And I think she did know. Or suspected. But she gave me that out, allowed me have my secrets, and let me be.
She knew I’d killed Bender in self-defense…what she didn’t know was that it’d been because I was consumed with grief over him killing my child.
The one piece of me that was good…and pure.
I didn’t realize that my sobs had become so gut wrenching until a knock sounded on the door.
“You okay?” A muffled male voice called from the other side.
Silas.
“Yeah,” I choked out.
“You don’t sound okay,” Silas challenged.
“I’m fine,” I lied.
I heard something that sounded distinctly similar to ‘fucking hardheaded women,’ but I couldn’t be sure.
“Call me if you need me,” Silas ordered.
I nodded, even though he couldn’t see me.
“Okay,” I said through another sob.
I could practically hear him sigh through the door, and a small smile started to spread on my lips.
I really loved Silas.
I loved him for Sawyer.
Loved that he treated my good friend with the tenderness that she deserved.
I didn’t like that he was putting his nose into my business.
I craved independence like crops need rain.
I’d become so accustomed to doing what I was told to do, that sometimes I didn’t even realize I was following orders until I’d already followed them and couldn’t unfollow them.
However, these men…these Dixie Wardens…they gave me the independence that I craved, and always watched over me.
Something Sterling had said would happen.
‘We look out for our own…and baby, you’re mine.’
That’d come out of Sterling’s mouth the night before as we’d been lying in bed discussing the politics of motorcycle clubs.
I let my head fall back as I thought about all that I had to think about.
I’d made the decision to move out of my rental, and the couple I’d rented from had already agreed to let me rent another place that was about ten minutes from town.
Something I’d been intending to tell Sterling, seeing as I was supposed to be moved out by the end of the week.
I’d also gotten Dane, with his huge car hauler, to help me move.
Tonight, after I got home from my lunch with Lily, I’d start packing boxes I’d gotten from the local super market.
Then when I was ready, I’d be moving to the new house.
Although the only one I could get on this short of notice and not break my lease was one just a street over from the one I was at now.
A new set of neighbors would mean less problems…hopefully.
With quick thinking, I texted Lily that I was going home on account of I forgot about a pest control appointment, unlocked the bathroom door, and then eyed the window in the corner of the bathroom.
It was directly behind the toilet, so I used the metal trashcan beside the toilet to stand on, and unlocked the window.
It slid open easily, and luckily it had a large enough ledge to allow me to straddle the opening, allowing me to not fall, and instead slide out rather gracefully.
I landed on the concrete besides the building with nearly silent feet, and then turned to close the window.
Once I had it closed, I turned and started walking towards my car, ignoring the group of men that’d gathered outside the bar as I did.
It was Friday night, so it didn’t surprise me in the least that there was already a line waiting to get in the door.
What did surprise me though was the graceful older couple standing a little further away from the man.
They didn’t look the type to go into a bar to eat…not with those clothes anyway.
And they really weren’t dressed for a bar.
The woman wore white linen pants, a pale lavender silk shirt, and a scarf around her delicate neck.
She had dirty blonde hair that was styled in long, loose waves down her back.
And although she looked familiar, it was the man at her side that held my attention.
He was tall.
Really tall.
He was older, but not really old.
He had blonde hair with a hint of red in it when he moved, and sharp gray eyes that took in everything around him without actually moving an inch.
He was wearing a similar dressy outfit to the woman at his side, but he was wearing black slacks and a pale lavender button down shirt.
His eyes caught me as I looked at him, and they narrowed, marking my turn to leave with haste.
I couldn’t figure out what it was about that man that had me staring at him so, but I knew it wouldn’t solve anything to keep staring.
And if I didn’t hurry, then Silas would realize I wasn’t in the bathroom anymore and come looking for me.
He felt some sort of responsibility for me, and I hated that.
So, in my haste to get out of there, I didn’t realize that the man I’d been watching was now watching me in turn.
I didn’t see how his face turned down in a frown.
Nor the way he pulled out his wallet and looked at a picture from a long ago time.
Because had I seen that, I wouldn’t have been so surprised just a few days later when Sterling came home.
Chapter 12
Do you ever start crying about something that’s weak, and realize the next day when you get your period that you weren’t a weak ass bitch after all?
-E-Card
Ruthie
My eyes stared blankly at the TV screen.
I was watching the ten o’clock news and thinking about what a shitty day it’d been.
Tips had been shit.
Customers had been even more shit.
At least Silas hadn’t caught on, or it could’ve been even worse.
Any time he caught on, my measly tips suffered even more.
“An Amber Alert has been issued for an eleven month old baby that was stolen from a gas station this morning by the child’s mother, who is thought to be unstable. The child was in his father’s car while he was pumping gas, and while he was busy at the pump, he didn’t realize that his child was being taken from the backseat,” the news anchor droned.
