“Come on, Tate. I promise not to freak out.”
“I’ve heard that lie before. I do have two brothers and four very protective uncles.”
I set down my beer and hold up two fingers on one hand and cross my heart with the other. “I swear. Scout’s honor.”
“Oh brother,” she mutters and turns to face me, sitting the same way I am. “Fine.”
I settle in, grabbing my beer again so I have something to do with my hands while she tells me the entire story. “Thank you, Tate.”
“Don’t thank me yet. It’s not a nice story. It’s long and kind of nuts.”
No matter what she tells me, Thumper and I are going to have words. I want to make sure whatever it is stays in the past and doesn’t become an issue for her in the future. “I’m listening.”
“I met Rowdy when I was sixteen.”
“Rowdy,” I grumble, always having hated that loud-mouthed asshole who couldn’t keep his dick in his pants for more than five minutes.
“You know him?”
“I’ve met him a few times and thought he was a tool.”
Tate spits her wine back into her glass, almost choking with laughter. “Accurate, but when I was sixteen, I thought he was cool.”
“Wait, if you were sixteen, then he was…”
“Twenty-one.”
“Babe.”
She lifts a hand. “I know. I know. I’m older now and realize it wasn’t right or cool like I thought when I was a dumbass kid.”
“Thank fuck,” I mutter.
“We saw each other casually on and off for years. I knew who he was, what he was, and how he was, but I never expected anything more. We called it quits completely about a year before he was arrested.”
“I heard about that when he disappeared for a while.”
“Eventually, they all get caught,” she admits, but anyone who has a criminal in their life knows they can’t outrun the law forever. “Well, when he was arrested, the club felt there had been pressure from law enforcement.”
“Okay,” I say, wondering where the hell this is going to go.
“And the club thought I must’ve ratted them and Rowdy out to the cops, because, of course, I’m a woman, and in their mind, I had to be petty and heartbroken.”
I tilt my head, surprised anyone would think Tate would go running to the cops after so many years of what I can only think would’ve been bullshit with Rowdy. “They thought that?”
The man always had his arm around a different woman. I don’t remember ever seeing Tate when I had run into him. I’d remember her face if she had been there. It’s unforgettable.
She nods slowly. “They were out to get me.”
“Out to get you?” I ask, tilting my head and curling my fingers into a tight fist, imagining how terrified she had to have been.
“Yeah. I left town for a little while until shit got settled. My great-uncles in Florida stepped in and made sure the club knew it wasn’t me, and until they decided to leave me alone.”
“Was it that simple?”
She shakes her head and glances away for a moment before bringing her sorrowful eyes back to me. “Logger came after me. Know him?”
I nod. “Yeah, but he disappeared a while ago.”
