Charming: The Coast Book 9

by Hart, Eve R.

  I laughed hard. I knew what he was saying. The same way he wanted to ‘take care’ of the fucking detective.

  “You’re the best kind of asshole, brother,” I told him as I took a step back. I slapped his door frame before heading to my room next door.

  Behind my closed door, I stood at my window. My eyes were pinned across the lot. Her blinds were closed telling me that she wouldn’t be ready to come out any time soon.

  I had to believe that what Blade had said was right.

  Maybe I needed time to think too. To process everything that had happened. Which included parts of what Blade had said to me about the love stuff.

  I made a silent promise that if she did come back to me— no fuck that— when she came back to me, I’d be one hundred percent ready to give her all of me.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Charming

  The moment my eyes blinked open I knew that something wasn’t right. I couldn’t tell you what, but I felt the weight of dread in my soul.

  I tried to shake it off as I got out of bed. Desperately, I peeked out my window and didn’t notice anything different across the way. At this hour, I imagined Abigail was still in bed. The sun wasn’t up yet. I shouldn’t have been and I almost wished I wasn’t, but there was nothing I could do about it.

  I tossed on some loose shorts and my running shoes.

  I had a trail that I’d made in the surrounding woods. It led down to the river, and I’d run the path so many times that the tall grass now permanently stayed down.

  I downed a bottle of water, then headed out to clear my mind.

  Something caught the corner of my eye as I opened the door. A folded piece of paper taped right at eye level. Well, almost at eye level. More like eye level for someone shorter than me.

  No, I thought as I reached for the thing.

  I opened it up with shaky hands. I knew. In my heart, I fucking just knew that it couldn’t have been anything good.

  Abigail.

  Her name was signed at the bottom. That was what my eyes landed on first.

  I scanned over the words, hating as they bounced around in my head over and over again.

  She had to leave.

  She needed time and space.

  She couldn’t get it if she stayed here.

  Don’t try to find her.

  Everything that I read I hated. It made me feel even more like shit. And if she wasn’t here, I couldn’t protect her. I couldn’t watch out for her, even if it was from afar. I’d already promised that I’d keep my distance but it hadn’t been enough for her.

  Yeah, there went my heart.

  Shattered into a thousand pieces.

  Call it dramatic, but it was the fucking truth.

  My feet were moving as my eyes stayed glued to the paper, sliding back up to the top to read it all over again.

  My hand blindly pounded on Blade’s door. When an odd sensation met the side of my hand, I paused. There was one taped to his door too. I pulled it off, hearing him move around on the other side. I didn’t dare read it, I wasn’t that bad.

  “The fuck, man,” he said as soon as he pulled open the door, his voice thick with sleep.

  I held the folded paper meant for him out.

  “Abigail left.” It was the only thing I could manage to say at the moment.

  He grunted as he pulled the paper from my hand. Then he turned and walked back over to his messy bed. Which would make sense seeing as I’d woken him and all. I followed him inside, Biscuit looking at me like I was the devil for disturbing her sleep. No surprise, she was curled up on the pillow next to where her daddy slept.

  I watched as his eyes tried to focus on the words. He shook his head, then dropped his hand to his side before walking over to the small refrigerator in the back corner. He pulled out a beer, opened it without a care, and downed half the thing in one swallow. I waited, staying silent until I knew he had processed everything. Clearly, he hadn’t been able to take in the words because his hand raised again and his eyes scanned the paper once more.

  “You got one too?” he asked in a gruff voice.

  “Yeah,” I held it out for him and like a bunch of losers, we exchanged letters.

  His was similar to mine with the ‘don’t worry about me’ and ‘I need space’ parts. But mine had a few extra lines that I didn’t see in his.

  It didn’t make me feel any better.

  “What are we going to do?” I asked with a huge ring of panic in my tone.

  “Nothing,” he grunted.

  “The fuck?!”

  “She said she needs space. We have to respect that. You have to respect it.”

  Just because he was right didn’t mean I had to like it.

  “Where the hell would she have gone? How do we know she’s safe?”

  “It’s too fuckin’ early to deal with this loud shit,” he said as he downed the rest of his beer. “Go do your shit like you normally do. Leave her alone. She’s a big girl, she can take care of herself. She probably knows where she’s going and she isn’t dumb, she knows how to stay safe.”

  “How can you be so calm about this?” I asked and I might have been getting a little pissed at his relaxed attitude.

  He cut his eyes over to me.

  “She loves you, she’ll figure it out. You have to give her time to do that or she’ll start to hate you.”

  “What if she needs me?” I might have sounded a bit sad and pathetic.

  “She does,” he answered as he flopped back into the bed, his arm going over his head to block the light from his eyes. “And she’ll see it. I know you want to rush in and drag her back. She’s one of the few good things you’ve had in your life. But you can’t do that, not if you want to keep her.”

  I let out a huff as I dropped his letter on the bed and turned to snatch up mine from where he’d set it on his dresser.

  If he was right, I didn’t want to see it.

  “Go for a run. Let it settle before you go charging in,” he said as I turned for the door.

  “Fine,” I gritted out, then left, tugging the door shut a little harder than I needed to.

