Her breath comes more quickly. “I don’t trust myself around the patch. When I see it, a side of me comes out that does things that hurt me. It’s like I owe things to be liked, and I don’t want to owe things anymore. I want to take back who I am and make a different life for myself.”
I hate the fact that something so important to me, something that’s given me life and purpose, means fear to her.
I step back, giving her room to breathe. “Thank you for telling me.”
She blinks, fast. “What? You’re not mad?”
“Isla,” I say with a huff. “Why would I be? I’m here on your porch at three in the morning trying to make sure no one messes with you. I’m not doing it so I can mess with you too.”
A reluctant chuckle escapes her. Low and fragile.
“Look, I’ll finish setting these up for you and get off your property. When you’re ready to set them up on your phone, you come over to the house, and I’ll do it for you. You don’t owe me anything. We don’t even need to talk beyond setup instructions.”
“Fine,” she says quietly. “Just…don’t make a lot of noise.”
I smile at that. “Just go back inside, out of the cold. I’ll keep an eye on things out here. You can sleep safely.”
I’m just about to step down to grab the drill when Isla steps forward.
“Shade?”
“Yeah?”
“Thank you. I just don’t know how to let people help me yet.”
I shove my hand in my pocket as my heart does something funny in my chest. “It’s okay. Sometimes feel the same way myself. Good night, Isla.”
And I’m still looking at the porch when she closes the door.
9
JACKAL
“Fucking love the sky this morning,” I say as we step out of the back door to grab our bikes, three days since Garrett fitted the cameras. “Look at all those colors, like it’s showing off. The frost on the grass makes it look like it’s been dusted in sugar.”
“And it’s too damn early for you to be this poetic.” Garrett locks the door while I tighten my gloves. “You got the addresses?”
“Yeah. Already programmed into my phone, in route order.” Bikers who haven’t been living up to club commitments are about to get a rude awakening this morning.
Garrett unlocks the garage door, and then I hear the rumble of it as he lifts it open. “Then let’s go do this.”
I glance over my shoulder at him and catch him looking at my ass. “It shouldn’t be so hot that you get excited when you’re about to threaten people.”
He chuckles at that as he raises the garage door. “It shouldn’t be so hot how good you look in those leathers, but here we are. I’m thinking we should tell these brothers they’re on a new formof probation. Like, this is their warning shot, and if they don’t fix their contribution in the next thirty days, they’re out.”
“I think that’s a good idea. We want fast turnaround of behavior.”
As we’re about to mount the bikes, we hear the sharp, stuttering whine of an engine turning over that won’t quite catch. It speeds up and then dies, like it’s doing its best to wake up but can’t quite make it.
It happens again, a coughing, uneven sputter.
I can feel Garrett looking over to Isla’s drive, even though he assured me this morning that he was done worrying, seeing she hasn’t come to get the cameras connected to an app on her phone so she can actually use them. Which obviously means he’s worried about her every ten minutes since.
“We have a choice to make,” I say, looking over to Garrett’s face. His hazel eyes are focused in one direction. And it’s going to be a difficult one. Because I’ll follow Garrett’s lead in how he answers, but I know what I want to do.
“And that is?”
“We do the right thing, give her the space she wants, and just drive over to Grizz’s house.”
