“Hmm,” I answer obliquely. “I was awake for a bit in the night.”
It could have been any of them.
Ryder is a likely candidate. Wyatt…no, too injured. He’s the only one I can cross out. Jake or Damian? Could be.
But no one takes the bait. There’s no knowing nod, no wink in response. Jake goes back to his screen and Ryder pours boiling water into a mug, and Wyatt takes a seat at the table. Damian moves away from the back door and comes into theroom, his gaze flicking up over my bare legs. No one gives anything away…
Although, when I look back at Ryder, I catch a dark glance that’s completely loaded.
The hand over my mouth, the way he moved. My body knows who it was but I don’t let myself follow the thought all the way through. I like not knowing.
Not knowing who it was makes it feel like it was all of them.
“What’s the plan for the day?” I ask.
“Recon,” answers Damian. “We’re going to check out the clubhouse.”
A frown twitches across my face. “When?”
Ryder turns around and takes a sip from a steaming mug. “Ten minutes, if Jake ever stops checking the traffic feeds.”
“I’m also monitoring the clubhouse’s wifi for changes,” Jake adds, eyes on the screen. Ryder gives me a shrug.
“I’ll come,” I say quickly, but—
“No,” says Ryder.
I let out a heavy sigh.
I know this is what they do, I know they’re experts in their field…but the O.D. is the particular hell I unleashed on them. Ryder’s been shot, Wyatt beaten to within an inch of his life, all because of Billy’s motorcycle club. Because of me. I can’t shake this need to watch them, as if I could stop something bad from happening again.
“You are not going back on that land,” Ryder says firmly. “Not today. Not ever. Not if I have anything to do with it.”
“But what am I supposed to do? Just sit here and wait for you? What if you never come back?”
“Max, honey,” comes Wyatt’s voice, soft and reassuring. “We’re not stepping foot inside today. We’re watching doorways and traffic from a long ways away. We’ve got all four of us there. We’ll be safe.”
“I just feel like I’m sitting at home while you go risk your lives fixing the mess my past made. I can help. Ishouldhelp. I’m the reason—”
But Wyatt interjects. “You are not the reason for anything the O.D. has done. You are not responsible for their choices. This is us doing something we’re trained for.”
I watch the Civic pull away, all four tall, broad-shouldered men in it looking like clowns packed into a little car, and then try turning on the TV.
I flip through streaming services, trying to land on anything distracting, but TV seems impossible—too distant and unreal. How can I lose myself in something fictional when my reality is so all-consuming?
With the men gone, silence rushes in, one that feels all too familiar to me.
It’s the feeling from Silas’s kennel, when I was locked in all night without knowing if anyone would come for me. It’s the nights in the clubhouse when Billy told me to stay in my room because he was with another girl for the night. It’s like being twelve again in some shitty foster house, watching through the window while the “real” family gets in the car to go to the movies.
I last about an hour.
I lock the doors, check the windows twice, put my mug in the sink, open the fridge, stare at the half-carton of eggs and sad-looking ketchup bottle inside, and close it again. I go through the bedrooms and collect all of our laundry, dumping it on the laundry room floor in one big pile and get a load of whites started. I try the TV again.
Then I put the laundry in the dryer and check the fridge one more time. There really isn’t any food.
My mind is already hunting for something to do, somewhere to go. When I gathered up the laundry, the keys to Damian’s truck fell out of his pockets. And Wyatt had a hundred dollar bill in his.
We need groceries,I rationalize it.
