by Jess Bryant
He watched as Bentley tried to help a woozy Decker to his feet. The Bomar known most for his always present smile certainly wasn’t grinning now. He frowned when Decker smacked his hands away and then cursed at him when he started wandering off, throwing his hands in the air and looking at his older brother.
“Go after him, Bent. Make sure he gets home.” Lincoln ordered.
“I got him home last night.”
“Yeah, well get him home again and this time, make sure his drunk ass stays there.”
Bentley cursed but hurried off after his uncle. Decker was at least heading in the direction of his house. That was something, Remy supposed. Somebody should probably have dragged him back, put him in a car and drove him over there since he was bleeding and it was a good mile over rough terrain. Since nobody bothered, he figured cutting across the fields would shorten the trip enough and his cousins thought Decker should walk it off.
Lincoln cleared his throat when the two figures disappeared over a hill and Remy turned back to face him. It didn’t occur to him until right then to question what his cousins were doing here in the first place. He hadn’t seen Lincoln since that night at the barn and even before that, their relationship had been strained because of what he’d done to Colt.
Remy wiped at his lip, realized it was split when it came back with blood and wiped that on his already stained shirt, “What are you doin’ here Link?”
“We’ve got business remember?” He raised his eyebrows, “The girl?”
“Oh, yeah…” Remy frowned as he shot the trailer a quick look, thankful Rachel had obeyed his order to stay inside and not come out to see him falling apart, “I need to talk to you about that.”
“Did she tell you what she knows?”
Remy shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts. He felt a little woozy himself and wondered if he might not have a concussion. Decker still threw one hell of a punch. That must be why he was confused, why Lincoln’s words didn’t make any sense.
“What she knows?”
“About her brother. Did she tell you what she knows about Bug? About what he did to Colt?”
The confusion he’d been feeling turned into a sinking sense of dread as Lincoln’s words sank in. He felt nauseous and this time he couldn’t be sure if it was from the fight, the blood or the confrontation he didn’t want to have. He’d expected it, known this was coming, but after everything else that had happened, he’d somehow forgot.
Lincoln was home from wherever he’d been. He’d come here to talk to Rachel. He thought she knew something about their traitor, about the threat to the Bomar family, and about what had happened to Colt.
For days Remy had told himself that he was jumping to conclusions, always thinking the worst. He’d pushed those thoughts away. He’d buried them down. He’d focused on how good it felt to be with Rachel, how good they were together. He’d ignored his gut instinct that she was hiding something important from him because he was in love with her.
He’d woken up with the girl of his dreams and thought they would spend a perfect day together. Decker had ruined that but he’d thought it couldn’t get worse. What he’d forgotten, for just a minute there, was that he was a Bomar… and things could always get worse.
Chapter Fourteen
“She doesn’t know anything.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because I love her and she loves me and if she knew anything that would hurt me, hurt my family, she would’ve told me by now.”
“I know you think that but you can’t be sure. I need to talk to her.”
Rachel cringed back from the door and wished there was another way out, any way out of this that didn’t end with Remy hating her. But there wasn’t. She’d known that she needed to tell him the truth, tell him what she’d overheard, what she knew about her brother and the trouble he was causing for Remy’s family, but she’d been scared.
She’d been scared and she’d frozen, just like she always did. She’d chosen to hide here, with him, instead of fighting. Instead of telling the truth. She hadn’t come clean and now it was too late.
Lincoln had figured it out. He’d put it together. And now he would tell Remy that she was a liar, that she was related to their traitor, that she’d been keeping what she knew from him.
Lincoln wanted to talk to her and she thought, somewhere in the back of her mind, that should scare her. The eldest of the Bomar boys, their leader, wanted to talk to her about her brother. He wanted to know what she knew. The fear should have swallowed her whole. It should’ve made her knees shake and her palms sweaty but that wasn’t the reason she wanted to shrink into the floor.
It was the way Remy had stood up for her when she didn’t deserve it. He loved her. She loved him. And he believed that meant she’d been honest with him. The fact that she hadn’t been was going to hurt Remy and that was the thing that made her cringe backwards when the door flew open, banging against the side of the trailer as a big shadow loomed in front of her.
She bit her lip and swallowed a whimper when Remy came barreling back into the trailer. She should have stayed hidden in the bathroom like he told her to but she hadn’t. She’d quickly brushed her teeth and found a change of clothes and then she’d tried to eavesdrop on what was happening outside.
She’d heard him arguing with his father. She’d been incredibly proud of him for standing up for himself and for his brothers, but then she’d heard the fight start. She’d been trying to decide if she should go out and stop it or run back to the bathroom when she realized Lincoln was there.
Despite hearing the fight, she hadn’t expected Remy to look quite so bad. His clothes were dirty and bloody. The collar of his shirt was torn. There was a bruise already forming on his chin and another near his temple. His hands were clenched at his sides, scraped raw and bleeding as well. His lip was busted and he dabbed at it with his tongue even as he eyed her with a dark, worried gaze.
“You okay?”
She snorted, “I’m not the one that just got into a fistfight with my father. I’m fine. Remy…”
“I’m fine.” His eyes narrowed as he looked her over again, clearly taking in her dry hair and the change of clothes she’d put on, “You were supposed to stay in the bathroom.”
