“Those are bad dudes, girl,” Heidi murmurs into the phone.
“I know,” I say.
The other end of the phone is silent. I think that maybe she’s hung up on me, but when she begins to speak, I realize she hasn’t. What she’s doing is choosing her words wisely so she doesn’t upset me.
She shouldn’t.
I need to hear it, because I fucked up—big time.
“Don’t tell me what happened. I just need to know if you’re safe.”
“If they’re there and haven’t found me yet, I’m safe.”
She clears her throat, then her words come out low, and I know she’s being serious. She wants me to take this in and let it soak down to my bones. I close my eyes, inhaling a deep breath and letting it out slowly as I wait for her to continue.
“They will find you, honey, and when they do, it will not be pleasant. Do you have someone there who can keep you safe?”
I bite my bottom lip as I think about Axton and how I’m fairly positive it’s him who followed me last night, how I’m certain I saw him in the club last month . And then I think about who he is. Not the police officer part of him, but the Vicious Reapers part of him, and I realize that he can.
If anyone can keep me safe, it’s Axton Colter.
“I have someone who can keep me safe.”
“But?” she asks.
I laugh softly, because if anyone knows me, it’s Heidi. She can hear it in my voice, no doubt. The hesitation is without a doubt present, even though I can’t hear it myself. It’s there. I can feel it.
“That would require me going to him and asking him.”
“And you would never do that because you’re stubborn,” she mutters. Before I can respond, she continues. “But you’re going to, because that’s the whole reason you left Vegas. It’s him, isn’t it? The man you love.”
“Heidi,” I warn.
She hums. “I expect weekly updates.”
I don’t get the chance to respond because she ends the call, and that is that. But she is not wrong, and there is no fight in me for anything she said, because she was right in all of it.
Delusionally, I came here because it was familiar and far away from Vegas. In reality, I came here because I know if anyone can protect me, it’s Axton, and even if he hates me, I am confident he will protect me. It’s just who he is to his core. Even if he was a shit boyfriend, we loved one another.
And although I don’t want to admit it out loud, and I probably never will… I still love him.
I’ll always love him.
PIGGY
“Lorenzo is going to shit bricks if we get involved with the strip club. He’s still side-eyeing us on a regular fucking basis about his piece-of-shit kid,” Goose calls out.
He is not wrong.
“How do I take back the offer for security on that club?” Bullet asks.
“We got our fingers in too many related pies,” Shocker growls. “We need to cut ties with it all. Take a bit of a financial hit and regroup.”
He’s not wrong. It’s probably the sanest suggestion that’s going to come out of this church meeting. But it won’t be the one anyone agrees to.
Not that we’re money hungry as a whole, because I would take a financial hit if it meant we were done with this shit and moving forward. The biggest issue is that we have nothing to move forward with.
So cutting off our noses to spite our faces is not in the best interest of the club or any of the members. We all have bills to pay. There are more families these days than not, and there’s nothing wrong with needing to make money to support your family.
