Jinx studies me, leaning against the counter as he does. “You never let me know what you decided.”
“That’s because I haven’t yet.”
I know what my heart wants. I know what my soul yearns for.
But then I think of Mom and what the town would do to her when it found out her daughter dated a King of Anarchy. I think of my brother, ridiculed by his peers because his little sister is a lawbreaker. And I think of Dad, as much as I don’t want to—of how it would taint his reputation as the Sheriff. I think of the years to come where he’d deny his grandchildren a right to know him and how that’d feel—for them and me.
“Every argument I have against this isn’t my own,” I say. “If it were just about you and me, the answer would be clear. I’d pick you. Always. But it’s not just about us. There are a lot of people affected by what I choose to do here.”
He hangs his head, arms folded over his muscular chest. He looks like a warrior with his one shoulder bound, and I suppose in a way he is.
He rode in to rescue captive women tonight and got hurt in the process.
All because that’s just the type of guy he is.
“But you know what?” I say, piquing his interest again. “I’ve spent too long prioritizing everyone around me at the cost of my own happiness. And for what? To be judged for my choices? To be cut off when I don’t meet their standards? I say fuck that and fuck them.”
He smirks.
“I choose you.”
FORTY-ONE
JINX
“The fuckwe gonna do with them?” Loki shouts, loud enough for the women huddled in the corner of the room to hear.
I glance across to where Kyra kneels beside the group, a look of intense concentration on her face as one of them speaks. It felt right bringing her back here after she said she chose me. Even more when she walked in the door, squeezed my hand, and then set to work helping the former captives.
Chaos steels his jaw, lounging in one of the armchairs with his head resting on his hand. He shifts his attention from where Circus stitches my shoulder to our enraged Enforcer. “What do you suggest we’d done? Leave them there?”
“Or perhaps had a better plan than just steal them,” Loki counters. “Fuck man. What do you think the Devil’s Breed will do when they find out where they are?”
Even more reason why bringing Kyra here was the right choice.
“There’s no doubt they know who took them,” I say, gritting my teeth as Circus prods a little too deeply with the needle. “The keeper would have seen our patches.”
Chaos narrows his two-tone eyes on me. “Good thing I wasn’t trying to hide who we are, then.”
“No need to be an asshole,” I snap. “You could just admit we fucked up by not thinking this through properly.”
He raises his eyebrows.
“Hate to interrupt…” Flinch steps into the fray, hands pressed together before him. “But can we deal with the immediate issues before we descend into a brawl over the plans going forward?”
“Such as?” Chaos asks.
“Such as five women and a child in varying states of shock and trauma-induced catatonia. They need a room. Somewhere away from the tension you three make when you fucking argue.”
“I thought you couldn’t swear like that,” Loki says, a tease in the crinkle of his eyes.
Flinch lays a dead-eyed stare on the idiot. “Occasion calls for it. Besides,” he gripes, frowning when he sets his gaze on Circus’s handiwork, “I wouldn’t be here if I were your regular religious man, would I?”
“Give them the guest room beside the upstairs bath,” Chaos instructs. “But get Darko to nail the fucking window shut first.”
“For fuck’s sake,” I growl, both at his order and the way Circus tenderizes my goddamn shoulder. “They just escaped captivity, and you want to trap them again?”
Chaos leans forward in his seat. “I want to make sure none of them get grand ideas about jumping out a second-floor window late at night and breaking their fucking ankles.”
