“Oh,” he said, softly. “That’s. Good.” He ducked his head back over his plate, cheeks tinging pink.
She’d embarrassed him, and that was adorable. But things felt too heavy, too fast.
She picked her fork back up and said, “So what was the emergency earlier?”
He nodded, swallowed, and looked up with obvious relief at the change of subject. Then his brow furrowed. He twirled pasta onto his fork. “Another girl went missing. The first girl’s best friend.”
“Shit,” she said, with feeling.
He nodded. “This one we got on traffic cam: some guy went into the shop where she worked, said something to make her come outside with him, and then he wrestled her into a van and took off with her.”
Her bite of food fell like lead into her stomach. “Right in broad daylight?”
“Yeah. In the middle of downtown.”
“Jesus. And nobody saw anything? Nobody called the police?”
“The shop owner gave us a good description of the guy, and we chased a few more leads today, but so far, we don’t have enough to pin down a suspect.”
“Did the friend know too much? Why her? Why – why any of it? Is this a serial killer?” The idea sent a hard shudder through her, one that Carter noticed.
He laid a hand on the table between them, not close enough to touch her – he would have had to lean forward for that – but it was obviously meant as a gesture of reassurance. He tilted his head, and she had the sense he chose his words carefully – trying to be honest without frightening her, she thought. “Eden – that’s Fox’s old lady – says this is looking like what happened in Texas a few months ago. She thinks the girls aren’t being killed – that they’re being trafficked.”
“Jesus,” she said again, and this time her pulse wasn’t leaping because of his cute face. “But why would – hold on. Why would Knoxville high school girls get snatched?”
He shrugged. “Why not? They’re just looking for pretty girls they can get lots of money for. And, if this is the same guy who was doing it in Texas, then he’s got a mad hard-on for the Dogs for some reason.”
“Oh. Well. That’s comforting.”
He winced. “Sorry. I wasn’t trying to scare you.”
“No, it’s – it’s good to know. That there’s human traffickers in Knoxville, shit.” She shook her head, and attempted a smile. “Thankfully, I’m not a hot, young high school student.”
Carter didn’t look amused.
“Not exactly the target demographic,” she tried again.
But his frown only deepened. “I want you to be careful,” he said. “Keep a lookout for anything weird. Don’t go anywhere with anyone you don’t know.”
“I won’t. I’m always careful.”
But he didn’t seem to hear her, gaze going distant and glassy as he stared at her. He leaned back, braced his hands on the edge of the table. “Shit. Shit, shit, shit…”
“Carter…”
“No, it’s – Candy’s wife, Michelle. She and Axelle. They got snatched in Amarillo. The guy – his name is Luis – had them chained up and shit.” His face had paled, and his next breath shivered. “They managed to get loose, and then Candy and the guys found them. Luis got away. The girls were safe, but – what if they hadn’t been? What if Luis had moved them out of town? Trucked them off somewhere? He won’t make the same mistake again. But there’s no reason he wouldn’t try to hurt another old lady.”
Leah took another long sip of wine – what the hell, she drained the glass, and got up to get more. She brought the bottle back to the table with her, and found Carter with his forehead in one hand, staring unseeing at his plate.
She refilled her glass and said, “So, this is fun.”
“I’m sorry.” He wiped his hand down his face and sat up. Shook his head, blinked his vision clear. “It just hit me: I’ve been thinking about all the girls that could be in danger, but the women attached to the club are in danger, too. I…” His gaze landed on her face, and he trailed off. “I’m sorry,” he repeated, and her stomach tightened unpleasantly. “We haven’t. If you don’t want–”
“Carter.” She aimed the neck of the bottle at him, and he fell silent. “Ava’s my best friend. I’m at her or Maggie’s all the time. I’m already attached to the club.”
Sadness deepened the sun lines around his eyes and mouth. “Yeah,” he said, softly. “I don’t want you to get hurt. Or…”
There were worse things than being hurt, she knew, and he didn’t say. Silence fell heavily between them.
