by Brook Wilder
We could be cleaning this up in a week or two.
“Can I ask you a question?”
Her tiny voice nearly tore my heart in two, putting me on edge.
“Sure, you know you can.”
“Where did this all go so wrong?”
I knew she wasn’t talking about Leo or the club anymore. She was talking about us.
“It was out of our control Rox.”
“I know,” she sighed, turning on her side. “And I hate that it did, Neil.”
I turned to face her, seeing a sight I had seen many times over the last few months, a sight I had missed every time I had slept in my bed after the day we had given up on us.
“I didn’t want it to.”
“Me neither,” she admitted, giving me a soft smile. “We had some fun times, didn’t we?”
I grinned. Fun was not how I would have described what we’d had together.
“I believe we did.”
Her smile faded.
“I don’t know what’s gonna happen tomorrow or the next day, Neil, but whatever happens, know that I didn’t lie to you during that time. What I felt, I can’t…”
I placed a finger to her lips.
“Don’t. Just, let’s just pretend that nothing has happened, and when we wake up tomorrow we will figure it all out. I swear.”
She sighed and moved toward me until I was holding her against my chest, one arm around her waist while her head rested right near my heart. My other hand stroked her red hair, like I had done many times while we had been together. Laid like this, I felt the peace between us settle in my soul.
Everything was going to be alright.
And it had for a while before. I remembered the night we had come crashing through the front door, our hands all over each other, and making our way to the bedroom where I had found Rox’s biggest secret.
***
I froze, my hands on her pants as her words drifted over me.
“W-what?”
Surely I hadn’t heard her right.
She let out a nervous chuckle, dropping her hands from my shoulders.
“I’m a virgin.”
I swore and dropped her like a hot potato, putting some distance between us.
“Rox, I’m not… we aren’t going to do this.”
Her gaze narrowed, and she took a step toward me.
“Oh yes you are, Neil Wheeler. I have waited all my life for this moment with you, and you aren’t going to back out on me now.”
I tore a hand through my hair, my emotions conflicted on what I should tell her. Hell, we were ready to rip each other’s clothes off, but I hadn’t imagined that she was still a virgin. Rox was smoking hot, and though it had taken me so long to recognize that, I hadn’t thought other bastards wouldn’t have already done so.
But take her virginity? Leo would kill me. This was his baby sister, and what she was going to give me I didn’t deserve.
“No.”
Her eyes widened.
“What?”
“No,” I ground out. “I can’t do this. I’m not the guy you need, Rox. Shit, I don’t have anything to give you. I’m a screw-up. I’ve killed people. You deserve better.”
Rox continued to stare at me, and I started to get nervous, wanting to be anywhere but there, pretty much telling her that I didn’t want to fuck her.
No, correction: I wanted to fuck her so badly it hurt, but it wasn’t the right thing to do.
“Are you done yet?”
I gave a shrug.
“I-I guess.”
“Good,” she said angrily, walking toward me until I was pressed up against the wall. “Because you have no right to tell me who I can and cannot give my first time to, Neil Wheeler. But if it bothers you so bad, I can go pull some random guy off the street and get rid of it that way, so you feel better.”
Just the thought made me want to commit murder.
“Hell no,” I growled, clenching my fists. “No bastard is going to do that to you?”
“Good,” she said, her expression softening. “So why don’t you do it to me. And make it the best thing I have ever experienced, or I will slice off your balls.”
Despite my better judgment, I grinned at her. “Yes ma’am.”
***
That memory still stuck with me. I had never, ever slept with a virgin before, and while I had anticipated Rox needing some extra tenderness, I hadn’t anticipated her being a wild cat in bed.
It was probably then that I had fallen in love with her, wanting no other man to have what I had. She was mine.
Rox shifted on my chest, her deep breathing telling me that she was asleep. Still, I let my fingers run through her hair, worried about what the next day was going to bring. She would want to open the box, and the moment I offered that key, she would know.
I couldn’t let that happen, but I also could not hide the box from her for too much longer. Rox deserved to know what had happened to Leo, but I was being a coward and wanted to selfishly hold onto this.
I wanted her to love me just a little while longer before she hated me.
Sighing, I listened to the house settle around us, hoping to God that some bastard would try to break in tonight. I needed a fight to get out the aggression toward what I was doing to this woman across my chest, the thing I was hiding from her that would tear us apart again when she found it out.
I fucking hated it.
