“What the fuck did I do?” Micah asked.
“You’re a man,” Ensley answered, and I chuckled.
“Once again, she’s runnin’ away from ya. What the hell man?” Micah taunted.
I ran my hand through my hair and over my face. “One step forward, two steps back with that one.”
“Yeah,” Ensley started. “And don’t freak her out. She likes you like a lot, but somethin’s holding her back, and she won’t talk to me about it. Every time I try to get her alone, she has some excuse and avoids it.”
“Your sister went through a lot.”
Ensley closed her eyes and then opened them. “Yeah she did.”
The room was quiet for a moment while we seemed to take this in, all of us in different ways.
Remy broke the silence wanting pancakes, and Micah got to work.
“I gotta head out. Meet ya at the clubhouse?” I asked Micah.
“Yeah,” he answered.
“Oh, Dry,” Ensley said as I moved to Remy to get my hug bye. “Just so you know, she’ll be at the clubhouse with me later. She’s showin’ Austyn her drawings.”
“Drawings?”
“For dresses, but you’re missing the point just like all men. She’ll be at the clubhouse!”
“Then I’ll see you all there,” I replied, sort of wondering what drawings she was talking about.
Remy jumped up and hugged me tightly. Then I was off. Had shit to do.
The club was still on the hunt for the ghost guns, and I had shit to clean.
18
KATIE
“Katie, what is your problem?” Ensley barked at me.
“Nothing,” I lied not feeling like talking about this, ever. I hated lying, but she just kept on pushing me and pushing me. The relentlessness was wearing me down. “I’m going to leave.”
We were at the clubhouse. I didn’t want to come, but Austyn wanted to see the drawings I had finished of the dress she wanted.
She said I have the eye, whatever that means. But the dress was a go, and I was done here. It was time for me to go home.
I had worked on the drawings all afternoon, trying to get my mind off of Dryerson. Every stroke of my pencil didn’t take the thoughts of him away. He was there in my face, and it was all my fault.
Last night, I lost my mind. Seriously lost my mind.
Sleeping with Dryerson wasn’t the way to go in trying to push him away. It opened the link between us and pulled us closer together. All afternoon I tried to score up my defenses. It was a fling. He was just horny. Heck, I was too. It was the heat of the moment. The passion. All the excuses I could come up with, one after the other.
All it led me back to was loving every second of what we’d shared together. Every touch and caress… Him inside of me… All of it. The sad truth was, I loved him. With every beat of my heart. And I couldn’t have him. He deserved better than my messed-up head. It was like a ticking time bomb, ready to explode. Therefore, I needed to get out of here.
There were a ton of people in the clubhouse, and I could only smile and nod so many times before someone would want to talk. Every-freaking-time, eventually, what had happened came up in the conversation. I didn’t talk about that. Ever. Ensley said it was just because they cared, but I wanted it to all to go away and to put it in the past. Talking, thinking about it just brought a mixed batch of emotions that I was keeping a very thin hold on.
Ensley grabbed my arm to stop me from leaving and jerked me around. “No. You’re going to talk to me.” She’d been on me since I’d stepped into the clubhouse, wanting to know details of what had happened last night.
Telling me that Dryerson and I were perfect together. We belonged together. We were perfectly matched. We were in sync. We would be so happy. Blah, blah, blah…
On and on and on… I wasn’t even sure if she had taken a breath during that time at all. I was on my last string of hearing it. Each word she said made that string inside me fray. Piece by piece it kept thinning, and I really needed her to stop. One last try.
Blowing out a deep breath, I said, “Look, I’m fine. You’re fine. Everyone is fine. Now let me go.”
Her eyes narrowed into slits. She was on her last straw with me too. I could feel it. “You are not fine. If you were, you’d let Dry in. You keep pushing him away, pulling him in, and pushing him away again. How long do you think he’s gonna keep tryin’ before he says fuck it and leaves?”
That was a punch to the gut that sucked all the air from my body. Sweat started to come to my hands, and I seriously wanted to puke my guts out.
Dryerson moving on.
Finding someone.
Starting a life.
God, it killed. Burned so painfully that something inside me cracked, and I couldn’t hold on to the emotions. I had to get out of here. If I didn’t, it was going to be bad. Panicked, I tried to move away from Ensley, but she was right in front of me. She’d let me go physically but was standing her ground.
“You can’t be that damn stupid,” she yelled in my face, getting so close I could smell the spearmint on her breath. “He’s in love with you, idiot. And you love him. So why the hell do you keep him at arm’s length?”
The coil inside me holding my perfectly put-on persona cracked. The spring broke. That was one comment too much. The scale began to topple over, scattering the emotions all over my body.
Anger boiled in my veins. Screw the hands being damp, I could feel the sweat now all over me like I was too hot in my own skin.
The tornado I’d been trying hard to stop from bringing me down had won.
I broke, and every feeling I’d had these past few months flew at my sister. It was my turn to get in my sister’s face, for probably the first time in my entire life.
It caught her a bit off guard, but she stayed solid.
Every thought I’d been holding inside of me needed to be expelled from my mind. I couldn’t take one more second of it. It had to be released, or I was going to explode.
“Why don’t you hate me?” I asked her flat out and a shocked look came over her face like that wasn’t what she expected to hear from me, but that was what this all boiled down to. She wanted to talk. Wanted to get the feelings out. Let’s talk.
“Hate you? What are you talking about?” she asked, taking a small step back and putting a little distance between us.
What am I talking about? Really? “You should hate me for calling you to come to the warehouse where Daniel had me kidnapped.”
My sister swallowed roughly. I never talked about my time there. Maybe that was my problem. Not talking to her. Letting it fester and grow into something I couldn’t manage anymore.
“Of course not. You…”
I cut her off since she was just going to repeat herself. I wanted this done, and I wanted to go home. She needed to get her say out, and I did too. “Yeah. I brought you to him. I called you. I put you in the position of being hurt. Me.” I pointed to my chest, emphasizing each of the Is, wanting her to feel this ball desperately seeking a way out. “I’m the reason you have those marks on your body. I’m the reason you’ve had trouble sleeping, and I heard your screams while I lived with you.”