“It’s always something with the club, huh?” she said, attempting a smile.
“I wish there wasn’t,” he lamented.
“That’s the price that comes with being top dog – literally speaking, I guess. People come after you.” He looked miserable, and she hated that things kept going off in odd directions, that they couldn’t just make small talk, and steal heated glances at one another, and wind up making out on the couch. Why did things have to be so difficult?
No, not difficult. Unusual. He was a Lean Dog. Normal social convention didn’t apply.
It shouldn’t have been a revelation, but it was a little bit. She’d had ordinary; had safe, and normal, and socially acceptable.
Carter may have been that once upon a time, in high school, maybe, but that wasn’t his life anymore. If she chose him, she had to accept that.
She did accept that.
“Tell me something good,” she said, softly, and his gaze flickered back up to meet hers. Questioning, uncertain. If she didn’t handle this the right way, manage to draw him back in, he would leave, she thought, and tell himself he was sparing her somehow. Protecting her. “Tell me something that happened today that was good.”
His brows lifted, and, slowly, his expression cleared – to one of quiet wonder. He wet his lips. “Um.” Thought a moment, and then a second, softer wave of surprise seemed to hit him. “Ghost complimented me.”
She knew Kenny Teague well enough to know that compliments were rare and sparing things. She smiled encouragingly. “That’s awesome! What did he say?”
“He said I was good with people. That I put them at ease.” He sounded like he couldn’t believe it. “He sent me out as the lead today.”
“In Ghost-speak, that’s better than a compliment. That’s, like, a ringing endorsement.”
“Yeah.” His brows drew together. “Something went down last night, after I left…”
The coffeeshop. After a conversation that she didn’t want to dwell on, and which she suspected he didn’t want to, either.
“I was the only patched member there, and I was just trying to contain it, but. Mercy said something, after. He said I was ‘stepping up.’ He said I always acted like I didn’t care what went on around the club.”
“Well, that can’t be true.”
“No, it…I think maybe it is. It was,” he amended. “But it felt good today to be a part of things. To feel like I was contributing, you know?”
She nodded. “I know.” The poor thing had been very lost for a long time, now, and she had the sense she was witnessing him finding his way, shakily, nervously, back to the path of his life. A different one that he’d started out on, sure, but no less worthwhile, for all that it didn’t resemble everyone else’s.
He blinked, and refocused, his expression softening. “What about you? Tell me something good that happened to you today?”
Heat flared to life again inside her, simmering and comforting this time. “I manned up and told the truth,” she said. “And then this incredibly hot biker boy kissed me.”
His smirking, teasing grin from before creeping back, twice as welcome now, twice as thrilling.
“So that was pretty good.”
He picked up his fork again and went back to twirling pasta. “Yeah, that sounds pretty good.”
~*~
They ate, and Carter helped her load the dishwasher, though she told him he didn’t have to. They topped up their gla
sses, and went to sit on the couch, and it felt easier, now; like a splinter had been pulled out, sore spots lanced. Like another hurdle of mutual understanding had been leaped, and he wasn’t nervous anymore so much as pleasantly warm and glad to be sitting a few inches away from her. Carter was aware of a mutual, below-surface heat simmering between them, acknowledged, but silent, still. There was no need to rush this – even if it took a shocking amount of self-control not to grip her hair and reel her in like he’d been wanting to for days, now.
It turned out, once they stopped dancing around each other, it was shockingly easy to slide back into an easy friendship.
