“I’m gonna sleep now.” I yawned, burrowing closer. “Don’t let me go.”
“Haven’t since I met you, sweetness, not gonna start now.”
And he was right, he hadn’t.
When I got home after my attack and attempt to run, he’d helped me focus my desire to help people into something that didn’t actually require me working with them. With Rabbit’s technical help, Doc and I developed an app that helped low-income, single parents connect with counseling, abuse hotlines, suicide preventions, life coaching, and basic first aid services. It was funded by higher paying clients who wanted concierge services, who understood that a twenty-percent fee would be added to their bill to help the poor.
I kept less than a dozen clients who were willing to meet with me online, and gave me some flexibility with my schedule. The app gave me flexibility with my income and Doc gave me flexibility with my sanity. He stood by me through everything and seemed to know what I needed before I even did.
As I snuggled close, I smiled, falling into a deep, untroubled sleep, safe in the knowledge I was loved beyond reason.
Olivia
Aweek later, it was Church for the club. This meant, it was an all-club meeting, no girls allowed, so us ladies usually did our own thing. At least, we did when we all had a free schedule. Which we finally did, and I couldn’t wait.
The Dogs’ main meeting house was a gigantic antebellum tobacco barn they’d converted into private bedrooms, offices, and a meeting hall. It sat in the middle of a fenced compound on thirty acres, along with outbuildings that housed workshops and a couple of old slave quarters. The workshops were used for everything from car repair to iron works (Otter was an artist when it came to sculpting metal). I was dying to renovate the slave quarters and make them actual homes the younger couples could live in if they so desired, but that was something to be tackled down the road. The original house had burned down in the early nineteen-hundreds and had sadly never been rebuilt.
Jasmine, Quin, and Willow were bringing their kids to the barn to be watched by a couple of the women who were trying to get in with the club and a few of the younger recruits would also be on hand. The beauty of recruits was that they were given a rigid background check and watched closely by our men, so they felt pretty comfortable having them around their kids.
Parker was also going to join us tonight. She was Jasmine and Willow’s bestie, and she was a blast. I wondered if she’d end up with one of the men, but she kind of kept her distance and I often wondered why. Something to drill down on in the future, but tonight, it was time to relax and drink.
Sterling was still too young for visitors, so Lyric and Doom were having family time, but we all planned to see them next weekend for their sip and see and I couldn’t wait to get my arms around the little man.
“Liv?” Doc said from the office doorway.
I glanced up from my laptop. “Yeah?”
I had locked myself away to get some work done before we left.
“Willow and Jasmine are here.”
I smiled, closing my computer. “Oh, cool.”
“They brought Kennedy.”
I raised an eyebrow as I stood. “Does Mouse know?”
