CHAPTER26
Arsen
Colby’s angry gaze met mine when I ducked inside the tent. “Get out,” she snarled at me.
Ignoring her, I sat down a few feet away and watched her. “You enjoy pissing him off, don’t you?”
Her jaw dropped, eyes widening in disbelief. “Seriously? You thinkI’mthe one at fault here?”
I leaned forward, my elbows on my knees, considering her words. “Rafe…takes some getting used to. His type, they need to be in charge.”
“So you just let him call all the shots? Tell you what to do all the time? Disregard you?” she grumped.
“Something like that.” I smiled at her. She was trying to get a rise out of me, but when I didn’t take the bait, she relaxed a little. “I like to think of it as, we pick our battles with him.”
“And when he goes off the deep end and pulls shit like he did yesterday?”
Yesterday had been a side of Rafe I hadn’t seen before. At least, not with a woman. I should’ve anticipated it. It was likely one that would pop up again in the future though, because he cared for Colby. None of us had spoken about our feelings, but knowing the others as well as I did, I knew they were as crazy about her as I was. We all showed that we cared in different ways. Rafe’s way was just a bit more violent at times.
A lot more violent.
I honestly wasn’t sure how he was going to deal with her walking into a fight by our sides. Maybe that was why he could allow it, she’d be withus. He knew we’d all give our lives for her in a heartbeat.
“You have to look past the action and see why he does things,” I replied.
Her eyes narrowed on my face and her hands clenched into fists. “There’s no acceptable reason to be such an asshole. He’s so damn controlling.”
“He is,” I admitted. “And if he wasn’t, you’d see that Sig and I are only marginally better than he is.”
That seemed to startle her. “You’ve never been overly controlling with me… Other than not letting me leave when you first kidnapped me.”
“That’s because we don’t have to be. Rafe takes that on. Part of the reason is he can’t help himself. But the other part is because it allows you to come to us for comfort when he’s gone overboard.”
“I highly doubt that,” she said in disgust.
I shrugged. She could bury her head in the sand all she wanted, but eventually she’d see the truth of my words. “That’s because you don’t know him well. Trust me, I know it for a fact. He never enters into something without examining all angles. He’s thought this through as well.”
“This being?” she asked, interrupting me.
“Our relationship as a group. The individual relationships between you and each of us. The friendship between the three of us and how it would be affected by bringing a woman into our lives. He knows what he’s doing. He takes on the leadership role and the disciplinarian role, so we don’t have to,” I told her again. My face hardened as she gave me a dubious look. “Make no mistake about it, Colby. When it comes to your safety—or what we want from this relationship with you—I can be just as much a hardass as Rafe. Sig, too.”
She scoffed, but dropped her gaze. She picked at the blanket in front of her, searching for something to do to ease the tension.
“It’s the truth. Unless you want a demonstration about punishment and respect, I suggest you take me at my word.”
Her eyes flashed up to mine, anger brewing there. She kept her mouth closed. I knew without her needing to say anything—or because she refused to speak—that I’d just firmly penciled myself onto her shit list.
It didn’t matter. We were a united front when it came to this. She was ours. Ours to protect. Ours to love. Ours to command. Ours to control. We could tell ourselves that the main reason we required it was because of the dangerous environment we lived in. But that wasn’t the reason. This was just how we were. A woman like Colby required your full attention, and that meant she got us in our raw, unfiltered form.
“This is us,” I told her. “Take it or leave it.”
“And would you let me?” she spat out.
“Let you what?”
“Leave?”
I cocked my head and studied her. “Do you want to?”