I looked at Presley, an apology on the tip of my tongue, but she was buried behind the laminated menu. I sighed and tapped my knuckles on the table to get her attention. “Sorry about that.”
A snort came from behind the menu. Irritated she was hiding from me, I reached up and pulled the big barrier down, only to be pinned in place by her emerald glare.
I lifted a shoulder and let it fall. “What do you want me to say besides sorry? It’s not like I lived like a monk before we crashed into one another.”
She made a face, her nose scrunching in an adorable way. “Knowing it and having it shoved in my face are two different things. It’s better to just hang out in my apartment if we’re going to have an unpleasant encounter with one of your former flames every time we step out the door.”
I rolled my eyes. “We can go to Austin on our next date and run into your exes, if that’ll make you feel better.”
I was trying to make her laugh, but her gaze got slightly sad and her mouth didn’t shift from the hard, straight line it was set in.
“The difference is my exes wouldn’t care if they saw I’d moved on, and yours obviously do.” She looked up when an older woman with salt-and-pepper hair stopped by the side of the table and asked what we wanted to drink. I ordered a black coffee; she ordered sweet tea.
When her eyes shifted back to mine they were filled with all the confusion and regret I’d done my damnedest to eradicate last night. “I’m still not entirely sure what you see in me.”
I grunted and leaned forward. I caught one of her nervous hands in mine and rubbed my thumb over the back of it.
“I see all the things you don’t see. I see how strong you are. I see how resilient you are. I see how brave you are. I see how sexy you are. All the things you’ve always overlooked, I see them clear as day.” She watched me with wide eyes as I lifted the hand in mine to my lips and dropped a quick kiss on it. “And I never dated Darlie, so she isn’t technically my ex. Neither is Kody. They are just women I spent some time with at one point or another. We weren’t together. There was no breakup.” I made sure she could see how serious I was when I told her, “With you, we are definitely doing more than spending time together, and if you want to get rid of me, you’re going to have to say the words. I’m not walking away without a backward glance like I usually do. I don’t know how to date any more than you do, but I’m making the effort. That should show you I’m not doing it out of any obligation because you saved my life. I’m doing it because I want to.”
I meant every word I was saying, but it also served a secret purpose. I knew Felicia was hovering close by waiting for a good time to drop our drinks and take our order. The woman was a huge gossip and wouldn’t wait even a second before spreading my conversation with Presley to anyone who would listen. Ashby Grant was bound to get the news Presley had a man in her life if she was keeping tabs on anyone in Loveless.
“And while I am eternally grateful you showed up that night when Kody called you in a panic, I have never, not once, felt obligated to repay you with my dick.”
Presley’s eyes bugged out and I heard a shocked gasp from somewhere over my shoulder. Felicia was getting more than an earful and had apparently had enough. Our drinks were plopped down in front of us, some of the coffee sloshing over the rim of the mug and hitting the table. She hurriedly asked what we wanted to order. I got a burger and Presley ordered a club sandwich. It was honestly the closest thing to a real date I’d ever been on, which made the underlying subterfuge behind it twist in my gut.
Presley played with the straw in her drink as she switched the conversation to somewhat safer ground.
“The girl who sat us said she hadn’t seen you and the boys in a while. Do you and the club members spend a lot of time in Loveless? Your clubhouse is pretty far out in hill country.”
“We come to town when we need to. I don’t know how much of the ranch you saw that night, but we pretty much have everything we need out on the property. It’s better if we stay off the sheriff’s radar. Case was just a deputy when we set up this chapter of the club, but he’s never been overly fond of us or our proximity to his town.”
“How did you end up in Loveless in the first place? And where are you from originally? You don’t have any kind of discernible accent.”
I chuckled at that. “I was born and raised in Denver. That’s where the Sons of Sorrow were founded. My dad was stationed at Fort Carson when he was in the service and fell in love with the state.” I snorted at old, bitter memories as they started to rise up from the very dark and deep pit inside my heart where I kept them locked away. “His bike. His club. His brothers. And Colorado. Those were pretty much the only things my father ever gave a damn about.”
She made a sympathetic sound. “Is that how you ended up in Texas? Were you stationed here?”
I shook my head and reached for the coffee. “Nope. I had an uncle—or rather one of the club members who stepped up and helped raise me, since my dad wasn’t interested—and he was from here. When I enlisted, he left the club and bought the ranch where our clubhouse is. He grew up in Loveless and wanted to come back home.”
He hadn’t told me he was sick and living on borrowed time. He also hadn’t told me he was leaving me the ranch in his will. What he had told me was that being a Son, and the son of one of the founding members of the Sons of Sorrow, meant I was never going to be able to walk away from my legacy. I hated the way my father lived, but I didn’t hate being part of a club and having a group of men who I knew would unquestionably have my back. He left instructions to set up my own chapter and coolly reminded me that when my dad was gone, I would be up for the vote to sit at the head of the table for the entire club.
“When he passed away I got the ranch and all the property. I was out of the military by then and had no intention of going back to Denver, so really Loveless was the only place I had to go.”
