I was scared, but I didn’t want to leave Jamie now that I’d found him.
But I didn’t want King to hate me. I still wanted to be able to visit him.
I was the worst kind of coward. Abandoning my club. Abandoning my family. I wished I could have both, but I’d thought about things a lot and figured that wasn’t in the cards. King would probably be fucking pissed off. That’s always what happened with people. They got upset with something I did, and I was tossed out.
Things had calmed down in New Gothenburg. Josh had called me and told me what amounted to a lopsided war was nearly settled there. The Warriors were down to four or five members, who were hiding out and couldn’t be found, or there would be zero members. The Demons were apparently turning into more of a problem because King and Sapphira had decided they were going to take over the small territory the Warriors had controlled on the west side, but the Demons seemed to think it should go to them, even though they hadn’t lifted a finger to help get rid of the mutual problem.
“If shit blows up with the Demons, you’re welcome back here,” I murmured.
Grant sucked in a deep breath. “I thought so. Did you tell King you’re staying?”
I shivered and shook my head.
“Hunter.” He leaned back and grasped my shoulders. “He’ll want to know. No matter what, he wants to know where you are. He plans to visit Forrest.”
“So.”
“He’ll want to come see you, too.” His lips thinned and he leaned in and pressed a kiss to my forehead. I froze, and he gave me one more hug before he turned.
“Call him.” He laughed as he went, and Reaper only shook his head at us. “Call him right now.”
“Now?”
“Yep.” Reaper opened the door for Grant and followed him outside with the suitcases. He’d brought his bike here, so I wasn’t really sure what they were planning to do with his luggage.
“Better do as he says. He may have a reason for telling ya that,” Jamie said and stepped back in to give me a hug. “For what it’s worth, I think he’s right. No one could stop loving ya just because ya moved house.” His smile was all joy. I hadn’t told him how long I’d decided to stay, either, and we hadn’t talked about much beyond what we were doing the next day.
“Not used to people caring.”
“Get used to it,” he murmured. I pulled my phone out of the pocket of my pants and it almost got stuck. The pockets were almost useless because the cloth was tight. I had no idea where the jeans had come from, but I thought maybe Jamie had bought them because I’d never owned a black pair that stuck to my ass like a second skin the way these ones did. All day he’d been walking behind me whenever he could. I glanced at his back as he went toward the room down the hall he called his den but was really a library with a huge couch he liked to fuck me on. Licking my lips, I thought about ignoring this problem, but I was a long way from King, so if he was going to be mad at me…. Well… might as well get it over with.
I dialed the phone, and it was answered almost immediately. There was the sound of wind and an engine roaring. I smiled a little and itched to get on my bike.
“You all right, kid?” King called over the sound of road noise. “I’m not gonna fall off, drive the fucking bike,” he directed at someone else, but he didn’t sound mad, more amused.
“I’m sorry,” I said and gripped the phone tight. I couldn’t make my tongue move to say anything else, and my stomach began to ache.
“You’re happy there, kid?”
“Yeah.”
King sighed. “Guess you can’t be a prospect anymore, if you’re staying all the way in fucking Sarasota Springs.”
“I’m actually in the city most of the week. I’ve been working with Jamie.”
King let out a whistle.
I shrugged and then realized he couldn’t see me. My heart twisted, and it had been a long time since I felt so awful. “I did my best. I thought I’d get voted in,” I said quietly, and then bit the inside of my cheek. I swallowed and tried to stop the pain that rolled over me. I’d wanted to be a King so bad, and this was just one more failure for the shit-heap.
King hummed. “If you’d stuck around, you would’ve. The boys like you.”
“Maybe,” I mumbled.
“You always have a home here,” King said sharply. “Don’t you go doing any stupid shit. Anything goes south with that Irish fucker, you call me. I’ll straighten his ass out.”
“I can take care of myself.”
“What did I just say?”
