With eyes forward and spine stiff, she’s hurrying behind me as we power walk toward my truck. She relaxes a bit when I get her in the passenger’s seat. It’s when I climb in beside her that she goes rigid again.
“What? Do I smell?”
Her hushed but abrupt laughter hits me a certain way. “Why would you ask me such an absurd question?”
I start the truck and put it in gear. “You’re sitting there like I have fucking leprosy.”
She takes my measure, her gaze frying everywhere it touches me. “It’s strange, being alone with you.”
This woman has been a confusion of contradictions since the day we met. Over the last few months, I’ve caught her watching me when she thought I wasn’t looking. But of course, it was because when she’s around, I can’t tear my eyes off her. She’s obviously nervous around me, yet she stands her ground. And she’s assertive but quiet.
She’s a gentle storm that rolled up to me when I wasn’t looking.
“Then why call me instead of Jester?”
Or Wraith. Hell, even Crow, the president of the Unholy, would have dropped everything and run to Kerri’s rescue. The woman proved her loyalty when she gave us Daniel Davenport. There’s not a person in Mayhem who wouldn’t have run to her rescue.
But she called me.
Kerri drops her head in her hands and huffs out a wretched sigh. “I don’t know.” Her palms muffle the admission. When her hands fall away, she turns to me and says, “It felt right.”
The air is electrified as I drive us down the road, away from the shitty motel. Volbeat’s “Still Counting” plays on the radio, but it’s little more than background noise as I take a turn that brings us higher on the mountain.
“You won’t be going home for a while.” I’m ready to shut down whatever bullshit protests she might have.
“I figured as much.” After her agreement, she says nothing for-fucking-ever. Her silence bothers the hell out of me, and when she finally parts those incredible lips to speak, her question is barely a whisper. “Where are we going?”
“North.” I nod at the windshield, indicating the road stretching out ahead of us. “Up the mountain. To the Death Star.”
The Unholy has numerous safe houses, with the Death Star being our most remote. The least used of them because of its isolated location. It’s the place I retreat to when the world gets too loud. When my past feels too…close.
Jester and Crow can’t understand why I need the escape. Wraith didn’t either until David Crane took him prisoner and held him captive for six months. After the torture he’d suffered while in captivity, my friend now gets why I come here whenever the claws of my past scratch at my brain.
Because he and I are now a pair of broken kindred spirits.
“Okay,” is all Kerri says, nodding as she stares out the windshield.
“Or,” I spit, “I can dump you anywhere you fucking want.”
The fuck is wrong with me? I hate a dramatic woman, yet here I am, resenting how frigid Kerri—
Wait.
Why is she touching my arm?Christ. The delicate scrape of her nails over my skin is both a torment and a tease.
“No, the Death Star is perfect. Thank you, Havoc,” she rushes out, and I hate how I love the way her lips curve around my name. “And you don’t have to stay with me. I’ll be fine alone.”
“Yeah,” I say in a sneer. “Because the impression I gave you is that I’ll leave you in the middle of nowhere by yourself.”
She pulls her hand away, and suddenly I’m freezing. “No, you haven’t.”
I don’t need to glance at her to know she’s watching me. Her gaze is burning a goddamn hole through my skull. “The cabin’s an hour up the mountain. Close your eyes and try to get some sleep.”
If she’s concussed, and there’s a good chance she is, it’s safe to assume she can sleep. She can hold a conversation and walk fine. And I’m well acquainted with concussion care thanks to a lifetime of getting my head bashed in.
Kerri shifts in the seat, and when she does, her citrus shampoo fills the cab of the truck, making me have to white-knuckle the steering wheel. Because yeah, Little Miss Brighton wants me digging my dirty, bloodstained hands in her shiny blonde hair.
Not going to lie, the drive to the Death Star is torture. Even with the radio on, I keep it low so she can sleep, which means it’s not much of a distraction. This is the longest I’ve been around her alone, and yeah, she’s right. It’s strange without Jester with his normal bullshit. Faith with her ridiculous matchmaking attempts. Discord being…Discord. The usual cast of characters to act as buffers.