“I was worried about you.”
“Why?”
She flinched back at the question, “Because I love you.”
He sighed and wiped at his lip, “No, I… never mind. I wouldn’t have stayed hidden if you were in trouble either. Look, Rach, I don’t know how much you heard but uh… Lincoln’s here and he…”
“Wants to ask you a couple of questions.”
Her gaze darted over Remy’s shoulder and she watched as Lincoln Bomar stepped up into the trailer. His mere presence in the space made it feel suddenly small and claustrophobic. It wasn’t that he was a huge man, he wasn’t. He was about the same size as Remy actually. Tall and broad and muscular, but not a giant or a bodybuilder. Yet there was something about him, the way he held himself, the aura of power and confidence that surrounded him, something that made him seem bigger than he actually was.
He wasn’t smiling this time. Wasn’t smirking. He looked as serious as she’d ever seen him. His ridiculously handsome face was pulled into a tight mask, his lips thin and his eyes narrowed. Those beautiful blue-green eyes looked different today and it took her a moment of staring at him to realize it was because there were dark circles beneath them. He looked as if he hadn’t slept in days. There was stubble on his jaw where usually there was none and his clothes, which were always perfectly put together, were wrinkled.
She swallowed down the urge to ask him if he was okay. She had no idea where it came from. Her worry about Remy must have simply transferred itself to the other man because despite her bruised and bleeding boyfriend, something about seeing the always proud and put together Lincoln disheveled worried her.
“He just wants to talk to you.”
Rachel pulled her eyes back
to Remy when he spoke and her stomach tightened painfully. Lincoln didn’t just want to talk to her. He wanted to accuse her of things. He wanted to interrogate her. And God only knew what he’d do to her when he figured out that his suspicions were right.
“Rach.” Remy cupped her cheek and forced her to look at him, “Nobody’s gonna hurt you. I promise. He just wants to talk. There’s no reason to be scared of him.”
“I’m not.”
“You’re shaking, baby.” Remy stroked her cheek and she closed her eyes and tried to stop shivering. “It’s okay. I’m not gonna let him hurt you. I’m not going anywhere.”
She wished that were true but she didn’t know if it was. She thought there was a very good chance that Remy would leave her if she answered Lincoln’s questions. He would leave her and it would be her own fault because she should have told him the truth from the start.
“I-I-I’m s-s-sorry.” Her words stuttered out and she felt hot tears well in her eyes.
“Oh, baby.” Remy was right there, pulling her into his arms, “No. No apologizing. No stuttering. There’s nothing to be afraid of here. I promise.”
She clung to him for only a moment. She let herself enjoy the feel of him, memorized it. She imprinted every single thing she could about the man she loved into her brain so that she would never forget. The way he smelled, the way he felt, the way he touched her. Since she might never feel him hold her again she breathed him in and then she let him go like she knew she had to.
No more fear. No more hiding. No more lying.
“O-o-kay.” She breathed out shakily and looked past Remy to Lincoln, who had shut the door behind him and was leaning against the kitchen counter now, “I-I-I’ll answer y-your q-questions.”
Remy moved to her side and put a possessive arm around her, “You’re scaring the hell out of her, Link.”
“I’m just standing here.”
“You’re glaring at her.”
“Seems to me someone with nothing to hide wouldn’t have a reason to be scared.”
“Bullshit.” Remy growled, “You’re a scary mother-fucker on your best day so stop trying to intimidate her before I take your head off.”
“You choosing her over the family?”
For once, Remy didn’t seem to have an answer to that and Rachel sank down onto the couch behind her, out of his grip. No. He couldn’t choose her over his family. He wouldn’t. But by answering Lincoln’s questions, it meant she was choosing him over hers. Craig was all she had left. Telling Lincoln what she knew would most likely get her brother killed.
“I’m not choosing between her and my brothers because I don’t have to. She’s mine. She’s with me. She hasn’t done anything wrong. Just because she’s related to that piece of shit traitor brother of hers doesn’t mean she’s done anything wrong.”
Her head jerked up at the sound of Remy saying that word. Traitor. The tears that had begun to cloud her vision made it difficult to see him but not impossible. She saw his handsome face twist with something she couldn’t name, had never seen before, and she watched him sink down to his knees in front of her.
“Wh-wh-what?”
Remy brushed her hair back gently, “Your brother is the traitor that Lincoln and the boys have been looking for. That’s what he’s here to tell us. Isn’t it Link?”
“Uh, well, yeah.” Lincoln frowned, “You already knew?”
“Wasn’t too hard to figure out once I started thinking about it. Guy is a huge dick. Talks shit about you, about all the Bomars. And you were way too interested in Rachel for it to just be about fucking with me. I’m not an idiot.”
Rachel listened to Remy explain how he’d already figured out that Craig was a traitor and struggled to breathe. He knew. From the sound of it, he’d known for a while. But… that couldn’t be right. Could it? She’d spent all this time wondering and worrying that if he found out she was related to the person that hurt his family that he would throw her out, hate her… stop loving her.
