Creed jumped down from the bar, saving me the trouble of going to him. Caitlin reached for him, but she was too slow. In a few steps, we were nose to nose, mean-mugging the hell out of each other.
Not long ago, I would’ve put my hands up and stepped back, defusing the situation. But now wasn’t then.
The days of me taking a shovel to the shit people threw my way with a grin on my face were over with.
“Twice. What?” he barked, lightning flashing in his eyes.
I didn’t give an inch. “Twice that you’ve disrespected my girl straight to my fucking face.”
His scowl deepened, and the ink climbing his neck stood out. “She’s your girl now, huh? You serious with this shit? It hasn’t even been a month.”
“Talk about the pot and the fucking kettle, Prez. Remind me again how long it took you to decide Caitlin was yours?” I laughed in his face.
In hindsight, that was probably a mistake.
Despite the violence written on his features—on his very skin—the fist that came flying for my face caught me by surprise.
Pain exploded along my jaw, and I staggered for the moment it took me to realize what had just happened.
I turned to face him slowly, hands clenching and releasing. Caitlin was already between us, steadily pushing him away. Make no mistake, he was letting himself be pushed.
But the distance did us both a favor.
Watching him get reamed by the redhead who was spitting mad allowed me enough time to let the rush in my ears fade away into background noise.
“You promised,” she said, arms waving wildly. “When I told you...you promised things would be okay. This shit?” She pointed at me, and then back to him. “This is not okay.”
Creed continued glaring over the top of her head at me. “He’s out of line, that’s what’s not fucking okay, Red. He-”
A choked sob cut him off. I forgot about the punch he had thrown, and the fight he was still raring for. Creed grabbed her, easily hoisting Caitlin up onto the bar. Fitting himself between her thighs.
In the next heartbeat, I was right there beside them. Scanning her up and down for anything that might’ve made that sound come from her throat.
Fat tears fell down her face, and I watched the cruelest man I ever met stare at them like a dagger was slicing his heart to bits.
“Hey, none of that,” he whispered, rubbing his hands up and down her arms while she covered her mouth. “Tell me what’s wrong.”
Caitlin drug in a deep breath, green eyes sad when they stared up at him. I felt like I was intruding on a moment not meant for me in the least, but I couldn’t just leave either. Creed was a bastard. A rude, violent motherfucker with no manners to be found.
He was also my brother. In arms, if not in blood.
He was family.
Which made the girl in his arms family also.
When I considered the people I wouldn’t accept losing, she was among that list. So was Naomi.
“I’m not trying to be dramatic,” Caitlin said, voice trembling. “I know what I signed on for. Being so closely tied to a motorcycle club doesn’t exactly scream stable environment.”
Creed sighed, dropping his head to rest against hers. “But I also promised I would try.”
Their eyes met, and something passed between them. Apology? Unlikely. Acknowledgement, maybe. Because if he was going to apologize, I knew it wouldn’t happen in my presence.
Yet when he wiped her tears and pulled back from her, extending a fist in my direction, I didn’t hesitate to pound it with mine.
Creed stuffed the monster back in the cage and met my eyes. “They’re getting bolder,” he said. “Someone broke into Rain’s garage.”
“What?” I was on high alert immediately. “When?”
Caitlin slid herself back over the other side of the counter and splashed water on her face.
“Early this morning,” Creed said. “No one was there, but they tore about three or four cars to shit, and left tools everywhere. Security footage was scrubbed, but we both know no one else would fucking dare.”
“Why am I just hearing about this?”
“Because he'd only just told me when I text you, and you’re the only one of us I’m going to tell.”
I raised a brow, waiting for the rest.
He pinched the bridge of his nose and took a deep breath. “Yeah, it pissed me the fuck off and I took it out on you. Doesn’t mean anything has changed. You’re still our best bet for getting out of this mess without someone ending up six-feet under.”
See? Apologies weren’t his thing. Good thing for both of us I knew how to read between the lines, and lacked a tendency to hold grudges.
I must’ve looked too satisfied, because his scowl returned.
“Keep your head on straight, Tone. If bodies do start dropping, you can be damn sure I’m sending your ass out with a shovel.”
“I’ll handle it,” I said, reading the dismissal for what it was and heading for the door.
I wanted to ask him what had lit a fire under Axle’s ass, but it was better to leave the belly of the beast before the jaws snapped close. Creed wasn’t wrong either. I needed to focus. There was a chance Naomi would be caught in the middle if this all went to shit.
That simply couldn’t happen.
Like I said, I was done losing people.
Completely.
Fucking.
Done.
Creed didn’t know how close to the truth his own words were. After all, there was a reason I wasn’t running from the ghosts of my past in Deacon. They were dead and buried.
But it was more than that.
I stepped out into the sun, a nasty grin splitting my lips.
For all intents and purposes, the men Texas helped me find were simply missing.
Gone from the face of the Earth as if they had been swiped by the hand of God.
I had no issue doing the same thing again.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Naomi
A lack of consistency was literally killing me.
Amendment.
Maybe literally killing me was being a tiny bit dramatic, but it certainly felt true enough.
