Chapter 22
Boots planted on solid stone, I’m out on the back patio of my place in the Hill Country.
Sundays the bar's closed, which is the reason I'm here and not under the neon lights. Forty minutes from town, tucked between cedar trees and limestone outcroppings, the house blends into the land instead of bragging about being part of it. The sky stretches far in every direction without obstruction, making me feel like I’m the last person left.
Quiet. Remote. Peaceful.
The house isn’t flashy—clean lines, big windows, vaulted ceilings with heavy wood beams—but it’s nice. Moderate by rich-people standards. Pricey by mine. It’s got enough space to keep my life spread out, enough privacy to take care of business without a neighbor peeking through the blinds.
The sun’s sinking low, casting gold over the hills. My bourbon catches the light where it rests in my palm, and for the first time all week, the edge starts to dull.
My phone lights up with her name, and the glass nearly slips from my hand.
Sable.
Calling me.
She’s never done that before. Not once.
I figured the birthday cake might earn me a flirty thank-you text, maybe a sexy photo if I got really lucky, but an actual phone call? Unexpected.
I answer before the second ring. “Hey.”
There’s a pause—just a breath—but I hear it immediately. The tension.
“I didn’t know if you’d be busy…” she says, her voice tight with the kind of pause that makes me think she’s considering ending the call short. “But I got the cake. And, uh… my little rabid friend hasn’t smashed this one yet. So that’s progress.”
I lean forward, resting my forearms on my knees, the bourbon forgotten in my hand. “I hear something in your voice, darlin’. What’s going on?”
Another pause.
Then, faint and unmistakable: “You tell that toe-faced bitch if she wants to blackmail you, she better learn to spell first!”
I blink. “Is that Demi?”
“Yeah,” she sighs. “She’s… fired up.”
“Well, I hope Bash isn’t within earshot of that.”
“He’s outside,” she says quickly. “Backyard. On the playscape you installed. He still can’t stop talking about it, by the way. Keeps asking when he gets to meet the guy who made him cooler than every other kid in the neighborhood.”
I smirk, even as something clenches tight in my chest. “Smart kid.”
But the feeling doesn’t let go. I want to go to her. Now. Drop everything and just be there. But she’s with her son. And besides the whole does she even want to be with someone who’s killed dilemma, I can’t assume I’m welcome around her kid. It has to be her call. Her terms.
She clears her throat. “I didn’t just call to thank you. I… I need to tell you something.”
My grip tightens on the glass. “Alright.”
“I got a text. From Ashley.”
The name alone makes me clench my jaw. “I assumed that is what Demi is shouting about.”
“She sent pictures. Of us. From the bar.”
My blood boils beneath my skin. “What kind of pictures?”
“The kind that make me want to dig a hole and never come out.” Her voice is tight; each word threaded with the effort of not breaking down. “Me on the bar. You between my legs. Then… me on my knees in front of you.”
My brain goes straight to the thoughts of those moments, and despite the fury flooding my veins, I can’t help the possessive twist low in my gut. Those memories weren’t meant to be shared. The way she looked. The way she felt. Her body. Her sounds.
They’re mine.
But I won’t lie, there’s a wicked part of me that’s selfishly glad the pictures exist.
“Text them to me,” I say, voice low. “Now.”
She hesitates, then I hear her phone clicking. Mine pings a second later. I swipe the notification and open the thread.
Yup. There it is. Clear as day. My hands on her and my face disappeared within her, her head bowed at my crotch ready to consume me, both of us completely gone for each other.
I want to jerk my cock and put my fist through a fucking wall.
“She said if I don’t get her back in Andrew’s good graces… she’ll make them public. Said she’d trash Thorne Revival. Essentially destroy me.”
“Jesus Christ,” I mutter. “She’s fully off the rails.”
“You think?” she snaps, then catches herself. “Sorry. I’m just… I don’t even know what to do.”
I inhale through my nose, working to keep my voice steady. “You don’t have to do anything. I’ll take care of it.”
“How?”
“My brother’s a tech genius,” I say. “JT can make sure those photos disappear. She sends them to anyone else? We’ll know. She tries to post them anywhere? They won’t make it past the first upload.”
There’s silence on the other end. She’s contemplating it.
“I know this is a lot,” I say, softer now. “But I got you. You don’t have to fix this alone.”
Sable still doesn’t speak.
“I just want you to enjoy the rest of your birthday,” I add. “Eat the cake. Let Demi say some wildly inappropriate shit. Sit in that beautiful yard of yours and let yourself breathe for a damn second.”
Nothing.
So I push it a little further, just enough to draw her out. “You reached out,” I say. “That’s something, right? Means you’re still thinking about me?”
Her voice returns, this time lighter. “Maybe I just wanted to make sure the cake wasn’t poisoned.”
I chuckle, resting the bourbon glass on the side table next to me. “If I wanted to poison someone, Legs, I’d use something they wouldn’t see coming.”
“That’s not exactly comforting.”
I shrug to myself. “But it’s honest. I know how much you appreciate that.”
And she laughs. A real laugh. Short, but real. And fuck if that doesn’t settle something wild inside me.
We sit there, only breath passing between us through the phone.