But what could I do? Leo had asked me to protect her, not knowing I was going to be the one to destroy her in the end. Was he trying to torture the both of us?
My chest tightened, and I clutched her just a bit tighter against me, scared. I was never scared of anything, but the thought of Rox leaving again or getting hurt when I could protect her scared the hell out of me. I never wanted her to be in so much danger that I couldn’t protect her.
Especially since she held my damn heart in her hands.
Shit. What was I going to do? It was more than just losing her that scared me. It was her figuring out that she could do so much better than my ass. I didn’t deserve someone like her, someone that could make the world a better fucking place by being in it. I didn’t deserve to feel this tightness in my chest when she laid against it, trusting me to keep her safe while she slept.
And I definitely didn’t deserve her love. That was supposed to be for the good fucking guys of the earth, the ones that could give her the picket fence and two-point-five kid shit kind of life.
Me? I didn’t know what I was going to do past tomorrow, whether my past was going to come back to haunt me, or when someone was going to take it out on me or my family. I didn’t know what I was going to do about the club and my position there, or whether it would just end in the middle of the desert, someone getting the better of me.
What kind of place did that put Rox in? I had witnessed her fear tonight after she had realized I had been grazed by a bullet.
What kind of pain would I put her in if I was dead?
But as soon as the thoughts had passed through my little brain, there was that nagging feeling that I didn’t want to let her go. If I did, some other bastard would snatch her up and I would be left with a gaping hole in my chest, watching her live out the life I should have had with her.
Hell, I was going to damn near torture myself to be with her, but there was no other place I would rather be.
Chapter Fifteen
Rox
I swept the broom across the floor, the glass scattering with each pass. The shop was a mess, far worse than I had first thought, but I was determined to clean it up and get my insurance money, so I could re-open.
This was my livelihood, and I wasn’t going to let some bastard ruin that for me.
Sighing, I leaned against the broom, blowing the hair out of my face. When I had awoken this morning, I had thought it was all a dream. Neil had lain next to me, his hand across my stomach, and for a moment, I had been transported back to before my world had crashed down around me, when things had been
good. Last night, I had touched the stars because of him.
And when he had finally opened his eyes, I had tried to play it off. I hadn’t wanted him to see the emotions reflected in my eyes, how I felt about him and what we had just done. I didn’t want him to know that he had taken my heart once more.
So, we hadn’t talked about it. I had rolled out of his bed, taken a shower, and asked him to take me to the shop. Neil had complied without question, even staying right outside in case someone had tried to do something else. From my vantage point, I could see him, casually leaning against his bike, his eyes hidden behind his dark sunglasses. When he had gotten shot last night, I had lost it, the thought of losing him tearing me apart on the inside. Losing my brother had been painful, but he was gone, and Neil was here now.
I couldn’t lose him too.
But how was this going to work between us? We needed to get into that box and see what Leo was hiding, what the truth was so that I could take it back to Grant. I wanted this to be over with. I wanted Grayson to be found and all his traitors brought to justice. I wanted Leo’s killer to be brought to justice.
I hoped it was not Neil.
Wiping a hand over my face, I looked at the plywood covering the hole where the window had been, wondering who had been nice enough to do that. Probably Neil. I would bet all the money in the world that he had something to do with that, which only softened my feelings toward him.
Who was I kidding? I loved the man. Every fiber of my being knew I had loved him from the moment he had walked into my life years ago, and just because this… this mess stood between us, didn’t mean I had stopped.
Oh, but I had wanted to stop. Last night had drummed up memories of how much I had been hurt, partly from Leo’s death and subsequent betrayal by Neil. But it had also brought wonderful ones, like the dates Neil and I had experienced together, the special moments between us when nothing could go wrong.
***
“Watch out!”
I held up my hands to ward off the wave that followed as Neil dove into the water, laughing as he disappeared under the surface. The sun was shining brightly overhead, a nearly cloudless blue-sky Texas day.
A perfect day to enjoy a dip in the lake.
Neil popped up beside me, the water running down his face, and I wrapped an arm around his neck, pressing a kiss to his nose.
“There you are.”
He wrapped his arm around my waist and pulled me close, winking at me.
“Miss me?”
“All the time,” I said softly, giving him a soft smile.
We were taking a huge risk being together in the middle of the day, but the lake was secluded, and I doubted that anyone was going to ride down the dirt path, least of all anyone that knew either one of us.
Neil growled and kissed my shoulder, gently nipping it with his teeth.