  He said not to go charging in there, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t know where the hell she was, right?

  I ran around to the front and pounded on Cable’s door. He might not have been in there, given that he lived with Claire in an apartment away from the compound, but I had to try.

  With no answer, I had no choice but to wait.

  I went back to my room, put the letter on my desk, then headed out for my jog. I had some energy to burn and some things to think about.

  I burned up the trail in half the time. When I reached the starting point, I turned around and ran it again. Sweat dripped in my eyes and my shirt was soaked through, but it did nothing to lessen the feelings inside. I was worried, that was a given. Hurt. Angry. Scared. Yeah, pretty much all of those.

  Was Blade right? I didn’t want him to be. I wanted to track her down and go charging in. Make her see that she belongs here, she belongs with me. I wasn’t blind, it was clear he knew how to handle her better than me. Maybe that was the wrong way to put it. But it was painfully obvious at times that his approach to things when it came to Abigail was what she needed. I was learning, or trying to, but I wasn’t at that blunt point yet. I didn’t know if I’d ever be. It wasn’t that I saw her as a kid that needed to be protected. It wasn’t even that I felt the need to look after her because she seemed a little wide-eyed when it came to the world. I think I’d learned that she wasn’t as innocent and shy as she came off. I knew that wasn’t some ruse she put on. It was just her. She was shy, but she was also so very curious about everything.

  I made my way back to the compound. It was still early and the place was quiet as I headed in through the back of the clubhouse. The kitchen was empty, another reminder that she was gone.

  Grabbing a bottle of water out of the fridge, I didn’t hesitate to toss the whole thing back at once.

  What the he
ll was I going to do now?

  I flopped down at one of the tables and reached for my phone. Pulling up her name, I couldn’t decide what I should do. I backed out of her contact info and pulled up my pictures. A smile played at my lips seeing the ones that we’d taken in my bed. In one, her smile was bright and wide. She was happy. I studied myself in the picture too. I was happy. In the next one, she was making a silly face and I had been caught mid-laugh.

  One stupid thing had fucked it all up. I was worried that I’d never get that feeling back. That she’d never look at me the same again. There had to be a way to fix it.

  “Make some damn coffee,” Iron said causing me to jump. “I’m guessin’ by that look on your face, I’m not the only one that got one of these.”

  He set the folded paper on the table in front of me, his finger pushing down on it for a few beats before he moved off to make the coffee that he told me to make.

  I had a good idea what his letter said and as I read over the few short sentences, I was pretty much spot on.

  The room stayed silent other than the dripping and gurgling of the coffee maker. Iron took in a deep breath as he poured the nearly black liquid into two fresh mugs. He plopped down in a seat across from me and slid one of the mugs my way. I watched the steam knowing it was too fucking hot to drink right now. That didn’t stop Iron, though.

  “We fucked up,” he said making my brows shoot up in surprise. “Yeah, don’t fuckin’ look so shocked. I can admit when I mess up.”

  “I just… I mean, it was for the best right?”

  “Yeah,” he grunted and I could tell he wasn’t quite awake yet. “I was trying to protect us all, including her. Don’t think she sees it that way, though.”

  “No, and maybe I should have told her, but how do you tell someone something like that?”

  “How we gonna fix this?”

  “Blade said to leave her be. He thinks she’ll figure it out on her own and come back,” I said with a heavy sigh.

  “That ain’t good enough for you though, is it?”

  I gave him a pointed look telling him he’d hit the nail on the head.

  Iron pulled out his phone. After a few taps and some typing, he set it down on the table in front of him. A second later, it lit up and vibrated loudly. It wasn’t hard to see Cable’s name flash up on the screen with a message replying back.

  He was on his way.

  I knew it wouldn’t take him even ten minutes to get here.

  We sat in silence while we waited.

  It ended up being closer to fifteen minutes before we heard the front door pull open. Two sets of footsteps. Claire had come along. I didn’t want to be the one to break the news to her. I wasn’t sure if Cable already had or not, but I was about to find out.

  “What’s up?” Cable asked looking around the kitchen.

  “Where is Abigail? I was hoping to help her with breakfast?” Claire asked as she went to the fridge and started pulling out things.

  Cable caught on real quick that something was wrong.

  The three of us shared a bunch of looks and Cable got it before Iron even slid his letter in Cable’s direction.

  The big guy cleared his throat and looked pained as he opened his mouth.

  “She’s not here, beautiful.”

  Claire’s body froze. I couldn’t look at her directly but I caught the stiffness out of the corner of my eye.

  “Why?” she asked turning to look at the three of us.

  “Club stuff,” Cable answered.

  “Nope,” she said with a shake of her head. “If it involves Abigail, then it involves all of us.”

  I couldn’t say that I had any room to argue with her there. My chest might have beat a little harder. Knowing that Claire would put her foot down for Abigail made me proud. Abigail needed that around her and she deserved all the love that she had here.

  With a heavy sigh, Cable hung his head.

  It was Iron that stepped up and spoke the truth.

  He didn’t bullshit her. He didn’t skirt around the details. Nope, he grabbed his balls and hit her with the whole truth.