I looked up, seeing a grainy picture of a woman with brown hair taking the young child out of the car while the man looked in the other direction. He never even realized it’d happened. Drove off and left without a second thought.
Something that I was sure every parent wouldn’t think to check.
Then a picture of the child was displayed on the screen, and I smiled sadly at the man and the child.
The man was holding the child against his chest, the boy clutching a plastic dump truck in both hands that was bigger than his body.
They looked happy.
And it broke my heart that this would happen to him.
“Baby Donnie has a distinctive birth mark on the left side of his neck in the shape of a heart. If you see him, alert authorities immediately, but do not approach the woman. She is suspected to be armed and volatile,” the news anchor said animatedly.
I turned off the TV with a flick of my wrist, taking a look around at my now packed up rental house.
The only thing that was left out of the boxes were the sheets on my bed, the clothes I’d be wearing tomorrow, and my TV.
Everything else was packed and ready to go.
I looked down at my phone that was on the couch in front of me and willed it to ring.
It’d been four days now without any contact from Sterling whatsoever.
Not even an ‘I arrived okay.’
Zero. Zilch. Nada. Nothing.
Leaving my phone on my couch in hopes that I wouldn’t check it thirty times before I laid my head down for the night, I walked into the bedroom and flopped down into bed, completely exhausted.
My ey
es got heavy, but that still didn’t stop my mind from wandering where I didn’t want it to be.
But it seemed a certain man with green eyes and dirty blonde hair had a way at keeping me on his mind…even in my dreams.
***
Three hours later, I woke up to my last day in my house with it on fire.
Smoke was billowing into my small bedroom, but with my bedroom door, it only had a limited place to come in.
But as I said that, the door slammed open and an imposing figure in a yellow jacket started through the doorway.
Smoke poured through even faster behind the figure, and soon it became harder to breathe.
“Shit,” I said, dropping down onto the floor on my hands and knees.
“Ruthie!” Darth Vader called.
I looked up to see the yellow jacketed man about three inches from my face, and realized that I was disoriented.
“Ruthie!” Darth said again.
I blinked.
“Yes, Darth?” I asked, somewhat delusional from oxygen deprivation.
The yellow-jacketed man moved his mask aside and placed it over my face, allowing me a few blissful mouthfuls of oxygen before he removed the mask again.
“It’s me,” the man said.
It took me a few minutes before I realized just who ‘me’ was, and then I smiled, launching myself at him.
“Zander!” I cried, so happy to see the goofball that I didn’t contemplate what I did next.
I threw myself in his arms, hugging him so tightly around the neck that he choked out a, “you’re okay.”
“Thank you so much for coming for me!” I gasped.
He patted my back and started to crawl.
Inevitably, I ended up on the floor beside him, my hand in his as we crawled together.
I couldn’t see a damn thing with all the smoke, and the moment we made it to what, I guessed, used to be the living room, I was praying that it wouldn’t be much further.
And it wasn’t.
Only a few short crawls more, and I felt the familiar feeling of a doorway.
Zander pushed me through it, and I fell face first into a man’s ass.
A man I hadn’t realized was in front of me until I became acquainted with his butt.
“Ack,” I exclaimed.
The man didn’t budge when I hit him, even when I slammed ungracefully against his backside.
Then my hands were grabbed and I was hauled off my front porch before I was unceremoniously dumped on my front lawn.
“Ruthie!” Zander said, patting my face.
Except I couldn’t look at him.
I was too busy looking at my house burning.
All of my things that I’d managed to gather over the last seven months were gone.
Every. Last. One of them.
Then a thought occurred to me, and I was up and running back towards the front door before anybody could stop me.
I didn’t have to get far, though.
All I had to do was make it back up to the front porch, right inside the door.
I held my breath until I was dizzy, feeling around for the familiar hook that I hung all my bags from that I needed for the next day.
And as soon as my hand closed around it and I lifted it off the hook, strong arms encircled my ribcage and I was yanked back so hard that my head snapped.
I gasped in a full lungful of smoke filled air, and started to gag.
Then I started to cough as I was dragged further and further away from my home.
“Why’d you go back into the building?” Sterling yelled as he shook me, fuming.
I held out my hand, offering him the book in my hands, and his face completely fell.
“Fuck,” he sighed. “Just fuck.”
I nodded.
It was Jade’s baby book.
It had her tiny footprints…and her tiny handprints. A lock of her dark brown hair, and a few dozen pictures of her that the nurse had been kind enough to take for me.
“I couldn’t leave her behind,” I whispered brokenly.
His eyes closed, and he leaned his head forward until it rested on my shoulder.
“You could’ve died,” he whispered.
I didn’t know what to say to that.
I could have.
