Chapter Forty-Three
Sadie
“Is Paparazzi your real last name?” I ask the nomad Saint standing guard by the front door. He’s short, boasting a wide jaw speckled with a greying beard. His Boston accent is thick when he replies.
“Might as well be. Been over twenty years since anyone used my real name.”
“Which is?” I prompt.
Pappi raises his eyebrows.
“What is it with bikers and hoarding their real names like faeries?”
“I have no idea what that means.”
“‘Course you don’t. Never mind.”
He smirks, revealing a deep dimple. He’s cute in a silver-fox, boxy way.
Not my type but not terrible to look at.
He’s also nice, if quiet. Still, he talks more than Nemo.
The Albuquerque Saint said barely three words to us before heading outside several hours ago.
Clyde is my favorite of our guards, though.
He reminds me of Bruce Willis in Red. Like a young badass grandfather.
“I’m going to check the perimeter,” Pappi says. “Don’t let anyone in or—”
“Or open the curtains or step outside or make any stupid decisions. What? You think this is my first time hiding in a biker clubhouse while my boyfriend fights a bloodthirsty gang because said gang threatened my life?”
“Uh… yes?”
“You are correct. This is a first for me.”
His brows pull together in a confused frown. I’d give anything for my humor to be properly appreciated by these brooding bikers.
“Never mind. Just go. I know the rules,” I say. As he heads outside, I return to the living room, where the others have been struggling to make small talk for hours. Evelyn is asking Lydia about Benny, her cousin, when I lower to the couch next to them.
Not for the first time, I wish Evelyn had gone with Rose to Maple’s place in Phoenix. Not because I don’t want her here but because I’d rather her be away from all of this. Both for her safety and for mine and June’s mental states.
Evelyn has learned a lot this week. Nothing about June, thankfully, but definitely more about our lives with the Saints than anyone would’ve liked. Shockingly, she hasn’t shown much judgement. She’s been quiet, especially when a certain brooding non-Saint is in the room.
I tried asking her about Ace, but she adamantly insisted there’s nothing going on between them.
I call bullshit. He watches her like she’s a sunrise he forgot existed.
“Miss Sadie.” Nevaeh, Zion’s six-year-old daughter, steals my attention. She holds out a child’s iPad and says, “The game turned off.”
“Don’t worry, kiddo. I got it.” I take the device to fix the issue.
A few minutes later, the door swings open and Pappi sprints in. His expression has me jumping to my feet.
“What is it?”
“Someone’s coming. We need to get you to the back—”
His sentence comes to an abrupt halt when a bullet rips through the middle of his throat. He gasps and wheezes, falling to his knees. Evelyn and Lydia scream. Two other women appear in the hallway, drawn out by the noise.
Quickly, I turn and shove Nevaeh toward Evelyn. “Take her to the back room. Go!”
“But—”
“NOW, EV!”
She hesitates, conflict evident in her eyes. Finally, she concedes, scooping the young girl up and disappearing down the hallway. I hear barking, and my limbs become Jell-O when I imagine Soot escaping the back room and throwing himself into the oncoming danger.
If any of these fuckers touch my dog, I will make John Wick look like Samwise Gamgee.
“Come on, Sadie! We need to go too!” Lydia says, pulling on my arm.
Terror fills my brain like deafening static. Lydia’s panicked face tells me to run with her. But if the Fivers are here for me and if I hide in the back room, I’ll be luring them straight to my friends. To Nevaeh and Soot. No way in hell am I doing that.
I yank my arm from her grasp. More gunfire sounds outside. I’ve been to gun ranges. I’ve shot a gun and stood next to others when they pulled the trigger. I’ve been shocked at the volume of it. But even from a distance, those shots sound a hundred times louder than any I’ve ever heard before.
“Barricade the door. Keep everyone quiet. Don’t let Soot out.”
“Sadie…”
“They’re here for me. We both know that.”
“There are other rooms to hide in!”
“And I’ll pick one,” I lie. “But I’m not going with you.”
She opens her mouth, but the next gunshot is even closer. I push her and she gives me one last look before following the direction Ev went.
And I’m alone.
Quickly, I grab the gun hidden in the clubhouse fireplace and make sure the safety is off. Then I press against the brick, hidden from the front door.
Someone yells outside, and I recognize Clyde’s voice, though I can’t make out the words. The next few seconds are each the length of a lifetime.
Instead of fixating on the immediate danger, my mind sinks into past traumas.
My first memory surfaces. I’m tucked into my mom’s side, rubbing her bald head.
My dad was there, crying. My brothers were crying.
Their tears felt world-ending. I didn’t know what was happening, but I clung to my mom, as if expecting her to disappear at any second.
It wasn’t until years later that I learned they were happy tears because my mom was in remission.
Then the moment when I felt how truly deep loneliness could drag your soul.
After feeling so unconnected, I had a best friend.
Sage was everything I ever dreamed of. But all I was to her was a pathway to a director my mom was friends with.
Losing the friendship was bad enough. But when she sent screenshots of our texts, full of private admissions and fears, to the whole school, I thought I was going to die.
Like they’re connecting flights, that memory takes me to the three years I spent with Carson.
The bliss at being so loved and wanted in the beginning.
Then the humiliation of learning he’d cheated on me.
And the pure self-degradation I willingly suffered when I begged him not to leave me because I was too fucking afraid of being alone again.
Another gunshot. Silence. Then I hear people clambering up the porch steps. In the time it takes me to suck in a lungful of air, the memories are replaced with ones I’d prefer to be thinking of when I die.
Laughing with my family. Holding my nephews for the first time. Meeting June. Carrying puppy Soot out of the shelter. Learning Dakota was dead. Knowing my best friend killed him for me.
James.
James showing up at Seedling Sanctuary. James sleeping outside my apartment. James crying in my arms. James kissing me. James fucking me into submission. James asking me for help.
His touch. His smile. His words.
It’s the knowledge that I’d do it all again, even knowing that I’d end up here, that has the fear subsiding. The chance to know them all was worth it.
The opportunity to experience being James’s, even for only a couple of weeks, was worth it.
Someone enters the house.
Then a familiar voice follows the footsteps.
“Bella? I know you’re here.”
I close my eyes, take a deep breath, and allow myself a second to remember James’s face.
Then I turn and step into view, lifting my gun as I move.
“Hi, Bowie.”
A gunshot rings in my ears.