“Y-y-you knew?”
Remy’s dark gaze came back to hers and his brows furrowed, “Wait… you knew?”
She bit her lip as disbelief and then a thin veil of anger colored his face. Two words. Two words and she’d just outed herself. She told herself that she’d intended to come clean anyway but from the way Remy pulled his hands from hers, she wasn’t sure she ever could have prepared herself for the giant, gaping hole that opened up in her chest when he let her go.
She nodded slightly.
“Told you she was lying.” Lincoln snorted and Remy whirled on him so fast he was a blur.
In one blink of her eyes, he was up and across the room. He grabbed Lincoln by the front of his shirt and pressed him back against the wall. She could see nothing but his back but she assumed his eyes were blazing with furious heat. When he spoke, the words were quiet and angry.
“Shut the fuck up. Right now. You don’t know anything about her.”
“I know she’s had the chance to tell us about Bug for months and hasn’t.” Lincoln shoved Remy hard but he didn’t budge, “Get the hell off me, Remington.”
“She’s scared of him, you asshole. Do you understand that? Whatever she did or didn’t say, it’s because she was scared.”
She was scared. So scared. But more than being scared of Craig, she was scared of losing Remy.
“Remy…” She tried, softly, to get his attention but he didn’t acknowledge her.
“She’s mine, Lincoln. Mine. You lay a fucking hand on her and I swear to God I’ll put you in the ground. You do whatever you have to with that piece of shit traitor but you don’t touch her and you don’t threaten her. She’s mine and I swore to protect her, even from you.”
“Get. Off. Me. Remington.” Lincoln growled so low it was barely audible but the sheer force of the words was deadly and the clear threat in them, the threat against Remy, against the man she loved, broke through the barriers that were keeping her quiet.
“I heard him that night. I-I-In the trailer, i-it’s hard to keep a s-secret in the trailer.” She spoke up and slowly, she watched as Remy’s grip on Lincoln loosened and he turned back to face her. “He was meeting with s-some guys I’d never heard before. I-I... I didn’t realize what they were s-saying a-at first.”
Both men were looking at her now but she couldn’t stand to meet Remy’s eyes and watch all the love go out of them. She stared at the floor right in front of her instead. She pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them the same way she had when she’d first heard Craig with his friends. She curled into a ball, trying to shield herself from this, even as she let what she knew spill out.
“T-the guys were a gang. I-I think they were Hispanic, maybe. S-some of them spoke s-spanish b-but not all of them so… They were talking about hurting you, all of you, the B-B-Bomars.”
Once she got that far, something happened. There was no explaining it. Maybe it was simply knowing that it was over. That everything she’d tried to hold onto and put together had already fallen apart. There was nothing else to be scared of because she was already going to lose Remy over this. But the rest of the words came out easily, no stuttering, not even when the tears began to stream down her face.
She told them what the group of men in the trailer that night talked about. Stealing shipments, jobs and recruits from the Bomars. Rigging fights. Working their way deep so they could hit them where it hurt. But she also told them what she hadn’t heard. She hadn’t heard Craig say a word about busting up Skylar’s salon or Colt’s tattoo studio. She hadn’t heard him bragging or laughing about leaving Colt for dead. She hadn’t heard anything about Craig hurting Colt that night.
She managed to raise her eyes with the only shred of hope she had left, “He didn’t hurt Colt, right?”
Remy winced and turned his back on her. She swiped ineffectually at her cheeks as another stream of tears poured out of her. He couldn’t even look at her. He wouldn’t look at her and it hurt. It felt like her heart h
ad been ripped out of her chest.
“Actually…” Lincoln sneered, “I spoke to Colt this morning and he remembered something. One of the guys that attacked him was wearing a mask, probably because he was afraid Colt would recognize him.”
“But that doesn’t mean…”
“The other men called that guy Bug.”
“Oh God…” She felt physically ill and had to swallow back bile, “Oh God…”
“Colt didn’t remember the name, couldn’t remember because they beat him in the head with a baseball bat, but he’s pretty sure now that it was Bug. After we put it together he said the eyes were familiar, that he’d known they looked familiar but not how. It’s because they look like yours.”
Remy blew out a rough breath and Rachel struggled through a sob, “I didn’t know. Oh God, I didn’t know. I thought he was… I didn’t know he’d hurt Colt. If I had… I would have… you… you have to believe me.”
Lincoln shook his head, “Why should I believe you about anything when you didn’t come to us and tell us what you knew in the first place?”
“I w-was s-scared.”
“Of us? Of me? Come on, Rachel. You know how this stuff works. We protect our own and if you’re not with us, you’re against us. You chose your side and…”
“Stop.” Remy spoke up suddenly, his voice rough and guttural. “Stop it Lincoln.”
“Remington, you were wrong. She’s not…”
“I said stop it.” Remy turned on his cousin, “I don’t care if you believe her or not. I don’t care what you think of her. It doesn’t change anything. You’re not gonna touch her. You’re not gonna hurt her and you’re not gonna threaten her anymore.”
“You can’t honestly believe that she…”
“I do.” Remy turned back to face her and her breath caught in her chest, “I believe her.”
“You’re stupid if you…