My feet barely left the floor as I shuffled around the shop after the end of another grueling day. I seriously needed to hire someone to work full-time. My entire body ached, I was so tired. Even managing smiles for my last wave of customers had been an effort of pure will.
I knew why my body was so upset with me, and it had every reason to be. The best, most surefire way to effectively manage a health condition was to establish a routine and stick to it. That was like, the beginner’s course. The one-oh-one that every person who needed to take medication or receive some type of treatment should know.
Which meant I definitely should’ve known it.
And I did.
For years and years, I managed to stick to a schedule and follow it like clockwork.
Then, a ridiculously hot man with chocolate eyes and a voice worth dreaming about made himself part of my life and threw my entire rhythm in the garbage.
“Ugh.” I groaned, glaring at a particularly heavy box sitting on the floor. What were the odds I could close my eyes and wiggle my nose to get it to levitate into place? Probably slim, but I did it anyway. No one was around.
So, unless there was an invisible weirdo sticking to a wall somewhere, no one was forced to sit through my small tantrum when I opened my eyes and the box was still in the same place.
Muttering to myself, I walked away from it. Fine. It could be stubborn if it wanted to. It wasn’t like the stupid thing was going anywhere before the next day, and I needed to finish locking up.
Tone was coming to pick me up, and he was going to be here any minute now. Mentally, I knew I could simply wait for him to get here and ask for his help. Heck, I probably wouldn’t have to ask. He would walk in, take a quick sweep of the store with those perceptive eyes, and realize exactly what I needed.
But the
lie of omission I found myself in the middle of was coming back to bite me in the butt.
Normally, even when Tone was here during the day to help me out, I would insist on moving the same things I would have otherwise. He knew what being self-reliant meant to me. So, despite how much easier it would be for him to do some of those things—how much his own helpful nature probably screamed at him to take care of it—he always stepped aside and let me do my thing.
I sighed, returning to the back room. Ignoring the way my heart was beating slightly too fast.
That one box was going to mess up everything. I could already see the events playing out in my mind.
He would come by. Spot the box on the ground. Take in the bags beneath my eyes and the slight paleness to my skin. Then he would start silently asking questions I couldn’t answer. Because I would be too busy pretending I couldn’t hear how loud he could make a slight wrinkle between his brows.
Each time his face pinched, I shrunk in on myself a tiny bit. Flinching away from the out loud questions I wasn’t looking forward to. And they had to be coming.
This past week, he dropped so many hints and lines about me not staying in his bed that I should’ve been able to find the holy grail by now.
Those hints were another dagger, taking quick stabs at my insides. He knew me so, so well already. He knew I would flip my lid if he did anything that might be misconstrued as smothering. So, he stuck to the hints, waiting on me to reveal the rest of the board we seemed to be tiptoeing around.
I put my foot against the box and slid it closer to the shelves so I wouldn’t have far to carry it. Even that task left me breathing a little harder than it should have, and I blinked rapidly to clear my fuzzy vision.
Stupid blood sugar.
Stupid me, not packing any extra snacks to get me through the rest of the day.
And because the universe and I were not friends, I heard the ding of the door opening, followed by his familiar voice, right as I crouched down to grab the box.
“Naomi?”
Crap. “Back here!” I called, hurrying to get as good a grip as I could while footsteps approached.
Digging my heels in, I started to stand just as the door opened and the smell of pine floated in.
Immediately, I knew something felt wrong, but the warning my brain tried to send to the rest of me didn’t make it in time.
A spike of pain red-hot pain went through the back of my head.
The box fell from useless fingers to crash back to the floor.
My world tilted on its axis and sent me swimming sideways off the horizon.
I floated, even while the ground raced up to meet me, blackness creeping in like a closing curtain around the edges of my vision. Something hard slammed into me from the side. A terribly loud yell registered briefly to my conscious, sounding so, so far away.
Then the darkness took me, and my awareness along with it.
***
Why can’t they make hospital gowns less itchy?
I knew where I was before I opened my eyes to a plain, tiled ceiling and the privacy curtain secured there.
What I didn’t know was how I got here.
I remembered straining myself.
Pain.
Falling.
Those things were clear as day. The rest, not so much.
I shifted my arms beneath me so I could sit up, and the IV stuck into my vein rattled. My eyes sought the window and the sunset streaming light through it. Hopefully, that was a sign it was still the same day.
There was my first bit of good news. I had no doubt that if I spent a night in the hospital, Law would’ve found out about it somehow.
No way I wanted to have that conversation.
I stretched, yawning, and a smell I knew by heart reached me. My brief moment of relief dropped straight into the yawning pit of my stomach when I remembered how I’d gotten to the hospital. Who had brought me.
Slowly, so slowly that I might as well have been moving through molasses, I turned my head to the side. Considering I closed my eyes before I made it there, it didn’t do me much good. I was having a very cowardly moment, and I hated it, but I also knew nothing I was going to find would be good.
Hesitantly, I peeked. When I found empty brown eyes staring back at me unblinking, I debated closing mine again. Would it have been too much to ask that he might be asleep when I woke up? Maybe I would’ve had a chance to explain in a way that might wipe that angry glare from his face.
