“You’ve heard of it?” The question seemed rhetorical because she didn’t wait for his response. “All I know is that if she’s there, we need to get her out. I have the money and the connections, but I have no way to get in and I don’t think I could anyway—the last two times he sent her to that place—she was different when she came out.”
“Different how?” Milo took two steps toward her. “There was never anything about her being in a facility.”
“Of course not, it wouldn’t reflect well on the family. But I knew. Some of us knew, because we saw what happened after. The only reason they sent her there was to control her—to take away who she is, and I couldn’t stop it before. I can do something now.”
“That’s where we come in,” Vaughn said, like Doc, he’d said almost nothing. But real fury had replaced the agony in his voice. If they were caging her, we would damn well shatter those bars.
“Exactly. I just—I just don’t know how to make it happen and I need help to get her out.”
“We’d need to know if she was there for sure,” Doc said. “HIPPA would prevent them from admitting it, but medical requests…”
Medical requests?
Milo cut a look at him.
Right. No one wanted to admit this. No one wanted to say she was in trouble, even if it was what we’d all been saying.
“Tell them,” Rome said and that got all of our attention. But he wasn’t talking to Elaine. He was looking at Liam. “It’s time. Tell them.”
“He’s right,” Freddie said. “Tell them and then we figure out how to get me committed. It’s not like anyone needs to tell me how to be crazy. They’ve been wanting to lock me up for years.”
WE SAW THE SEA
MILO
Nikki said yes to joining me for the weekend. The guys had given me some shit about it, but I flipped them off. Nikki was the kind of girl who deserved nice things. She was sharp, from the neighborhood, and going places. While she hadn’t been in the system, her dad died when she was a kid, leaving her mother to raise Nikki and all four of her brothers on her own.
She used to say she grew up quickly because her mama needed help, but now, the boys were mostly grown and so was she. The loyalty she had with her siblings mirrored the tightness I had with the Vandals.
That was the only bone of contention between us. Gang life was not something she wanted any part of. This was a goodbye trip. I’d accepted that from the moment she agreed. The wind blowing in off the water carried so many fleeting promises. None of them were going to come true.
I’d stripped down to swim trunks and leaned against the deck railing as I stared at the waves. The place cost a pretty penny to rent for the weekend, but it also offered us privacy and a strip of sand to call our own. Nikki was a lady and I wanted to treat her like a lady.
More, I wanted her to keep being my lady but…
“This is a nice place,” she said from behind me as she trailed her fingers up my spine. I closed my eyes at the warmth in that touch. The ease of it. We’d known each other for a few years. The dance between us began sometime around the end of high school and before college.
The guys knew her. They looked out for her when I traveled. I’d taken care of some issues her brothers were having when an upstart gang filtered into the area. They thought they were being quiet, but I wasn’t letting a bunch of punks paint our streets with blood.
When her brother Keith had gotten winged in a confrontation, I grabbed Jasper, Vaughn, and Kellan. We cleaned out their block and a few blocks around them. Keeping Nikki and her family safe was important.
She hadn’t quite seen it the same way.
I kept my hands on the railing until she leaned into me, and then I slid an arm around her. Relief surfaced but I didn’t grasp onto it. Nikki’s decision was her own and I didn’t think she enjoyed it any more than I did.
“Milo,” she said in a sigh. “What am I going to do with you?”
The words ‘keep me’ refused to leave my tongue. They might as well have been superglued. Glancing down into her deep brown eyes, I turned so I could trace her features with my free hand. Her skin was both warm and silky soft. She really was one of the most beautiful women I’d ever seen, inside and out. That I got to touch her—it was a gift.
The sadness etched into her expression and worse, deeper into her eyes, left my heart heavy.
“It’s okay, Nikki,” I promised her. It wasn’t, but I would make it okay. For her. She needed the distance, I’d give it to her. I wouldn’t pull anyone into this life who didn’t want to be here. Frankly, I didn’t want her involved in any of it anyway. I just… Well, that didn’t matter anymore. “I understand.”
A wet sound escaped her and her eyes went damp in the time it took her to look down and then back up again. She pressed her hands against my bare chest. “I wish I did,” she admitted. “I wish I understood why this scares the hell out of me and at the same time, I wish I was the girl who could do this.”
“You don’t have to be anyone except yourself.” I was right there with her. I wished she was the woman who could handle it. Even if I would do everything in my power to never let it touch her. I had a plan. One we’d talked about a few times late into the night, with her wrapped in my arms. “I will never ask you to be anything more than that.”
Her chin dipped again and she let out a watery laugh. “Why are you so damn perfect?”
Sliding a finger beneath her chin, I nudged her face up to look at me. “We both know that’s not true.”
“But it is—you’re kind, you’re sweet and thoughtful. At the same time, you’re protective and strong. And you’re so damn smart. You’re going places, I know you are. I just—just how you’re getting there.”
“I can’t change who I am.” Not when who I was would give me the strength to become the person with the power and the influence I needed to be. Not when I was determined to get back to Ivy and meet her in her world. I would take my brothers with me.
I wanted to take Nikki.
“And I don’t want to ask that of you—any more than you want to ask me to.”
“Well, that’s where you’re wrong,” I said evenly. “I am asking. You’re saying no.”
She parted her lips, then closed them again. “I guess I am,” she whispered finally. The tears in her eyes escaped one at a time. Each one poured salt into the wound, so I gathered her close and pressed her against me.
“We have the weekend,” I told her. “It’s not goodbye.”
I’d never cut her out of my life.
“If you need us, you’ll know where we are.” That was a promise I intended to keep. The guys all liked her. Even Rome, and he didn’t like too many.
“Damn you,” she whispered, her fingers curling into fists that she beat against me, but it wasn’t like it hurt. “I hate that I—”
Tilting her head back, I kissed her, silencing the recriminations. The last six months had been round after round of the same conversation. We carried guns. We actively would, and had, taken out competition and those that would do more harm.