“I know.” My hands slide under her jacket, under her shirt, needing to feel her skin. “I know, swan. Me too.”
She’s warm. So fucking warm. And solid and real and here, and I can’t believe I almost let her walk away again.
My fingers spread across her back, pulling her closer?—
And then I feel it.
Something rough under my fingertips. A bandage, maybe, near her left shoulder blade. Right where the tracker is.
I freeze.
Pull back just enough to see her face.
“What happened?” The words come out rough, breathless.
“Nothing.” She tries to pull me back, kisses my jaw, my neck, but there’s a hesitation now. A slight tensing in her shoulders that tells me there’s more to this. I lower her to the ground.
“Swan.” I catch her chin, make her look at me. “What did you do?”
Her eyes dart away. Guilt written all over her face.
“Emma—”
“I tried to cut it out,” she mumbles.
The words don’t register at first. Like my brain can’t process what she just said.
“You what?”
“I tried to remove the tracker,” she admits, still not meeting my eyes. “Last night at the motel. I was angry and drunk and I just . . . I wanted it gone.”
“Jesus Christ,” I mutter, carefully turning her to examine her back through her thin shirt. “How bad is it?”
“It’s fine. Just a scratch.” She turns back to face me. “I didn’t get far.”
I stare at her, trying to process this. She tried to cut the tracker out of her own body. After all this time, why now?
“Get upstairs and show me,” I demand.
“No.” She crosses her arms, chin lifting in that stubborn way I know too well. “It’sfine.”
“Emma—”
“I said it’s just a scratch, Bones. Drop it.”
This is the Emma I remember from when she was fifteen. The one who’d climb out windows to avoid me, who’d lie straight to my face about where she was going, who’d fight me on every single thing just because she could. The princess who made my life hell and earned me the shittiest assignment in MC history.
I love her so fucking much.
“You’re really going to make this difficult?” I ask.
“I’m not making anything difficult. You’re the one being dramatic about a tiny cut.”
“You tried to cut a tracking device out of your own body with—what, a steak knife?”
“It was a butter knife, actually.”
“Oh, well that’s so much better.”
