity.

Waking up from the brief nap to find her gone, he thought he was losing his mind until he heard her laughter outside the door.

The thoughts he’d had weren’t decent. He’d wanted to drag her inside and spank her ass for disappearing and making him fucking worry. He’d chewed on his back teeth and ignored his instincts like they hadn’t sprouted wings in his mind more than once.

Reluctantly, and because he knew he should, he withdrew his hand from Sunny’s thigh, instantly missing the warmth of her leg. Because his hand tingled, he dragged it over the roughness of his jeans several times.

Once the immediate danger had passed and he’d been driving for some time without spotting another tail, Sunny had dropped into silence again. And he still wasn’t any closer to fixing the divide between them.

Her phone lit up again with messages, and she ignored him to smile at the screen. Seb choked the steering wheel in his two hands and tried not to be a dick for three seconds.

“Who are you texting?”

“Your brother.” She said, not looking up from the phone.

Seb’s impatience returned with a vengeance, burning his stomach lining as he mashed his teeth together.

The urge to throw her phone from the moving truck was powerful, almost impossible to ignore.

He went another five minutes before he cast his gaze over Sunny again. She had one leg crossed over the other, her phone resting on her lap. Although too far to read, the illuminated screen displayed an active text thread, her typing evident.

He was close to his younger brother. Seb had been seven when Tanner came along, and he felt proud of being his protector.

There was nothing he wouldn’t do for Tanner.

He’d kill to defend him.

But he was dead set against one thing.

He wouldn’t stand by and let Tanner have Sunshine.

For a long time, he’d seriously questioned his sanity.

He sure had lost it when he realized he would toss Tanner over a high fucking bridge if he even tried to put the moves on Sunshine.

The sense of possessiveness had risen in his chest like a battalion on a battlefield.

Powerful and determined. Unable to deny his proprietary attitude where she was concerned.

Sunshine belonged to him.

Every innocent inch of her impish, hyperactive defiance was his.

There was a more significant battle to fight, but Seb would address that later.

Something immediate was more pressing, and he couldn’t stop himself. He glanced at her again and found her smiling. His scowl deepened, his thoughts racing out of control.

“Tell Tanner goodnight, Sunshine.” He issued, and she flipped her eyes his way.

“I don’t think so.” She answered flippantly, her thumbs working on the phone screen. When it was sent, he heard the text’s sound, and rage rose on his forehead.

Fuck it . Pulling over to the side of the road, she looked around, confused. He made a call when he pulled his phone out of his back pocket.

“You don’t have time to sit around texting girls, prospect. Get the fuck over to the garage and clean every inch. I’ll be checking it when I get back.” He hung up but caught Tanner calling him a fucking dickhead.

Smirking, he slipped his phone away, and without looking at her, he took the truck out of park and pulled back onto the road.

“You did not just call Tanner.” She said incredulously.

“Try listening to what I say next time,” he warned, feeling the rage leave his blood. He exhaled and motioned with his chin to the drink. “Open that can for me.”

“Open it yourself, you big bully.”

“Who have I bullied?” he half laughed.

“You’re bullying me! You just bullied Tanner!”

“He’s a prospect and does as he’s told. He shouldn’t be flirting with girls when he’s on duty.”

He heard her huff. “He wasn’t flirting, and he’s already on gate duty.”

“If he’s on the gate, then he needs to be vigilant of his surroundings, not staring at his phone for what sweet shit you’re sending him. We’re under a lockdown.”

There was more huffing and tutting. It was the most personal reaction he’d seen out of Sunny in a while. “You’re being so ridiculous right now. So I’m to sit in silence and do nothing? I can’t text anyone?”

“Text one of your girls.”

He heard the fizz from the can opening, and then she thrust it under his nose, smirking. Seb took it, drained half, and then handed it back to her.

“But not Tanner?”

“He doesn’t need the distraction.”

Seb didn’t want her to have intimate conversations with his brother, however innocently friendly they might be.

Every inhalation she pulled in sent his blood racing. It was pure fucking hell. And had been that way for a long time.

He’d believed he had a grip on it, but his obsession took over, slithering into his mind and dominating every second of air.

He’d tried to make sense of it.

Late at night, while sleepless in bed. Or she plagued his mind when he rode out of state with his club brothers.

But there was so much Sunny in his life that he couldn’t pick a start date for when it changed.

She’d been his precocious shadow and then his little childhood buddy. Always someone he sheltered, cared for, and adored. Ruby and Preacher showed Seb what it meant to be loved by a genuine family. And that’s who Sunny was to him. She was family. Yet someone closer.

During his teen dating life, he’d had girls tell him to stop putting “that clingy kid” before them. Unknowingly, if Seb was out on a date and Sunny needed him (because she was scared or sick), he’d rush home to check on her after dropping off the date.

To Seb, it was a normal thing to do.

Sunny was important to him. She always would be.

But where it began to feel different nearly sent him fucking reeling.

Jealousy punched him square in the guts when he saw her sitting across the clubhouse with her friends.

With her head close to Tanner’s while he showed her something on his phone, she’d laughed, slugged Tanner in the shoulder, and then his brother had slung an arm around her to ruffle her hair, which sent Sunny into a fit of shrieks.

Seb saw it in Tanner’s youthful expression. Like Sunny at the time, he was eighteen, and clearly on top of the world for making the girl laugh.

Seb had felt his feet move automatically. To do what? Rip Sunny away from her friend? To drive his fist into Tanner’s face, to demand he stop having feelings for her?

He’d walked out of the clubhouse that day and spent the night getting drunk, talking himself into it being an anomaly, and he wouldn’t feel anything of the sort the next time he saw her.