I didn’t want to lie. He’d know I was lying…so it defeated the purpose.
“Yo!” A voice barked, interrupting our little bubble.
I blinked, finally looking around the area.
I was at the curb now instead of on my front lawn, which was good since I could clearly see that the house was fully engulfed now.
Firemen worked hurriedly around us, massive fire hoses snaking along from the road beyond my driveway.
People surrounded a makeshift barrier of fire trucks and police cruisers.
Two bikes were parked haphazardly in the middle of it all.
One of which I knew to be Sterling’s, and the other one I’d never seen before.
“She needs to put on this mask,” a medic ordered from beside me.
I didn’t look away from the bikes.
Only kept staring as I thought about all that had happened in the last ten minutes.
It felt like hours.
“Y’all need to back up so my men can work,” Sebastian ordered, pointing to a point where there were more men standing around.
“Go over there. Stay with the cop who’s standing beside her cruiser,” Sterling ordered.
My eyes followed where he was pointing, coming to the conclusion that Sterling wouldn’t be following me over there, otherwise he would’ve led me to her.
“What are you doing here?” I asked softly.
His eyes connected with mine, and became somewhat softer.
“We’ll talk…just not right now. Go over there and be good,” he ordered once again.
I sighed and let go of his hand, walking away from him.
His stare stayed on my back as I moved through the crowd of people, coming to a stop next to a woman police officer who looked like she’d rather be anywhere else but here.
“How are you doing?” She asked reluctantly.
I smiled. “I’m fine, thanks.”
“No, she’d be better if she put this oxygen mask on her face,” the same persistent paramedic sniped from my side.
I sighed and turned, holding my hand out.
“Give it to me,” I snapped.
The medic gave me the facemask and I placed it over my nose and mouth, annoyed that she was making me wear it when I felt perfectly fine.
Except when she started the oxygen, I immediately realized how much easier it was to breathe, and inadvertently let out a small sigh of relief.
“Good,” the medic said. “Keep this on. I’ll come check on you after I check on the firefighter.”
I blinked, turning to find Zander sitting on the back of the medic, his eyes focused on me…or at least my area.
When I moved, his eyes didn’t even flicker.
And then I realized it wasn’t me he was watching, but the police officer at my side.
“You’ve got an admirer,” I said through my mask.
The officer looked down.
“What?” She asked.
I lifted my mask and said, “You’ve got an admirer.”
She looked over at the fire truck, and I was impressed with how she knew exactly whom I was talking about without asking.
“Yeah, he’s an…ex,” she said.
My brows rose.
What’d they do, graduate high school together?
Were they high school sweethearts?
“He looks into you,” I observed, watching how they watched each other.
Zander moved his big body so that the medic who was in front of him was more to his left, freeing up the area directly in front of him for his viewing pleasure.
“Well…he’s not into the fact that I’m a cop…so he can’t be th
at into me,” she finally offered.
I blinked, surprised that she’d admit that.
All the female cops I’d met over my time didn’t like to share feelings, and either this woman at my side didn’t mind sharing her feelings, or she was tired of holding those feelings in.
My bet was on the latter.
“How long did y’all date?” I asked, eyes scanning the area for the only man that would ever be on my mind.
“He’s by the fire truck on the right side,” she said. “And we dated for six years, all the way through high school and the first two years of college. We’ve been separated for two years now.”
And they still had it this bad.
Imagine that.
I turned my head to find the man that currently meant the whole world to me and found him exactly where the young cop at my side said I would.
He was talking to some man I’d never met before, Sebastian, and Torren.
Sterling had his hands resting on top of his head, as if he was so relived he could barely contain it.
He must’ve sensed my gaze, because he turned and offered me a wink.
I waved back, but the order of the cop at my side was what had me jumping.
“Put your oxygen back on before he comes over here,” she ordered quickly.
I quickly complied, looking over at Zander with the now finished paramedic staring at me in anger.
“She’s a strict woman,” I said.
“She’s the reason we broke up,” the cop confided.
“Why?” I asked.
Was it weird that I was having this conversation with a practical stranger?
Because I thought maybe it was.
But it was taking my mind off the matter of someone burning my house down.
Because I didn’t doubt for one freakin’ minute that this wasn’t deliberate.
I’m sure they wouldn’t have gone to such exuberant measures had they known I was planning on moving anyway.
But now it was somewhat comical, since I knew for a fact that there were cameras on the house…something I imagined Sterling was discussing with the police officer on his right, and Sebastian that was on his left.
He hadn’t specifically told me he had a camera on my house, but it was kind of obvious when I saw new wires leading into a battery pack in one closet.
Well, I’d had to Google it…but I’d figured it out eventually.
Right To My Wrong (The Heroes of The Dixie Wardens MC Book 8) Page 13