Top didn’t have a home to return to, either, and by then I’d been collecting misfits and outcasts who didn’t fit into any mold or box. We weren’t meant to fit in. We were made to stand out. I was a pro at being blacklisted by polite society.
She gave me a crooked grin. “It’s weird that in a town called Loveless, people seem to be tripping over the people they’re meant to spend the rest of their lives with. When I first heard the name of the town, I expected something very different.”
Honestly, so had I.
I hadn’t expected to find a place that finally felt like home. I hadn’t expected to find a place and people I was eager to return to whenever I left. I hadn’t expected to find friends like Kody, and enemies I respected the hell out of like Case. And I definitely hadn’t expected to find a woman who was going to make me realize that while I might live in a place called Loveless, I didn’t actually have to live a life that was loveless.
Chapter 16
Presley
I was exhausted.
My hiatus from work was the longest period of time I’d gone without being in the trenches. While I hadn’t left under the best of circumstances, the break ended up being a nice way to hit the reset button. I loved my job. I believed it was important. But I had a tendency to forget how much it could take out of me emotionally. Working with the dead didn’t have the same kind of pressures that came with trying to heal and save the living, but there were unique drawbacks and downfalls when you worked in a morgue that somehow had slipped my mind while I was dealing with the rest of my life crumbling around me.
Before my mother had passed away, it was a welcome distraction to be caught up in other people’s worst-case scenarios. What I dealt with at my job was a good reminder to be thankful for what I had, for every single moment I still had my mother around. When I left work for the day before my hiatus, I’d always had something dealing with my mother waiting for me, so it was easier to flip the switch from professional to personal mode. Now that she was gone, I was finding it difficult to drop the harsh realities of my career at the door. Even with all the crazy currently going
on in my life, some things lingered and affected me long after the case I was working on was closed.
One of the big things that I’d forgotten about my job was the strong smell of disinfectants and chemicals, as well as other things no one wanted to think about, that seemed to cling to me no matter how hard I scrubbed after a shift. It probably wasn’t noticeable to anyone not familiar with what a morgue smelled like, but to me, it was overpowering and felt like it was embedded in my skin and wrapped around each of my hair follicles. I usually showered once before I left work, and then again as soon as I got home. Shot complained about the janky shower in my apartment every time he stayed the night, and I was starting to agree with him that when I found a new house, I needed to look into building some kind of luxurious master bath. It’d be nice to have a spa-like experience after an exceptionally long day at work.
Because now I wasn’t just juggling the pressures and pitfalls of my job, but also of navigating a new relationship. Shot was becoming a regular fixture in my life, and while our version of dating tended to be nights in at my apartment, or the occasional trip to the diner or Kody’s bar rather than romantic dinners and flowers, it was still definitely dating. For the first time I was trying to leave work behind when I left for the day. A challenge I wasn’t doing so great at. Shot never seemed to bring his biker business to my door and I was attempting to do the same, but it felt like an impossible task.
These days when I left work I didn’t make the drive back to my apartment unescorted. I tried to tell Shot it was overkill to have one of his biker buddies wait for me, since I never knew when I was going to get off work for the day. However, despite my protests, each and every day there was a man on a motorcycle wearing one of those vests Shot always had on, lurking somewhere near my car. I was starting to be able to recognize a couple of them. I’d tried to apologize a few times for them having to babysit me since their president was overly cautious, but they all waved me off and told me it was no problem. I secretly felt they were worried I would tell Shot if they were anything other than gruffly polite to me, but I kept that speculation to myself.
Most days, Shot would appear at the door shortly after I got home. I didn’t need to tell him I was safe and sound, because his brothers did it for me. On the days he didn’t show up, he always called or sent a text to let me know someone was keeping an eye on me through the night. He never gave an explanation as to what he was up to or where he was at. At first, his vagueness didn’t bother me because I was too busy settling back into the routine of being at work and juggling all the new responsibilities I would have as the chief ME. It started to grate on my nerves a little when I realized he literally knew every move I made almost every second of the day, and I couldn’t even begin to guess where he disappeared to.
Could we actually be considered as being together if I didn’t know what he was up to half the time? I knew that neither of us knew how to date and we were learning together, but some things felt like they should have been obvious, like each knowing where the other was the majority of the time. I was trying to be patient and understanding, but the truth was the difference in our lifestyles was growing more glaring the closer we became, and I couldn’t stop worrying the bridge crossing the divide was going to crumble at any moment.
Telling myself I was just overly tired and thinking too much when there were more pressing matters at hand and bigger picture items still at loose ends, I pushed into my apartment and practically stripped at the door. I let my purse fall to the floor along with my keys and left a trail of clothes on my way to the bathroom. I cranked the shower on as hot as it would go and climbed under the stream once it was warm. It stung a little, but the burn was a nice distraction, as it was meant to be.
Fifteen minutes later, when I pulled the flowery shower curtain back, I let out a shriek when I caught sight of a large figure dressed head to toe in black leaning against the bathroom sink. Shot had his heavily tattooed arms crossed over his chest and an intense scowl on his darkly handsome face. I noticed he had my abandoned cell phone in one hand, and the screen showed several missed calls from him. I put a palm to my chest over my racing heart and reached for one of the fluffy towels hanging on the rickety towel bar attached to the wall.