The next time he did, it was worse. That new feeling had dug talons into Seb’s chest, digging deep welts.

And it continued to get worse.

At his grown age of twenty-five, he’d had zero rights to notice the plumpness of her ass in tight jeans. He’d nearly drowned himself in scotch that night as punishment.

So he didn’t look. Seb put himself wherever she wasn’t, yet his instincts to make sure she was okay still weighed heavily.

He couldn’t wrap his head around the two versions of Sunny he was now seeing.

He remembered the girl who would excitedly show him her lost tooth, always expecting a gift in return, and the same girl he’d taught to defend herself against bullies.

During that period, he remembered rocking up to the school gates with Hawk to look menacing at the kid, knowing he had beef with anyone who had beef with his sunbeam.

And now the woman she’d become.

Smart, still so fucking precocious, funny, and shy.

The woman thought nothing about flinging herself into his arms like she hadn’t seen him in months. Pressing her little budding tits into his chest. Making him see stars with how tightly he wanted to hold her, and then the quickness in how fast he shoved her away because he couldn’t breathe.

As a Souls member, Seb had one job: getting Sunny home safely.

That should be all he was thinking about.

Not trying to ease the jealousy sloshing through his mid-section or thinking of ways to send his brother out of the country for eight years or more.

It was irrational and out of fucking order, but it was his truth.

He wanted the girl he’d grown up with, who hero-worshipped him, and the girl he adored right back.

But shit was complicated.

Not only because she hated him now, but also because they were in an emotional place they’d never been in before.

“Sunshine?” he said after a while.

The sky was dark, and they were about eighty miles from home.

“What?” she snapped, and he smiled. Her attitude was so fucking cute.

“How long do you think you’re gonna hate me for?”

He heard her inhale before letting it out slowly.

“I don’t hate you, Sebastian.” She stated.

He could hear her emotions just by listening to her voice.

“I just wish I’d kept my mouth shut. I wish many things, but mostly that, so I don’t have to feel humiliated every second of the day.

” There was another strong inhale from her side of the truck. “I don’t hate you.”

“Then you’ll talk to me again?”

The silence drove him mad.

She was never without things to say, and now she was weighing up her words like she was divvying out candies and didn’t want him to have any.

He wanted all her words.

She owed him a year’s worth, and he was figuring out how to get them back.

“I’d prefer it if we kept things as they are.” She said in a small voice, and Seb’s skull nearly imploded as the truck ate up the road ahead of him without him seeing any of it.

“No,” he growled low. “That’s not an option here, Sunny. It stops now. You’re gonna talk to me again, and it’s gonna be just like it used to be.”

“You can’t say that.”

“I just did. Make peace with it because that’s what’s happening. So many things have gotten twisted up. We won’t be something I can’t fix.”

Even if he had to haul Sunny over his shoulder to get her back to the happy place they were at before. He was sick of this ghosting bullshit.

He needed to talk to her every day.

The intensity of his daily need to see her was unbelievably insane. It was like needing drugs and being unable to get those drugs because his drugs were a stubborn little thing and wouldn’t answer his calls.

That meant Seb had stooped to dangerous levels over the past year. Though stalking didn’t come naturally to him, it hadn’t stopped him from using it to get his Sunny fix.

He’d jump on his bike and head to Texas at any opportunity. Sometimes, he’d spend hours there, then drive back to Colorado, exhausted but happy that he’d gotten to see her up close.

It was the only peace that settled his restless heart.

Though near her, he could see that every sip of coffee she’d taken hadn’t truly felt like peace. It was torture to be that close to Sunny, yet not close enough. He’d call occasionally, only to see her frown at her phone and leave it unanswered.

That’s how he’d known she wouldn’t have been receptive to seeing him on her doorstep.

So he did like all nefarious idiots and watched her from afar. He told himself it was just checking up on her, making sure she was alright at college and no one was bothering her, but it was a load of crap.

When he couldn’t find the spare time to ride through to Texas, he paid the prospects from that chapter to send him hourly reports. He also dropped to diabolical levels and slipped an AirTag into the bottom of her bag, allowing him to track her movements.

He glanced Sunny’s way to find her looking forward, her lips pursed so prettily.

It was the same crazy and possessiveness he’d been feeling all year, longer still.

The first time, he rode to Texas with less-than-good intentions.

She’d only been in college a few months, and there he was, stalking around her campus like fucking Heathcliff on the moors.

Trying to make right with the new feelings he’d been experiencing that were far from friendly.

His wiring had undergone a factory reset, and he no longer understood anything.

She was his Sunny girl. His sunbeam was the best friend he’d ever had. Even when she was a pain in the butt, he’d still choose her over anyone.

But those platonic feelings hadn’t been the ones battering his chest at that moment.

They were brand new and fucking terrifying.

But the moment he saw her step out into the quad, his heart lit up, and his breath settled in his chest.

Unrepentant, he’d warned off so many boys in the last two years; he wondered if she was ever confused why she didn’t get dates.

Seb didn’t know why he craved her the way he did, but he’d had to reconcile that he couldn’t have her when she was fresh-faced, eighteen, and too angelic for him.

Not then.

But it didn’t stop him from watching over her like a demonic protector, warning off anyone he thought was a threat as the words she’s mine battered around his skull on a non-stop loop.

She thought he was aloof.

That he’d rejected her.

When it was the farthest thing from the truth.

“Nothing to say?” he asked.

“What’s to say? You don’t listen, so I’ll do whatever I like.”

That was his stubborn sunbeam.

The expert way she handled him, and she didn’t even realize it.

The lengths he’d go to for her didn’t come with appropriate words.

But she was soon going to find out what he’d do.