“That would be nice, huh?”
* * *
Neither of us really said a word more. I waited by my bike for Rose to get dressed. She threw on a simple red t-shirt and jeans.
“Ready?” I asked when she got down.
“Got my keys, my wallet, and my phone,” she said. “So yeah.”
“Good enough.”
I hopped on the bike and waited for her to wrap her arms around me. I really hated how good it felt. Not because I didn’t want it, but because the more I got it, the more I felt compelled to skip the process and just get straight to the bedroom.
Funny, wasn’t it? The moment Rose got her strength and fortitude back, I became the one desperate to try and make it work.
Well, desperate was a bit too strong of a word. But it was something I leaned more toward than I had before. I just reminded myself that I still needed to see Rose’s life in action first to understand why she’d gotten to where she was.
I drove to Brewskis with a nervous pit in my stomach. What if the Saints had done something to her car? It wouldn’t be enough to see a car clean of any damage. There was always the chance they would have put a bomb or something else on it. One could never take too many precautions.
Still, the good news when we pulled up was that the car was apparently untouched.Apparently.
“Let me examine it really quickly,” I said after I killed the bike.
I hopped off and looked under the vehicle, behind the tires, and even in the exhaust pipe for anything that could have caused trouble. Much to my surprise, everything was clean and good. I guess the Saints recognized that if they hurt someone that us Reapers cared about so much, they’d all be dead in a matter of hours.
“Good to go.”
“Thanks, LeCharles.”
She shot me a sweet smile, but it was brief. She got in the car and turned it on. I held my breath as I watched her back out and head back home, but as far as I could tell, there was no damage and no problems done. She was in the clear completely.
That in itself was something of a minor miracle. But so too was the fact that, by all accounts, things were starting to somehow progress toward something more meaningful between us.
I rode toward the clubhouse, needing to get a debriefing from Lane and anyone else there on what had happened. When I pulled up, most of the prospects were there, cleaning up the aesthetic damage done by the Fallen Saints. Lane and Butch were overseeing the process, each of them sipping a beer while leaning against one of our club trucks. When Lane saw me, he held his beer up to me. Butch had no apparent reaction.
“Guess the damage wasn’t too bad, all things considered,” I said, nodding toward the bullet-riddled building.
“Could have been a lot worse,” Lane said. “Come on. I’ll tell you everything inside. Butch, can you watch the boys?”
Butch nodded. I felt like he was watching the two of us as we went inside, but I was more concerned with whatever Lane had to say than whatever Butch had to think. We walked past Father Marcellus, speaking to one of the club members in what looked like a somewhat light conversation, and walked into church. Lane locked the door behind me.
“We alerted all the officers before we got back,” he said. “Patriot and I nearly got hit, but we got back just in time. The rest of the club was well-prepared to repel the Saints’ attack, so no harm really came of it.”
“Good,” I said. “But we don’t have any indication of any spy?”
Lane shook his head.
“I don’t think this is a real great example of something we can use to accuse someone of anything,” he said. “Remember, the three of us were staring Lucius in the face last night. He didn’t have to have a spy to know we were away from the base.”
“True,” I said, disappointed.
“And in any case, like I said, we decided to call all of the officers. Butch, Father Marcellus, Red Raven. Maybe if we’d called one and nothing had happened, we’d have our guard up, but we called all of them. We weren’t going to take any risks for this one, not when we had done the equivalent of dropping our guard in a boxing match.”
“Understood. But the damage was just aesthetic, right? We’re not hiding the fact they somehow hit us harder than we want to let on or anything like that, right?”
“Promise.”
So then really, all we had to do was just clean up, maybe throw a minor strike back at them, and all would be equal. There could be no mistaking the fact, though, that we had dodged a pretty big metaphorical bullet with this one.And because of how I feel about Rose.