“It was so busy there,” she was saying of Chicago, gesturing with her half-full glass. He was afraid wine might slop over the side and splash the sofa, though, given its dated, ugly bulk, he didn’t figure she would mind that much. “And that was so exciting, at first. It was a real city, finally. The lights, and the traffic, and the way everyone walked, or took the bus, and it was all so crowded. It felt like being a part of something huge.” Her tone shifted, then, from wistful – it was obvious she’d enjoyed her time there, in the Windy City – to something a touch more glum. “Something so huge that you don’t matter at all. You’re literally an ant.” She held up thumb and forefinger, dark purple nail polish catching the light, gleaming bright as glass. “And busy is great at first – but then it got so I was tired all the time. You can’t take a breath. My boss was always emailing, or texting, or calling me. He’d want files sent over after nine at night. Which, I get it. That’s business. But then it would take two hours instead of two minutes to send, and I’d oversleep, and miss the bus, and some douche would bump into me in line at Starbucks and spill hot coffee all over my jacket, which I couldn’t afford in the first place.”
“Someone spilled hot coffee on you?” he asked, alarmed.
She waved the concern away. “It all went on the jacket, which was ruined. Four-hundred bucks down the drain. But I was trying to keep up with everyone else’s fashion at the office – my whole purple hair and Doc Martens schtick wasn’t exactly the done thing where I worked.” She rolled her eyes, and then held out her arms. “Which is how we got the new, improved, more appropriately fashioned me.” She sounded bitter, and it troubled him. Leah was the sort of person who’d always struck him as shockingly confident, adaptable, and unbothered. She’d changed her style a little, sure – though she still had bright nails, and loud shoes, and wild pops of color here and there. He’d thought she’d chosen to tone her look down a little, and not that she resenting having to try and fit in anywhere.
“You could dye your hair again,” he suggested, carefully, “if you miss it.”
She scrunched up her nose, and titled her head, considering – adorably so. “Working for Shaman? Doubtful.” She shrugged, and slumped against the sofa back, folded arm hooked over it, so she sat sideways, facing him. He read a lot of trust in that pose, an easiness and total lack of concern. It warmed him, maybe more than it should, given its innocence. “But. I liked my hair, back in the day. But I don’t miss it. That wasn’t really why I was secretly glad to come back home.”
“Secretly?”
“I wasn’t supposed to want to, was I?” She made a face. “That’s why everyone hates all those Hallmark movies, right? The girl has a big job in a big city, and she gives it all up to move back home to her small town.”
He shrugged. “Not that I watch those movies” – he’d watched one or two, with Jazz; Leah’s chuckle said she could see right through him, and he felt himself blush – “but Knoxville isn’t exactly the sticks.”
“No. But it’s different. It’s quieter. More personal. It’s not all rush-rush, bitch-bitch, never-sleep is it? It’s Southern,” she said, finally, nodding. “I felt like coming back here was admitting defeat or something. Like I wasn’t cut out for that life in Chicago – but, God, it’s a relief. I missed my parents. I missed my best friend.” She grinned, small and sideways. “I missed the sound of motorcycles, to be honest. Game day traffic, and real barbecue, and watching the sun set.”
He smiled back. “All good things. Game day traffic does suck, though.”
She chuckled. “Do y’all ever go tailgate on the river?”
“Once or twice. Ian has this obnoxious fancy boat and he invited us out once. Dude knows nothing about football, but he likes to drink champagne and be – what’s the word?”
“Ostentatious?”
“If that means obnoxiously fancy for no reason, then yeah, that.”
“I haven’t been inside Neyland in forever.”
“I haven’t been in any SEC stadium since I quit playing. Have you seen how pricey tickets are these days?”
“Now that I don’t have to pay bus fare, maybe I’ll treat you sometime,” she said, with a playful eyebrow waggle.
“I didn’t even think you liked football.”
“I didn’t like the kids who liked it when we were in high school. The sport itself never tried to shove me in a locker.”
“Tried?”
“You think I let them?” she asked, archly.
“Never.”
They grinned at each other, and he thought she was as keenly aware as he was that they’d lived on very different sides of the social divide for a long time, but that the divide stopped mattering once you grew up. Priorities changed, people did – prejudices, too.
“You really don’t miss it?” he asked. “Chicago?”
