Double Dare (Devil's Fighters MC Book 3) Read Online Free PDF Page A

said. There was no malice behind his words, no hurtful intent. He was merely stating a fact they were both painfully aware of. “Please, let me help you.”
     
    Rick looked back at him then, and the fear and hopelessness written all over his face tore at Xavier’s heart.
     
    “How?” Rick asked. “How are you going to help me? How are you even going to help yourself?” He let out a long, frustrated breath. “I’m sorry, Xavier. I hate myself for telling you this, but we’re fucking trapped. We’re going to die in this hellhole of a town.”
     
    Xavier frowned. It wasn’t like Rick to be so bleakly negative. He realized then that those were all the fears and feelings of despairs that his friend had kept buried for over eight years, finally bubbling to the surface and being released in dark, depressing waves. He reached out across the table and grabbed his friend’s forearm.
     
    “We’re going to be okay,” he said, making sure he had Rick’s undivided attention. “Do you hear me? We’ll be just fine. I’ll make sure of it.”
     
    Rick was staring at him with a mixture of disbelief and curiosity. It was obvious that he thought Xavier had gone completely mad, but he was also clearly intrigued. “How can you be so confident?”
     
    “Because after eight years of horrors, I think we deserve something good to happen in our lives,” Xavier said.
     
    He sounded confident to his own ears, because that’s how he needed to sound in order to soothe the terror he could still see in the bottom of his friend’s hazel eyes. But the truth was, he wasn’t nearly as sure of himself as he would have liked to be.
     
    Finally, Rick nodded. “All right,” he said. “You go in there and you do what you need to do. I’ve got your back.”
     
    Xavier knew what that meant. It meant that if things took a turn of the worse, Rick would be by his side. It meant that if somebody had to die, it would be both of them. He gave a nod in return and squeezed Rick’s forearm one last time before letting go and sitting back in his chair.
     
    “I’m going back to the bar now,” Rick said, “Johnnie is probably getting suspicious.”
     
    “Good idea,” Xavier agreed. “I’ll stay here just a little longer to try and gather my thoughts, then I’m going in.”
     
    “Please, don’t get yourself killed.”
     
    Xavier grinned. “I’ll try.”
     
    He watched as Rick stood up and went back to the bar, settling on one of the tall stools and asking Johnnie for another beer. The man gave them both a suspicious look, but soon he relaxed again.
     
    On his part, Xavier felt anything but relaxed. No matter how confident he tried to appear, his stomach was tied up in knots and his heart was beating a mile a minute in his chest. He had spent the whole morning trying to come up with the words. He could never get anywhere past, “I want out,” which he knew would be the wrong way to start the conversation.
     
    He hoped there would be a conversation. He hoped Bennie didn’t freak out on him immediately and gun him down on the spot. The thing with Benedict “Bennie” Lenday, one of the founders and the current president of the Devil’s Fighters, was that he was unpredictable. He had killed for way less and spared lives for way more. There was no way to guess his reaction.
     
    Still, Xavier tried. He tried to play it all in his mind, and he came up empty-handed every time. If a reprise of the beating from six years ago were to occur, he was pretty sure he would be able to take Bennie now. The man wasn’t a fighter, at least not in the strict sense of the term; Xavier, much to his chagrin, was. But beating up the club’s president was probably the stupidest thing he could do and the fastest way to get himself a death sentence, effective immediately.
     
    Eventually, he decided that the only way to know what would happen was to knock on the door of the meeting room.

 
     
     
    CHAPTER FOUR
     
    Bennie was cleaning his gun