“You’re really going to take care of it?” she asks softly.
“You have my word.”
She sighs, a quiet, trembling sound that carries the weight of everything she’s been holding in since the pictures showed up.
“Okay,” she says. “Okay.”
And just like that, I know I’ll do whatever it takes to fix this. Because she didn’t just call me.
She trusts me.
I lean against the end of the bar, sipping burnt black coffee and watching Will line up coasters with military precision. Lemon oil and bleach cover every inch of the bar’s air, which means he’s been here since the ass crack of dawn scrubbing out the sins of last Friday’s lunch.
JT’s perched on a barstool nearby, hoodie up, headphones slung around his neck, wearing that smug little smirk he gets right before doing something deeply illegal.
“She still alive?” Will asks, not looking up from the rag in his hand.
JT grins without humor. “Unfortunately.”
Ashley. No one says her name anymore. Around here, she’s just Bat Shit.
“She’s made a big fucking mistake,” I say flatly. “She’s screwing with someone that’s mine.”
JT taps away on both his laptop and phone, then flips the screen toward me. A tangle of code, routing pings, and server logs flash across it.
“Got her cloud access. Phone’s wide open. Emails, texts, app data—everything. She’s been using a third-party vault for the pictures, but once I isolate the backup pathway, they’re gone. Permanently.”
“You’re sure?”
He raises a brow. “Hex. If you want me to nuke her digital footprint from orbit, I can make it look like she never existed.”
Will snorts. “Or we could just make sure she doesn’t.” I glance at him. He shrugs. “What? I’m just saying. Fewer loose ends.”
JT gives him a lazy side-eye. “We’re not doing body disposal on a Monday. That’s a weekend problem.”
I drag a hand down my jaw. “We’re not killing her.”
Yet goes unspoken.
JT leans in. “But we are taking everything. Her files. Her backup accounts. Even the hidden burner she’s been using to send the texts. I’ve got a tracer on it. If she tries to upload or send those photos to anyone else—”
“They’ll disappear,” I finish.
“And?” Will adds. “We send her a warning?”
“No.” I shake my head. “She won’t even know she lost the power. We let her try to swing first.”
JT raises a brow. “And then?”
“Then I swing back.”
Silence settles over the room.
Will wiggles the last coaster into perfect alignment and tosses the rag over his shoulder. “You want me to tail her again?”
“Yeah,” I say, tipping my coffee toward him. “But take the beater. Not the Challenger.”
Will groans, dramatic as hell. “Come on, man. I spent two hours under the hood yesterday. She’s spotless. Even the damn spark plugs are shining. She’s sex on wheels right now.”
I shoot him a look over the rim of my coffee mug. “Yeah, and she sounds like a jet engine and turns every head within a ten-mile radius. You really want to tail Bat Shit in a bright red muscle car with blackout tint and racing stripes?”
He throws his hands up. “It’s not even that loud.”
“It backfires when you downshift.”
Will winces. “Okay, yeah. But the beater?”
The beater’s a war-torn 2001 Ford F-150, sun-faded paint, rust spots on the bumper, and a mysterious smell that might be mildew or old jerky—we’ve stopped investigating.
The headliner sags low enough to graze your scalp, the driver’s side window jams halfway down, and the windshield sports a crack shaped suspiciously like a boot print.
He stares at me in disbelief, as if I just asked him to throw loyalty out the window and light it on fire. “I just vacuumed the Challenger.”
“And now you’re driving the rolling crime scene. Because that truck doesn’t get noticed. It gets ignored. And that’s exactly what we want.”
He sighs long and loud. “Fine. But I swear to God, if I get tetanus from touching the steering wheel—”
“We’ll add it to the list of things you’ve survived.”
He mutters something about hepatitis and lost dignity as he heads toward the back.
I watch him go, and that old familiarity tugs at my chest.
Will grew up with parents who forgot to pick him up from school, and never asked where he went at night. He used to show up at my house just hoping for leftovers. Looking for structure. Looking for rules.
It calmed him. Still does.
Now he makes good money. Keeps his life clean and in perfect order. The car. The shoes. His damn sock drawer. That Challenger is spotless because he’s earned the right to own something beautiful. Proof he finally has something good, and he knows how to take care of it.
But when I need him in the mud, he never blinks.
Even if he bitches the entire fucking time, making sure we all know how put out he is.
JT starts packing up his laptop but pauses, looking at me. “You good?”
I sip my terrible coffee and think about Sable’s voice in my ear last night. The sound of her laugh. She called me.
Chose me.
“I’m good,” I say. “I’ve got something to protect.”
JT’s expression is sharp, almost proud. He really thinks he’s looking out for me by asking, like we’ve quietly switched roles. But I’ve never stopped protecting him.
Not when he was ten and already too smart for his own good.
Not when Mom died and the world got real dark, real fast.
He’s a man now. Dangerous in all the right ways. But my instinct doesn’t leave. The weight in my chest stays the same.
Will. JT. Me. We’re not all blood. But that’s never mattered.
We’re brothers where it counts.
JT leans back, typing something into his phone with a smirk.
“Well then,” he says. “Let’s handle Bat Shit.”