Page 252 of Rogue Riders Duet

Dane mutters, “Of course I knew, but she was a teenager.” Then he looks up at me, and his voice drops cold. “Did you just wait until she was old enough for it not to be a crime? You know, this shit looks a lot like grooming.”

“Are you serious?” I snap. “No. Fucking. Way. I never thought about her that way before you came back. You know me, Dane.”

“Yeah,” he mutters. “I thought I did. Thought my best friend wouldn’t have snuck around and fucked my sister behind my back.”

Luc steps in again. “You’re allowed to be pissed. You’re allowed to hate it, but Alaina is hurting badly, and she doesn’t need this right now. So can we, I don’t know, be adults?”

Dane scoffs. “You hardly count as an adult.”

“Still acting more like one than you right now,” Luc fires back. “I’m not asking you two to braid each other’s hair. Just figure out how to coexist. Without fists.”

The silence stretches between us, and I can’t hold Dane’s gaze, so I look down at my shoes.

Like the coward I apparently still am.

Delacroix sighs. “Here’s how this goes. Greer’s gonna grovel, and he’s gonna earn his way back into her good graces. And you, Dane, you’re gonna step back and let him.”

Dane explodes. “Why the hell would I let him? He doesn’t deserve her. I’m protecting her!”

“You don’t need to protect her from him. She can protect herself. Yeah, he fucked up, but she needs him, and he loves her. Don’t you?”

At Delacroix’s question, I look up and hold Dane’s gaze for the only truth I have to offer. “I do.”

Dane scoffs. “As much as your ex? You said you thought you loved her, but she just filled a hole. How do you know Alaina isn’t doing the same?”

“Because…” I say quietly, “… you and Alaina made that hole in the first place.”

That shuts him up.

His eyes narrow, not in anger this time, but like that truth lands, and maybe he finally sees that he left me, too, that he also hurt me a lot, but just in a different way.

I was the friend he abandoned first.

Luc nods slowly. “So let him try. Let him earn her back. If he screws up again, fine. He’s out, but we all know she needs him if she’s ever gonna get through the rest of this.”

Dane exhales hard, dragging a hand down his face like he’s trying to wipe off the weight of it all. “Fine. I won’t get in the way, but this is for her, don’t think for a second that we’re good again, and if you hurt her in any way…” his eyes flash dangerously, “… the next thing I’m gonna break is your dick.”

“If I somehow manage to hurt her more, I’ll pull my pants down for you to do it.”

Luc looks away, pressing his lips together, and Dane stares at me, his jaw twitching like he’s this close to breaking again.

Instead, he looks down at the linoleum floor, and when he looks back up, there’s the ghost of a smile threatening the corner of his mouth before he huffs a breath and storms off.

I start to turn, too, ready to leave, unsure of my place, but a firm hand clamps on my shoulder and pulls me back.

“Where do you think you’re going, Papi?”

I blink at him. “I don’t know. I thought you’d want me to leave.”

Luc rolls his eyes like I just said the dumbest thing on the planet. “I didn’t make you come here for a little chitchat.”

“I mean…” I glance back toward where Alaina disappeared with Mason, something in my chest pulling tight. “I’m here. I’ll support her, whatever she needs, but I don’t think she needs me when you guys are here too⁠—”

“Shut up,” Luc cuts me off, sharp but not cruel. “Of course, she needs you too. She needs all of us. You want this to work?”

I frown. “Work? What are you talking about?”

“All of us. For her.”