  I supposed if anyone would have gotten the reasons behind what we did and why, it would have been Claire.

  Iron finished and we all waited for Claire’s reaction. Her eyes blinked a few times but she didn’t say anything right away.

  “You did what had to be done. I get it. And it seems like that is the kind of thing Dade would have wanted,” she said calmly, almost too calmly. However, she wasn’t done, we all knew it so we didn’t say a word. “That doesn’t excuse what happened. Maybe if you had been truthful with her and gave her the kind of respect and trust that she deserves, this wouldn’t have happened.”

  “Claire,” Cable warned softly but Iron tossed up his hand to stop him. Iron was going to take what Claire had to say, venom and all.

  “All you do is treat her like she can’t handle anything,” she went on ignoring her man. “Maybe you don’t see it, but she’s in this. She’s the damn heart of this place. She’s there for you when you’ve had a shit day. Feeding you hot meals and making sure you’re eating right. Starting your day off right. Cleaning up after your ungrateful asses.”

  Claire was fired up like I’d never seen her before. It was almost like she was a completely different person.

  “She’s stayed because this place has felt like the closest thing to love that she’s ever had. She could have left. Found someplace new to start over. You don’t think it kills her to be here? To see the faces of the men that took her brother in no questions asked. To see that all of you are still standing here while her brother is gone and buried?!”

  Cable moved to her then, his hand going protectively over her belly while his head ducked down near her ear. He was whispering something to her, but it was too low for me to hear.

  She was crying now, not hysterically but there were tears streaming steadily down her cheeks.

  “She gave you her love and trust,” Claire whispered, her eyes on the floor. “She’s the purest, best person I’ve met, you can’t tamper with that because you’ll end up destroying her.”

  She lightly pushed away from Cable. Her eyes dared him to say anything to her. Then she walked out without another word.

  “She, uh, might be a little emotional,” Cable said and there was a mix of hurt and happiness in his eyes, “but she’s not wrong. I’ll go see if I can find Abigail.”

  “We’ll get her back and fix this,” Iron promised me as he got to his feet. “You got a shift today?”

  “Shit. Fuck! Yeah,” I said moving to grab my phone. I never called out unless it was an emergency. This felt like one.

  “Don’t,” Iron said with a shake of his head like he could read my thoughts. “Clear your head, go to work. It will do you good right now.”

  He wasn’t wrong with that.

  “Okay,” I said, giving in.

  “I think we need to come up with a plan anyway. Figure out the best way to get our girl back. Guessin’ we’ll only get one shot, better make it count.”

  He refilled his mug then headed out of the kitchen.

  I checked the time, seeing that I barely had enough time to grab a shower before I needed to head out.

  By the end of the day, I started to feel like I didn’t know who I was anymore. I broke down once and called her. We hadn’t had a call in a few hours and decided to take a break to grab something to eat. I stood there on the side of the street losing the battle with my fingers and phone. It didn’t even ring. I knew what that meant. Still, I lingered, listening to her cute, cheerful message telling me to talk to her. I wanted to but I couldn’t. My throat felt thick I had a feeling if I did attempt to speak words, they wouldn’t be the right ones. And it wasn’t like she’d hear it anyway. I knew it even before Cable sent me a message saying that her phone had been turned off and the last ping he had on it was here at the compound. Even if she’d taken it with her, I doubted she would risk turning it on. She was smart enough
to know that we’d find her that way.

  I went to the compound hoping to feel more like myself once I showered and grabbed some dinner. Only the cold pizza that Prez had ordered wasn’t what I was looking for.

  I had turned into one giant sap. Yep. One woman held all the parts of me in the palm of her hand. Honestly, I was alright with it as long as she came back to me.

  I had a beer, tried to chat with some of my brothers, and even watched a movie. I finally gave up just as the hours ticked over to the new day. Then I went to my room, half-tempted to knock on Blade’s door. Good thing I didn’t because, by the sounds coming through the wall, he was busy.

  Though Iron or Cable hadn’t told me, I knew they’d found out where Abigail was. I should have asked, and I desperately wanted to, but I knew myself. I knew that I’d hop on my bike and tear up asphalt to get to her. Iron was probably right, we had one shot. And with Blade’s words from earlier bouncing around in my head, I thought it was best to put my needs aside and think about her. She wanted space, she wouldn’t have left if she didn’t, so I had to respect it.

  You know, for now.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Abigail

  Yes, I ran. I ran like my backside was on fire. I got that it was childish and stupid and so many other things. You’re probably calling me names and telling me to turn around and go back.

  But I couldn’t.

  I said I needed time. I did. I also realized that I needed space too. A lot of it, apparently. Like states worth of space.

  Since I had no clue where to go, I ended up in the one place I never wanted to see again. Well, the one city I never wanted to be in again. The place would have been my parents’ house and since hell hadn’t frozen over, I was not pulling up into their driveway.

  I’d left notes so no one would freak out. I didn’t want them to think I was mad at them or worry about me. I didn’t tell them where I was going. Sure, when I took off right as the sun was coming up, I didn’t know, but I also didn’t want to be found. I’d go back when, and if, I was ready to. I hoped that they respected that.