“You scared me to death.” My voice was still husky from fear. I covered myself with the towel and pushed my soaked hair away from my face. I was too tired to kick his ass appropriately this go-around, but there was still a spark of anger behind the fear.
I didn’t like how easily he invaded my privacy, or how blasé he was about showing up out of nowhere when he knew I was worried Ashby might do the same thing. Irritation as I thought about how inconsiderate he was being toward my feelings and current state of mind started to claw its way under my skin.
Shot held up my phone and wagged it in my face. His voice was an angry growl, which I normally liked a lot, but not today. “You scared me to death as well. Do you have any idea what went through my mind when I couldn’t get ahold of you? Do you want to know all the crazy things that ran through my mind?”
I snatched my phone away from him and returned his glare. On a normal day, I’d have been freaking out that he was fully dressed for battle and I was not, but right now I was too heated to care.
I pointed my phone at his chest and snapped, “That’s how it is for me all the time, Shot. I don’t know where you are. I don’t know if you’re dead or in jail. I don’t know if you’re breaking the law or saving someone’s life. You come and go as you please and expect me to be okay with it, and yet if I step sideways you have an entire legion of bikers reporting back to you. Do you think I don’t worry? Do you think I’m not here wondering and imagining awful situations you might be in?”
His expression softened slightly. He made a move to reach for me, but I brushed past him and marched toward the kitchen. The march wasn’t as dramatic as I had hoped, since I was dripping everywhere and barefoot, but it made me feel a little bit better. Tonight I needed a drink if I was going to deal with the badass biker who seemed to know how to push buttons I didn’t even know I had.
Shot followed, his footsteps heavier and louder than mine. I didn’t ask if he wanted a drink, just poured him a matching gin on the rocks and wordlessly pushed it his way. He looked at the glass, then back at me. He cocked his dark head to the side, eyebrows furrowing as he asked, “You want to tell me what’s got you so worked up tonight?”
I sipped the liquor and scoffed. “I just did.”
Shot swore under his breath and rolled his broad shoulders. “Come on, Pres. Tell me what’s going on. I get that you worry about me, which you should. That’s what people do when they’re together. But this outburst isn’t like you.”
I gripped the cold glass tighter in my hand and whispered, “You wouldn’t understand.” So few people did. When you spend your days with the dead, most already found it hard to relate, and no one ever wanted to have the reality and inevitability of their own eventual demise shoved into their face.
Shot moved closer and plucked the drink from my hands. He set it down on the counter and put his hands on my bare shoulders, forcing me to look directly at him. “Talk to me. You don’t know if I’ll understand or not until you try me. Remember, I’ve spent time in the worst places in the world. I’ve witnessed the worst humanity has to offer. Nothing you tell me, nothing you share with me, is going to shock me or send me running.” A wry grin touched the corner of his mouth. “Tell me what’s got you worked up, besides me, and once you get that off your chest we can talk about all the reasons you’re so pissed at me right now.”
I huffed a little. “All the legitimate reasons I’m pissed at you. I don’t like that you broke into my house and scared me.”
He just dipped his chin down in agreement and watched me as I tugged at my wet hair in aggravation. It took me a second to marshal my thoughts into an order that could express why I was so on edge. “I can’t say much because most of the work I do involves open investigations. My day at the
office never goes by without coming across some pretty horrific examples of how people can die.” I gulped hard and pulled on my hair even harder, my fingers slipping through the slippery strands. “The days when there are kids involved are harder than others.” My breath caught a bit and I felt tears press at the back of my eyes. “It’s something I’ve never managed to grow numb to and this week, there were multiple cases that came through involving very young children. An intern quit over one, and a seasoned forensic pathologist needed to take a break in the middle of an autopsy while dealing with another. I was out of work for several months, so I guess I let myself forget what a bad day felt like in my field, and just how hard it is to leave this kind of work at the office when it’s time to come home.”
Shot took a step that brought him closer to me. He caught the back of my head in one of his big hands and pulled me forward until my forehead was resting on the center of his chest. I felt him press a kiss on the top of my head as he rubbed my back in light circles.
“It’s never easy when kids are involved. That was my least favorite part of being in the Marines as well. I think it’s admirable that you haven’t numbed yourself to those feelings. What you do, the things you see, you could be a cold, hard person and you’re not. You still care. You still hurt, and that makes you very special.”
His words were like a cool balm on the parts of my heart that burned at the injustice and unfairness of a life lost far too soon. I’d never wanted to burden my mother with the weight of my worries, since she had her own to tackle on a daily basis. Ashby had always been much like Shot described, cold and hard. She often told me I needed to toughen up when a case got to me, when I felt broken at what I’d seen and experienced. So, I’d suffered alone and kept all those emotions to myself. It was amazing how nice it was to unload those feelings on someone who wasn’t going to judge or tell me to get over it. There was a lightness in my heart I rarely felt.
Blacklisted Page 17
