“I wasn’t cautious or restrained when I got up in her shit yesterday morning about her missing Lottie’s thing,” Axl informed them, getting some widened eyes, brows raising, and Boone’s head jerked. “I was an asshole. And when I stormed out, she didn’t race after me in order to offer an explanation it bottom line isn’t my right to have. Though, I acted like it was. And I haven’t heard from her since. I’ve tried the direct approach. I’ve tried the let’s-be-friends in order to lull her into the we’re-not-just-friends-anymore approach. I’ve tried the dickish, get-your-head-out-of-your-ass approach. I’m battin’ zero across the board. I’m not sure where to go from here. But what I’m thinkin’ is, after I lost it with her yesterday, she’ll be even less inclined to give me a shot.”

“You were a dick to her?”

That was Mo’s rumble.

“You saw that dance,” Axl returned.

It was weak, but it also was an excuse.

Mo’s lips thinned.

He saw that dance.

He also knew what that dance was about.

So he knew it was an excuse.

“She ran away from me after that dance,” Axl continued. “She’s no longer replying to texts, even when she never really did, she just did it enough to blow me off without seeming to blow me off. And she wasn’t replying even before I was a dick to her. I don’t know what the woman wants. I think she wants me, she knows I want her, and I’m all in to put in the work, but for her sake, as well as mine, I gotta know when to stop banging my head against the wall. Because there’s a line where it stops bein’ about a man who thinks you’re worth the effort and a man who doesn’t get the hint and he becomes a creeper. And it feels like I’m edging over that line.”

“We gotta get one of the girls to talk to her,” Mag noted.

“That’d be Evie since Ryn is pissed as shit,” Boone declared. “Missing Elvira’s boards with a lame excuse was the last straw. She ranted for a whole half an hour when she got home after that.”

“I shouldn’t have told you Lottie got her feelings hurt,” Mo remarked to Axl.

“Mac is like a sister, buddy, and I was angry Hattie hurt her. But it isn’t on you I got pissed on Mac’s behalf and did something about it. That’s on me,” Axl replied.

“How deep does this shit go with her father?” Mag asked cautiously.

Axl shook his head. “I don’t know. I didn’t dig. I felt it was something, when we got together, that she’d want to find her time and her way to lay on me, not me invading her life like that.”