How the hell did I get everyone out of there and make it look like nothing had happened to the dock in under ten fucking minutes?
“Go,” the chunky dockhand said.
“What?” I asked.
“Yeah,” the thin one said as he nodded his head, “you guys get out of here. We’ll handle the police when they pull up.”
I shook my head. “But how are you guys—”
The middle one walked toward me and placed his hand on my shoulder, almost as if he were mocking me. It made me grin, too.
Or maybe that was just the adrenaline of the situation finally getting to me.
“You’ve done your job, now let us do ours. Go. Get out of here. You can come back around in a couple of hours for clean-up when they’re gone.”
And they sure as fuck didn’t have to tell me twice.
“All right, everyone. Let’s wrap it up and move out.”
22
JULIA
The second the van lurched to life and pulled through the dock gates, reality finally dawned upon me. I killed someone. I took someone’s life away from them. I pulled a trigger, played God, and took pride as I watched that man crumble into his own death.
A death I had brought down upon him.
I didn’t know what to think. I didn’t know how to feel. One second, I wanted to cry, and the next I wanted to scream. My tears didn’t know whether to fall in sadness or joy, and my hands wouldn’t stop trembling.
Why the hell wouldn’t they stop shaking?
“Julia.”
Fangs’s voice pulled me from my trance as I watched his hand grab hold of mine.
“Julia, can you look at me?”
I slowly turned my gaze toward his, but I couldn’t speak. All I could do was throw myself at him as the relief of seeing him still upright and breathing left me at a loss for words. And as he wrapped me up in his tight embrace, he scooped me into his arms.
Before walking me back inside his clubhouse.
“Fangs, when you got a moment—”
“Sure,” he murmured.
“Fangs, after Bender, can you—”
“Yep,” he said flatly.
“Who’s heading back to—”
“Uh huh,” he said mindlessly.
He didn’t stop for any reason. His men asked him questions, but all he did was shrug them off. They asked him for opinions and next steps, but all he did was nod his head. I tucked my face into the crook of his neck. I stole his warmth for myself as he carried me down the hallway and took a hard left. And it wasn’t until he laid me down onto his bed that a tear slid down my cheek.
To which he bent forward and kissed it off my skin. “You are the wildest, craziest woman I have ever met.”
I giggled softly as I reached up and cupped his cheek. “Why can’t I get you out of my head?”
