“Then, what is it?”
I reached down to the doorknob nearest me and opened the last door. The last door in the house that I hadn’t looked behind. And when I cracked it open, all I saw was an empty coat closet.
“Shit,” I hissed.
“Not what you wanted?” she asked.
I drew in a deep breath and ignored the harsh tone of her voice. “Do you think there’s a bike or something outside?”
She barked with laughter, but the sound wasn’t pleasant. “Why? So, you can bike all the way there with just enough time to collapse in a fit of hard breathing and sweat? I won’t help you with a damn thing. I won’t condone my sister getting herself killed over some guy she’s known for a few days.”
Her words gave me pause. Had it honestly only been a few days? Because it sure as hell felt like a few years. I had lived the equivalent of a few years’ worth of life over the past couple of weeks, and when it finally dawned on me that I had known Fangs for a lesser amount of time than my captivity, I pondered on my emotions. Surely, I couldn’t love someone I had known for so little time. I mean, I had watched him kill people, for fuck’s sake. It wasn’t as if Tee didn’t have a solid foundation for which to worry.
The problem was my heart didn’t care.
Because my heart wanted what it wanted.
“Stay here if you want,” I said as I strode for the front door, “but I’m making it back to the guys.”
“Whatever,” she murmured. “I’m staying here and enjoying the sunshine.”
“Fine by me.”
As I made my way outside, I searched all sides of the house for any sort of vehicle. Electrically powered, gas powered, or me powered, I didn’t care. All I needed was something to help me hoof it to the nearest road. From there, it was as easy as thumbing a lift back into town where I’d have access to a taxi service so that I could get back to the clubhouse.
However, I had to find something to get me to the road first.
“God damn it, Fangs,” I grumbled. “What in the hell were you thinking?”
There was no storage shed or garage. There were no bikes leaning against the side of the house, nor was there any sign of a car. We had been completely abandoned, just like Death had left us once before, and the shattering of my heart overcame my need for Fangs. My chest exploded with fire, eating away at me like an inferno raging from the inside.
How could he just leave me there?
Had it been that simple for him?
He doesn’t love you the way you love him. Why bother?
The voice in my head taunted me, attempting to convince me of a truth that I knew was nothing but a lie. I squeezed my eyes closed and shook my head, listening as the wind kicked up around me. There was nothing but desert and sand and cacti and death all around me. Yet, somehow, I knew there was a way back into town. There was no way in hell Fangs was stupid enough to drop us at a place like this without giving us a way to at least defend ourselves.
“There has to be something,” I whispered.
“Jay, will you just come inside?” my sister asked.
Her question blew the roof off my skull. “Is this really what you want?”
I spun around to face her and found her leaning against the doorway, her arms crossed over her chest.
“Do you really just want to sit out here while life completely passes us by?” I asked as I held out my arms.
She shrugged. “This isn’t my life. This is life or death, Jay, and those men did what they did in order to protect us.”
I stared her down as her words dawned upon me. “You told him this was okay, didn’t you?”
“It honestly never occurred to me that you would have wanted anything other than this.”
I shook my head slowly. “But you knew. You knew what I wanted and you agreed with this anyway?”
She stepped outside. “What in the hell was I supposed to do? Let you run off into some gunfight that isn’t yours to begin with? Did you honestly believe that after hearing me scream like that night after night and going through all that you went through, that I’d think you wouldn’t want to be safe?”