She hesitated. “Parts of it, sometimes.”
“Do you…want to talk about him?” Jason, she’d said his name was, but Carter couldn’t bring himself to say it. Whoever he was, wherever he was, whatever he looked like – he was an idiot.
“No,” she said, right away. But then: “He wasn’t a bad guy. But it wasn’t…”
“Wasn’t what?” he asked, quietly, heart throbbing with a hope he couldn’t name. It was selfish, and stupid, and primitive, but he relished the idea of being more than Jason had been, in every capacity. He was so used to being an afterthought and a runner-up. He didn’t think he would be that with Leah, and the prospect was dizzying.
“Wasn’t special,” she finished, expression indicating she still hadn’t found the right word, but was making do. “I didn’t want him badly enough to try and hold on when he pulled away.” Whatever his face was doing, it caused her to smile, and reach to lay a hand on his arm, where it rested in his lap. “It’s alright. I’m not heartbroken or anything.”
No, she wasn’t. He was the one she was worried about breaking her heart, though he still couldn’t imagine anyone being capable of that, not with Leah.
“That’s good,” he said, tone rougher than intended, his gaze on her small hand, with its purple nails, resting on the tan skin of his arm. The hair there prickled to attention, chill bumps skating up to his elbow and down to his wrist. As if she noticed, her fingers curled a little more tightly. “Is this too soon?” he asked, and it was only a whisper now, afraid of the answer.
“Is it too soon for you?” she countered.
He lifted his head and met her gentle gaze, quietly concerned now, and no longer teasing.
“I shouldn’t have called you a sex fiend,” she said, apologetic. “I don’t know…?”
“Jazz. Jasmine.”
“I don’t know Jasmine, but you care about her, and I shouldn’t–”
The impulse to touch her struck, and struck hard; he didn’t try to deny it. He’d set his wine glass aside minutes ago, and he reached now with his free hand, the one not in his lap, beneath her hand, and cupped her cheek.
She was smaller in every dimension that Jazz, than maybe anyone he’d been with. Her jaw felt delicate and fragile in his palm; he felt the hummingbird beat of her pulse in his fingertips, in the soft skin just behind her ear. How little she was, how strong inside, but how breakable outside. Unbidden, thoughts of the missing girls filled his mind; he heard Eden’s sharp, bitter tone when she lamented Michelle and Axelle being taken, as if the
re was something she could have done personally to stop it. A whole clubhouse full of Dogs hadn’t been able to do a damn thing about it.
Fear clenched hard in his belly, and he let out a shaky breath, gaze fixed to his thumb as it swept delicately along the fine skin of her cheek. He didn’t want to be afraid, not now, not in this moment, but wanting to kiss her, wanting to touch her, was all tangled up with wanting to keep her safe, and the pulse of desire it sent spearing through him left him gasping, a little.
Her eyes widened; he was probably worrying her, but he couldn’t do anything to alter that, not now.
“Carter.”
“I am a sex fiend,” he said, wholly serious, and felt the little shiver that moved through her. “You’re right about that. I’ve been trying to drown my unhappiness with sex for a long time now, and that doesn’t work. It won’t make the bad shit go away.” He let his hand shift, palming slowly, gently down the slide of her throat, his thumb tracing her scattered pulse, feeling the flower-stem fragility of her neck. It had never been like this for him, this interlocking of want and fear and attraction and anticipated devastation. It was heady, and wonderful, and terrifying, and he was very, very glad of the years, the days, the hours he’d spent trying to drown himself, because it meant he had something – hopefully – worthwhile to offer to this girl who was giving him a chance to be something besides an afterthought.
He wet his lips, and leaned in closer, just as she swayed toward him, her lashes lowering a fraction. “But,” he said, shocked by the throatiness of his own voice, “I like to think I learned a thing or two along the way. I’m not a clumsy high school kid anymore.”
Homecoming (Dartmoor Book 8) Page 31
