I had tried to get a hold of him yesterday, Sunday afternoon, to see if I could come over for a booty call, but his only reply to my text was to say that he was unavailable. It was stupid to feel rejected—the guy had a life outside of our casual sex—but I didn’t like it one bit. I worried that he was getting bored with our arrangement.
Then, I chastised myself for such an insecure overreaction. One polite decline didn’t mean anything. But now, seeing that he wasn’t at work, I couldn’t shake the feeling of foreboding that hung over me. Somehow, I knew that something was wrong.
I had just finished up with a client, an eighteen-year-old girl that wanted a butterfly on her ankle, and Piper was waiting for a customer that she’d been working with for the last few days to come in so that she could put the finishing touches on his full sleeve. I was chomping away on my gum, wishing that I had a damn cigarette on me.
“So, you’re tense,” Piper remarked, sipping from her Styrofoam cup of coffee. Piper was a caffeine junkie, so she usually had one in the morningandbrought one back from lunch with her. I liked to tease her about it, but I didn’t have much room to talk since I guzzled sweet energy drinks to keep myself going. “Where’s Blade today?”
“How should I know?” I shrugged.
“Cut that shit out,” she said impatiently. “It’sme,Kat. I know you.”
“I still don’t know where he is.”
“So,that’swhat’s bothering you. Have you called him?”
“I’m not his wife,” I said. “Not even his girlfriend. He doesn’t owe me an explanation.”
“No, he doesn’t. But I bet he’d give you one.”
I picked up on something in her slightly clipped tone. Disapproval?
“You have a problem with Blade now?”
“Of course not. But I think that it’s about time you decided what you want.”
“I have what I want. Great sex, no commitment, and plenty of freedom.”
“He had that freedom too, you know. He could go out and find someone that’s not too hung up on daddy’s approval to see that she’s blowing it with a guy that might be her perfect match.”
“Ouch,” I grimaced.
“The truth hurts,” Piper said unapologetically.
“And I’m not trying to get my dad’s approval. I just…” I trailed off.
WhywasI so loyal to Las Balas? Because Mad Dog had called me family? It was a nice sentiment, but it would have been even nicer to be treated like family by my dad. The problem was that Las Balas came first, always. Maybe I thought that aligning myself with them would put me in that category for my dad.
That was pathetic. And to think that I had been silently judging Jason for letting Las Balas control his life. I was doing that same thing without even having the option to join the club. They were old fashioned in their no-girls-allowed stance. In reality, I had almost nothing to do with the club, and the more time I spent with Blade, the more skeptical I was of Outlaw Souls being troublemakers. Still, I’d taken a stand, and it wasn’t easy to backtrack at this point.
“You can do whatever you want,” Piper said, “but I think you need to realize that you can only keep Blade at arm’s length for so long before you lose your grip on him altogether. Because I can tell you right now, he has real feelings for you.”
I wanted to argue, but the words wouldn’t come.
The bell above the door rang, and Piper stood. Her customer was here.
“Take my advice or don’t. It’s up to you. I just don’t want to see you lonely anymore.”
She knew me too well. For the rest of the day, I couldn’t get her words out of my mind. When I first found out that Blade was an Outlaw Soul, I had been sure that he must be a bad person to be a part of an organization like that. But as I continued to get to know him, I knew that I was wrong. He was a good man.
But I couldn’t let my guard down with him again. I couldn’t let myself trust him.
Look where that’s gotten you.
We were stuck in a limbo where we fucked and fought over and over. It was exhausting, and mostly my fault. I knew that. Looking back over the last few weeks, I could see that I picked fights with Blade every time I started to feel too close to him, as if I was proving to him and myself that we were incompatible.
God, I was an idiot.
I wanted to be with Blade. Hell, I’d wanted him from the moment we met. When he got his patch, we’d only been together once, and I told myself that I wasn’t attached to him yet. There hadn’t been enough time.