“You know I only have an hour.”
I sighed, snuggling closer to him still. Neil was working on some secret project for Grant Travis, and it had taken up more of his time than I would have liked to. We already had to keep everything under wraps, and all I wanted to do was spend every waking moment in Neil’s arms.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, his fingers toying with the string of my bikini top.
“I don’t want to pretend anymore,” I forced out, surprised by the emotion in my voice.
“I know babe,” Neil responded, pressing a kiss into my hair. “I don’t want to either, but we can’t right now.”
I knew that. Leo was so wrapped up with the same project that Neil was involved in that the last thing he needed to happen was for us to tell him what we were doing behind his back. I didn’t want to cause any trouble between the best friends, especially not when Leo could put a bullet in Neil’s brain without thinking about it.
“I know,” I finally said, my hands sliding down his chest. “But I still don’t like not having you every single day.”
He chuckled, lifting me so I could wrap my legs around his waist, feeling his hardness nestling between my legs. Even in the water, I felt my body respond, eager to have him buried inside of me.
Neil pulled back and looked into my eyes, bringing one of his hands to cup my cheek.
“Do you know how much you mean to me?”
I felt my heart squeeze painfully in my chest.
“Not nowhere near as much as you mean to me.”
He grinned.
“When did this become a contest?”
I gave him a saucy smile in return, reaching down to cup him through his boxers.
“When I know I can win.”
Neil groaned.
“You keep that up and you will win every single time.”
***
A knock on the door pulled me out of the delicious memory, and I cleared my throat.
“Yeah?”
The door opened, and Amy Travis stepped in, a sad smile on her face. Close behind her was Cibolo’s only female police officer, now married to one of Grant Travis’s right-hand men. Sydney Hale was a force to be reckoned with, assigned to the Horsemen task force by her chief to aid in finding Grayson Barnes. She had been one of the few that had reached out to me after Leo’s death, offering her condolences and taking me out for coffee when I desperately needed it. Now we were friends, and those blonde streaks in her hair had come from yours truly a few weeks ago.
“This is horrible,” Amy remarked as she shut the door. “I’m so sorry Rox.”
Sydney didn’t say anything, walking around the small shop, her eagle-eyed gaze looking at all the evidence before finally resting on me.
“I responded to the scene. They said you left with Neil.”
Matter of fact, just like I would have expected from Sydney.
“I did,” I forced out, leaning the broom against the wall.
“And?” Sydney continued, a smirk on her face. “When I went to check on you later on, you were not at your apartment.”
I blushed, which caused Amy to gasp.
“Are you and Neil back together? You told me you weren’t sleeping with him!”
“God, we sound like gossiping hens,” Sydney said with a roll of her eyes. “But seriously, are you sleeping with Neil again?”
“Y’all are too much,” I said, rolling my own eyes.
Despite their gossiping nature, I was enjoying having them around.
“So, it’s true then,” Amy remarked as I dumped the dust pan into the trash and set it aside as well. While it was going to take more than a good sweeping to put this place back to rights, I felt marginally better that it was possible to get my shop back.
My life, on the other hand… that was still up in the air.
“It’s none of your business.”
Amy cackled with laughter, while Sydney braced herself against the counter, looking at me.
“I’m glad that Neil is looking out for you, Rox. Someone’s really wanting to do you some harm.”
I blew out a breath, my stomach churning at the thought of what we had endured over the past forty-eight hours.
“I don’t know why. I don’t have anything worth killing me over.”
I did alright with the shop, but the money I brought in wasn’t anything spectacular.
Sydney continued to look at me, her brows knitted in concern.
“Have you been threatened in any sort of way before?”
I thought about the phone calls. If I told the girls about them, they would want to investigate, and I really didn’t want anyone else to get hurt in the process, not for me.
But if I didn’t, no one would know.
“I’ve been getting these weird calls.”
Sydney went instantly on alert.
“What kind of calls? Who are they from? What did they say?”
She was like a dog on a bone. Quickly, I told them about the calls and the shoot-out that Neil and I had found ourselves in the night before.
“You have to report this,” Sydney said firmly. “We can protect you.”
/> “No,” I said quickly, shaking my head. Everyone was already working so hard to find Grayson Barnes and his traitors. I didn’t need any of that focus to be on me. “I’m fine. Neil is with me.”
“Please,” Sydney begged, looking to Amy for help. “Neil isn’t bullet proof, and neither are you. You can’t ignore this, Rox.”
