“What did you do now to put your own flesh and blood in danger? That’s low, even for you.”
The air shimmered with masculine fury as my eyes brimmed with tears I would never let fall. My mask was in place.
“Careful, Deputy,” my brother murmured. “You’re getting very fuckin’ close to sayin’ somethin’ you might regret.”
Luke’s hand subconsciously went to his belt. “You threatening me?”
“Yeah,” Cade replied immediately. “If you keep talkin’ shit ’bout my family, my club, lookin’ at my sister in a way that isn’t professional, you bet your ass I am.”
I flinched. Cade had seen it.
The entire club was focused on the exchange. I wondered if there was a possibility for me to slink away while the testosterone clouded the air.
Luke’s gaze focused on me.
No such luck, then. “She’s comin’ with me.”
The response to Luke’s declaration was instantaneous. Brock and Dwayne stepped forward, blocking Luke’s path to me with a wall of muscle. Showing that the bars to my cage were not iron, but men who benched a lot of it.
“No she’s fuckin’ not,” Cade said evenly.
Luke didn’t back down. “She needs a hospital. So does Bex.”
I sucked in a breath. Luke was really going for gold today. I prayed my family was serious about the ‘legit’ thing. Then maybe they wouldn’t murder the man I loved.
It could’ve gone bad. I tasted it in the air. Luke was using his state-given authority to try and take women who the club considered their God-given women. It may have been archaic—actually, it definitely fucking was—but it was the way. The men spoke and acted for the women.
Or until they fell in love with the right ones who were attached to their voices and unafraid to use them.
“I don’t do hospitals, Captain America. They mess with my complexion,” Bex said easily, as if she wasn’t choking on male fury. “Plus, the nurses here are way hotter.” She grinned wickedly in Lucky’s direction, who, uncharacteristically, wasn’t grinning. Much of his relationship with Bex took away his easygoing nature and infectious laugh. But sometimes in the midst of the worst horror imaginable, if you came out on the other side with the right person, that horror was better than any empty happiness before it.
Luke’s eyes went everywhere at once, his professional mask returning as he understood what was—or more aptly, wasn’t—going to happen. “None of you go anywhere,” he ordered. “I’m gonna want statements from fuckin’ all of you.”
He gave me one hard glance before he turned on his heel and left, taking one of the small and few remaining pieces of my heart along with him.
I froze in place, watching his uniform retreat out the door.
Freezing didn’t do well in the face of fury. Especially my brother’s fury. He gripped my shoulders and dragged me away while conversation somehow returned to normal.
As normal as it could get after an explosion.
“What the fuck was that, Rosie?” Cade demanded in a harsh whisper.
“What was what?”
The pads of his fingers dug into my shoulders, betraying his frustration. “Playing the innocent act stopped working when you came out of the fucking womb,” he hissed. “What have you got going on with Crawford?”
I flinched. “Nothing.”
He glared at me, searching for both the truth and lie in my eyes. There was a little of both.
“He’s dangerous,” he said. “To the club. To you.”
I lifted my chin. “I’m well aware of that.”
He narrowed his eyes. “And I’m well aware that you chase danger for fuckin’ cardio.”
I yanked out of his grasp. “I’m not fifteen anymore, Cade. You can’t give me lectures and hope they stick. But yeah, I get bored, I cause a little trouble. It never touches the club. I can handle my own shit. And there’s nothing to handle with Luke. You made sure to tell me that my entire life, essentially telling me I wouldn’t have one if I considered him as anything more than the scum you do.” My gaze didn’t falter. “And that one stuck, Cade. Lectures don’t stick with me, but death threats certainly do. Especially when they come from my own brother.”
Cade flinched, like I’d struck him. “Roe—”
“No, Cade,” I hissed. “Don’t worry, you don’t have to say anything else. I’m a lot of things, but I’m not suicidal.”
And then, before I could betray anything else, I turned on my heel and left.
So he didn’t think I was running, I did it farther into the club. But I knew every inch of the place where I’d grown up, especially all escape routes.
Which was exactly what I did.
Escaped.
But then again, I lived in a cage, so there was only so far I could go until someone found me.
And it was the person I wanted to find me more than anything. I also hoped he never would, because it would eventually mean he lost himself.
I didn’t go home because that would’ve been the first place they looked. I didn’t go to a bar because that would be the second.
Not that they needed to. I’d texted Cade to tell him I hadn’t been murdered or kidnapped or joined the circus. Then I’d turned my phone off, because despite that text, I knew Cade would’ve had Wire trace my phone.
This outlaw life of freedom sometimes had more bars than the cages of society boasted.
I was resigned to that when boots hit the dock I was swinging my boots off.
It was only a matter of time before someone found me. My heart stopped because I knew who the someone was. I knew it before he sat down beside me, before his profile danced at the edges of my vision and his clean smell mingled with the salty ocean air.
He was the only one who knew about this place.
Our place, as I’d come to think of it.
It was a delusion, sure. But everyone needed a delusion or two to get them through reality.
“I don’t need a lecture on rights and wrongs and evil and good right now, Luke,” I said, keeping my eyes on the ocean, even though every part of me yearned to drink him in.
There was a long pause, and the air around my hand changed as Luke rested his own on the wood of the dock, right next to mine, then coiled his pinky with mine.
One small touch, barely anything, but for us, it was more than everything.
I expected him to pull away. He didn’t. He just kept it there and I held my breath.
“I’m not here for that, Rosie,” he said finally. “I’m here for you.”
I whipped my head sideways. He was still watching the ocean. The words winded me for a split second, but then I hardened. “Here to arrest me? Question me?” I asked coldly.
That time my words made him shift his gaze. I restrained a flinch at seeing the hurt in it. I knew that wasn’t why he was there. We both knew it.
“I’m here for you, Rosie,” he repeated.
I swallowed roughly. “You can’t be, Luke,” I whispered.
His eyes hardened. “Where else can I be, Rosie? With the memories of the flaming remains of the fucking bomb that almost erased you from this earth?” he demanded. “With the fucking replay of what would’ve been if everything had been a little later, if you’d been just a little closer? I’ve done too much of that, staying away and chasing at the demons that remind me just how acquainted you are with death. I can’t fuckin’ do that anymore, Rosie. I can’t do any of it.”