“Don’t worry, baby. I’m not going anywhere,” he assures me with another kiss on my knuckles. “Now, go get that roll of gauze for me. If you’ll help me wrap my leg up, I’ll take an Aleve or something and we’ll go see our parents.”
There’s a Harley parked with the other cars when we pull up to the safe house around lunchtime, but it’s not Verek sitting on the porch steps. Instead, it’s a big man with reddish-blond curls.
As we approach, he gives us a jerk of his chin in greeting. Winston takes my hand, interlacing our fingers before he says, “Roman, this is my girlfriend, Zoe. Zoe, meet Roman, the president of the Savage Kings of Myrtle Beach.”
“Hi,” I say, grinning ear to ear because it’s the first time he’s introduced me as something other than this stepsister.
“Nice to meet you, Zoe,” Roman says with his own grin, getting to his feet just as Charlotte and Tessa come through the open front door with their bags. Roman holds out his arm and Charlotte slips into his side. “And I believe you met my fiancée, Charlotte, last night.”
“Fiancée?” Winston asks with a whistle. “So, you two finally made it official?”
“Yeah, we did, last night,” Roman replies as he smiles down at her. “Life’s too short to not spend it with the one you love.”
“Amen, brother,” Winston agrees, giving my hand a squeeze.
“And now that you’re back, I’m going to get the girls home and finally get some sleep,” Roman explains. “I think your parents are almost ready to head out.”
“Thanks,” Winston says. “But before you go, did you get anything out of Joey last night?”
Roman removes his arm from around Charlotte, then glances at her and Zoe. “I don’t really like talking about this stuff with the ladies around, but I’m too tired to go sneaking off right now,” Roman says as he seems to deflate with a heavy sigh.
“That bad, huh?” Winston says in commiseration. “I’m not looking forward to having a shift with Joey, especially if my partner is Verek.”
“Nah, it’s not that,” Roman says. “Conrad got him talking with some ‘creative persuasion.’ We got some names out of him, but now I’ve got a dilemma. Verek wants to kill Joey outright, and he’s even asking if Tessa can be there!”
“I don’t know how I feel about that,” Winston grumbles.
“That’s not the biggest issue. I don’t trust torture, man, and I don’t trust this Joey character. He could say anything, just to get us to lay off of him for a little while. We’re going to have to follow up on whatever leads he provides to verify the information before we can get rid of him.”
“That’s going to take some time, and we’re going to have to keep up with the little fucker in the meantime,” Winston observes.
“Exactly,” Roman says. “I don’t want to have to keep an eye on this little shit every hour of every day, and I don’t want to have to struggle to keep his ass alive any longer than necessary. It’s a risk, but it’s one we’re going to have to eat for now.”
“At least the boathouse isn’t too far out of the way…” Winston starts, before Tessa appears at the front door.
“Winston, your parents are all packed up and ready to go,” she says. “Oops, sorry to interrupt,” she adds as she sees the men’s bleak expressions.
“No worries,” Roman tells her. “We’re ready to go.”
“It was nice meeting you, Zoe,” Charlotte says, giving me a quick hug, before she walks back toward the car.
“Same,” Tessa says with a wave before the two women get into a car, and Roman climbs onto his motorcycle. With a wave, he wheels his bike around and leads the two women away.
“Dad, Mom? You ready to go home?” Winston asks, taking my hand and pulling me up the steps behind him and into the house.
“Just a second!” Deb calls from the back, leaving us in the living room alone with my dad.
“Morning,” he says, glancing down at our clasped hands.
“I think you and I should probably have a talk,” Winston tells him.
“Nothing to talk about, son,” my dad replies. “At least not when it comes to Zoe.” Smiling at me, he adds, “She’s a grown woman and has been for a long time. I can’t tell her who she should be with. But if I could, and she would actually listen, I would be rooting for you, Winston.”
“You would?” Winston asks in surprise.
“Of course.”
“And why is that?”
“Why not?” my dad responds. “Are you going to try your best to make her happy?”
“Yes.”
“Keep her safe?”
“Absolutely.”
“Be good to her?”
“Always,” Winston tells him.
“Then that’s all I can ask for,” my dad says. “You’re a good man, Winston. Even if you had feelings for Zoe when you two were teenagers, you kept it to yourself and did the right thing.”
“Aside from the night before Zoe left for Paris,” Debra interjects cheerfully, joining us in the living room.
“How did you know about that?” Winston asks her, as surprised as I am.
“Know about what?” Martin asks, looking between us all. “Wait. What the hell happened the night before she left?”
“Ah, nothing,” Deb says, giving us a wink. “I’m sure I was mistaken, right?”
“Right,” I agree, while Winston just shakes his head.
“Let’s go home, shall we?” he suggests.
“Great idea, honey,” Deb says. “The four of us have a lot of catching up to do.”
Epilogue
Winston
* * *
Six months later…
* * *
“Jesus, I can’t fucking believe that Roman tied the knot and Winston’s having a kid,” Cannon says as Leo lines up a row of shot glasses to pour us all one out. “It’s been a crazy ass year.”
“We’re two lucky bastards,” Roman says, as we both pick up a glass and clink them together. “Cheers!”
“Cheers!” I toss the liquor down my throat, then search the crowd at the clubhouse to find my woman. Zoe’s lounging on one of the leather sofas with her hands clasped on top of her growing bump, laughing while talking to the girls. She looks happy, as she usually does lately, which makes me so ecstatic, I can’t stop smiling.
“Pussy whipped motherfuckers,” Marcus grumbles. “And I still can’t believe you got your sister pregnant!”
“Stepsister,” I correct him. “And I would do it again too.”
“How come you’re not freaking out about being a daddy?” Leo asks from behind the bar.
“Because I wanted a kid. Not to mention that knocking Zoe up means she can’t leave me again or do any more nude shoots.”
Conrad chuckles. “Looks like it worked.”