“Can I bring somebody like Phoebe into this life?” Duncan asked.
“It’s not your call. It’s hers. So if you want that, you ask, and you accept the answer she gives you. The hardest lesson of my life has been trying to accept that I can’t make other people’s choices, even when I’m trying to protect them.” Dad grinned. “You taught me that yourself. And your mom, and your sisters.”
Hannah and Dad were still faced off about her future plans—she wanted to work at the station and be as deep into the Bulls’ world as she could get, and Dad was holding her back with his whole body.
Duncan grinned back at his father. “Hannah would say you haven’t learned the lesson yet.”
“Yeah. And she’s right. It’s hard, son. But maybe it’s time for me to back off there, too.”
“It’s your fault, you know.”
“What is?”
“That we all want to be as deep into the Bulls’ world as we can get. We love you so much, and you gave us this family, this life. It’s a good family, and a good life. I think that’s why Eureka is fucking with my head. I’ve been a patch for years now, but that was the first time we did something that didn’t feel right to me. Maybe I’ve been pushing Phoebe to let me ask the club to help—”
Dad finished his sentence. “Because you need us to do something good. Balance out something that feels wrong to you.”
Duncan nodded, finally seeing it. “Yeah. I think so.”
“The club does a lot of good, Dunc. You know that. We help out in the neighborhood, we do charity work, blood drives, ...”
“Charm patrol,” Duncan said, sounding more dismissive than he’d intended.
“That’s true. It’s good press and good rep, and it makes our dark work easier. But it is also good work. But I don’t think we can help Phoebe, even if she’d want us to. Buy into her ranch? That’s got to be a huge chunk of money.”
“About a hundred thousand.”
Dad shook his head. “Caleb has a fuller handle on the finances, but I know enough to know taking that much money out of the club chest would hurt us. You could try to get the patches to throw in themselves from their personal funds. But I don’t think it would be good for the ranch to have us involved, anyway. When we get involved with charity work, it’s one-off donations or volunteer stuff. Charities don’t want us on their rosters—that would tarnish their rep. Dropping that kind of money, it would be almost impossible for her to keep us out of it, and it might put a red flag right on her roof. If the Feds come sniffing around again, they might go for her, too. If there’s a way to scare off this woman who’s after her—”
“Her husband is the CEO of Copperman Resource Management. I did some googling, and he’s a heavy hitter, with fingers in politics all over the state.” His father didn’t need to tell him that would be too much a risk for the club to undertake. They had good relationships with law and government types throughout the state, but the balance was fragile.
Dad sighed. “I don’t see what we can do, other than make sure she’s safe if it does all go south on her.”
Duncan sighed, too. “Fuck.”
Then his phone vibrated against his leg. He picked it up and read the short text on the lock screen:
We can talk.
“It’s Phoebe. She’ll talk.” He felt like his heart was beating for the first time since she’d left.
Dad slapped his knees and stood up. “Good. I hope you work this out. If you want a little bit more advice from me, let this drop, son. She told you she doesn’t want the club’s help in this. I don’t think we can help her the way she needs, anyway. So I think you should let it drop right here.”
“I will,” Duncan said and meant it.
~oOo~
Phoebe opened the door and stood there, arms crossed. She didn’t say a word; she didn’t invite him in. She wore baggie, blue flannel pajama bottoms and a big, tattered brown hoodie with the words Yes, I smell like a HORSE. No, I don’t consider that a problem emblazoned across the front. Her hair was still in that pretty braid from dinner, but it had loosened considerably since then. Her makeup was washed away.
Her eyes were puffy and red-rimmed. She’d been crying. Duncan had made her cry.
“I’m sorry,” he said. The impulse was on him to say more, to explain, to assure her he’d meant to help, that he hadn’t been trying to be a manipulative dick, but he wrestled it into submission and simply stood there, waiting for her to forgive him.
“You said you wanted to talk,” she finally said. “If that’s what you wanted to say, you already said it in text.”
“I don’t want to bury the apology until you accept it,” he explained, wondering if that was an okay thing to say.
“And if I don’t accept it?”
How could she not? He meant it sincerely—he knew he’d fucked up. What reason, then, could she have not to accept it? What more did she want?
No means no not just in sex but in life, his mother had said.
He understood consent. He thought he had, at least. But Phoebe had told him she didn’t want the club’s help. He’d thought he’d found a loophole, asking Dad at home, and he’d thought doing it while she was there meant he was being aboveboard.
But that had just been him trying to get his way despite what she wanted, wasn’t it? And feeling entitled to being forgiven was pretty much the same thing, wasn’t it?
Fuck.
Duncan studied her lovely, vulnerable hazel eyes, swollen and sore because of something he’d done. Because he hadn’t respected her wishes about something that was truly not his business. His good intentions didn’t matter.
“If you don’t accept my apology, then there’s not much more to talk about. I’ll go and leave you be.”
“Is that what you want?” she asked.
God no. He was actually afraid that she was done with him.
His feelings for her had come up on him so damn fast. A month ago, he’d been content with his single life, loving the freedom and variety. Now he felt like something would get ripped out of him if this one woman didn’t want him.
“No,” he answered, working to keep his voice steady. “But right now, what I want isn’t important. I’m interested in what you want.”
She stood where she was, arms still crossed, and stared at him like she was trying to dig into his brain through his eyes and find all the asshole parts in there.
When she spoke, her voice was low. “I didn’t think you’d do that—what you did at dinner.”
“I’m sorry.” Again he quashed the urge to explain. Really, what was there to explain? She knew why he’d done it. She could probably figure out why he’d done it the way he had. Trying to explain something she already knew would just be him putting words into the air for their own sake.
“No. I mean I trusted you not to do something like that. I don’t trust easily.”
Fuck. “I really am sorry.”
Her head canted slightly to the side, and Duncan almost thought he caught a glimpse of a smile. “How many times are you going to say that?”
“As many times as you need to hear it.”