I had never seen that look directed at me.
Never.
And something was telling me I wasn’t going to have time to craft an elaborate answer capable of pleasing the accusation in his gaze.
“Hi,” I whispered, throat dry.
Congratulating myself on getting a word through the lump in my throat seemed promising. Except the bleakness in his expression disarmed me, banishing the possibility of this not being as bad as I knew it was about to be.
Especially considering the amount of time passing while we stared at each other without him saying anything.
Tone didn’t do things for no reason.
He had a purpose.
Always.
Without fail.
Right then? He was purposefully ignoring the hell out of me, and while it made my heart ache, I couldn’t say I didn’t deserve it.
He uncrossed his arms from over his chest, and finally freed me from the cage his stare created. I almost would’ve rather stayed trapped.
While I watched, Tone grabbed a paper cup and pitcher, filling the former with water and passing it to me. I pushed my nails into my thigh before I reached for it. My fingers still trembled, bad enough a bit of cool liquid spilled over the edge and onto my gown when I took a sip.
I looked down at the spreading stain, seeing the inky poison of my lie seeping between us instead.
Tone still hadn’t said anything.
Oh, God. Tears formed and fell before I could stop them, and I turned away long enough to dash at my eyes and cheeks.
Taking a deep, shuddering breath, I went back to staring at his mouth and nose. It was the only way I was going to get through this without my heart being split in two. “Are you mad?” I asked tentatively, testing the waters.
Dumb. Dumb. Dumb.
Is he mad? Testing the waters?
His lips thinned, and I pictured a great white shark leaping from the waves, perilously close.
“Am I mad?” he echoed, speaking in a voice too soft. Too controlled. “Ask me anything else, Naomi.” The sound of my name on his lips, spoken in anger, made me wince. He wasn’t done. “Any-fucking-thing else. Am. I. Mad?”
My mouth opened, despite the desperate voice inside urging me to shut the hell up. “I’m guessing you know?” Please, stop. Don’t say anything else. “About the...well- You know, right?”
A muscle in his jaw jumped so rapidly I thought his teeth might crack. “Do I know what, exactly? That you’ve been lying to my fucking face this entire time? Because yeah, I figured that out.”
“I didn’t mean to-”
“Stop talking,” he hissed, scrubbing a hand down his face. “You didn’t mean to? You didn’t-” Tone looked up, the apple of his throat bobbing while he put together whatever was going on in his head. “I told you everything about what happened with Katherine. Everything.”
I frowned, not understanding where he was going. But my self-preservation instincts were finally kicking in. I stayed quiet. If there was some chance to salvage this, maybe it would come from listening.
“Answer me.” His head came back down, and I caught a brief glance at the fire in his eyes before I refocused on the lower half of his face.
The water tasted like ash and decay in my mouth when I took another sip. I needed the brief delay. He was mad enough he wasn’t making sense. For most people? That was probably common.
For Tone?
I genuinely feared brimstone and hellfire might start pouring from the sky.
“You d
idn’t ask a question,” I said quietly.
He stood suddenly, and the chair slid back into the wall with a startling thump. He paced back and forth beside the hospital bed before deciding there wasn’t enough space there.
Tone moved to the front of the room and started going back and forth, and back and forth, moving so quickly the breeze he created stirred my hair.
The door opened and the face of a concerned nurse appeared, looking straight at me before noticing the panther stalking angrily inside its prison. She looked at him, then to the leather jacket hung over the seat he had occupied, and her eyes widened.
“Get the fuck out,” he barked at her, ruder than I knew he was capable of being. She jumped, hurrying to close the door. Tone cursed to himself when she did before glancing at me. “Did I leave anything out when I told you about Katherine?”
Lord, if you’re up there, now is the time to provide me with a correct answer.
But nothing happened. No angel whispered a solution into my ear. It was just me and the man I’d hurt without ever meaning to.
I shook my head, then stopped when the world went fuzzy. “No. Not that I know of.”
He nodded, pacing faster. “We’re in agreement then. That’s...hah.” He laughed, and the sound was cold and mean. A blow to my stomach that made me want to fold over and hide the agony painting my features.
Except there was no denying the truth. No hiding from it, either.
I’d stuck to my plan every step of the way.
My life. My decisions. My risks.
Now, I was starting to realize I’d risked something I was no longer sure I could survive without.
Tone leaned on the base of the bed with both hands. He gripped the hard plastic with such force his knuckles stood out, arms vibrating. “All those times you made up some excuse or another to get back to your house. This was the last thing I was expecting.”
“I’m sorry,” I told him, voice breaking.
“You think sorry is what I want to hear? Jesus fucking Christ. How are you not putting this together right now? Fuck. Fuck!” His hands went over his bald scalp with enough force he surely would’ve ripped hair out.
He dropped to his knees, only his arms and face visible. I couldn’t resist meeting his eyes, even though I wished I hadn’t in the next heartbeat. The horror in them stole my breath away, replacing it with something I could only choke on while it burned inside my lungs
Tempted by a Sinner (Seven Sinners Book 4) Page 24
