Chapter 20 Definitely Not Backing Down #3
“I invited you into the blast radius,” she shoots back. “You think he won’t go after you to get to me? You think he won’t show up at your bar and make threats, or that he won’t call in some bullshit complaint on you, Theo? You think he won’t cause problems for Elias at work?”
“Yes,” Elias agrees. “I do think he’ll do all of that, or try to at least.”
“That’s not helping,” I mutter.
“It is.” Elias’ eyes are still on her. “That’s reality. He was always going to push. He was always going to escalate. Whether we were standing here tonight or not.”
She swallows, damn hard. “You don’t know that.”
“Yeah, I do. Guys like him don’t show mercy. They don't stop until there’s nothing left to squeeze.”
Her face twists like he physically hit her.
“Hey,” I step in that last inch, resting my hands gently on her forearm, and giving her time to yank away if she wants.
Thankfully, she doesn’t. The contact is small, but it feels like sticking my hand in a live outlet.
“Look at me.” She shoots her eyes back on me.
“I’m not na?ve. I’m not walking into this thinking we can logic our way out of it and everyone goes home happy and unscathed.
I know it’s bad. I know he’s dangerous.”
“Then why are you still here?” she demands. “Why didn’t you leave when he told you what happens to pets?”
“Because I’m not a pet.” Heat finally sparks in my own chest as I answer. “And you’re not his fucking property.”
Her breath catches.
“We’re here,” I go on, words coming faster now. “We’re in this. You don’t get to kick us out to make yourself feel noble. You don’t get to decide for us that we’d rather be safe than stand by you.”
“You think I’m doing this to feel noble?” she asks. “I’m doing this because I’m not going to stand over one of you with your blood on my hands because I was selfish enough to keep you around.”
“I get that. You know I get that. But I’d rather take the risk than watch you drown from a distance. I’d rather be in the blast radius with you than standing behind some imaginary shield while he tears you apart.”
Her eyes are shiny now as she blinks hard, trying to push it back.
“You’re making it sound poetic,” she mutters. “It’s not. It’s stupid.”
“It’s both,” Jax adds. “We contain multitudes.”
She huffs out a tiny laugh that sounds more like a choke.
Elias takes another measured step closer. “You’re a person we care about.” His voice softens. “You don’t want us to get hurt? Great. We don’t want you hurt either. That’s why we’re going to make a plan. No running or hiding.”
“Plan what?” she asks. “How to triple my income in a month? Last I checked, none of you were secret millionaires.”
“Working on it,” Jax mutters. “Give me time.”
“The plan,” Elias continues, “is that we look at every angle. Legal, illegal, creative, stupid, all of it. We see what’s actually possible before we let him scare you into doing something you’ll hate yourself for.”
Her gaze flicks between us, listening even though she doesn’t want to.
“There is no way out,” she says finally. “He owns too much, knows too many people. You heard him.”
“Okay.” I nod once. “Then we stop thinking about out and start thinking about through.”
She squints at me. “That’s the same thing, Professor.”
“Not exactly. Out is clean. An exit. Through is… messy. It means we get banged up, probably. It means this is going to suck. But it doesn’t end with you in prison or scrubbing blood off your shop floor.”
“You don’t know that,” she whispers.
“No, I don’t. But I know doing nothing guarantees he keeps pulling until you snap. At least this way, we’re not sitting ducks.”
“Great,” she mutters, sarcasm and doubt fused deep into her tone. "We'll be sitting ducks with false hope."
Jax sighs, shoving a hand through his hair. “Look, Sunshine. Bottom line? You’re stuck with us. All right? You let us in. That’s on you.” His mouth twists. “You don’t get to revoke it just because the rent went up.”
She looks at him, into those crazy blue eyes of his that suddenly seem so serious, and whatever she was about to say dies.
“I hate this. I hate that he knows about you. I hate that you’re here. I hate that it feels better with you here.”
“Yeah,” Elias inserts. “That’s kind of how family works.”
The word hangs there, hitting her harder than she'd like to admit by the way she flinches inward.
“Don’t call it that.” Her voice is hoarse. “You’ll jinx it.”
I squeeze her arm gently. “We’re really hard to get rid of. Ask anyone who’s tried.”
“Name one person who tried.”
“Jax’s last three bosses,” I offer.
Jax points at me. “Incorrect. They loved me. They hated paperwork.”
Elias snorts. “My captain has written ‘insubordinate heart of gold’ in my file so many times it might as well be my middle name.”
“And my ex-roommate,” I add. “He said if I alphabetized his pantry one more time he was going to move out in the dead of night. He did. I found his change-of-address form.”
A tiny, unwilling smile tugs at her mouth. “You’re all idiots.”
“Absolutely.”
“Yeah,” Jax agrees. “But we’re your idiots.”
Her eyes glass over again. She looks away quickly, swiping at one with the back of her hand like it betrayed her.
“So what now?” she asks. “He wants triple in a month. I can’t do that.”
Elias answers first. “We figure it out. I’ll pick up extra shifts. They’re always short-staffed.”
“I can take more fights,” she says automatically.
“No,” all three of us respond at once.
She scowls. “I can handle it.”
“That’s not the point.” I shake my head, noticing she really isn't getting it. “You already handle too much. We’re not adding more ways for people to punch you.”
“I can run more nights at the bar,” Jax offers. “Pick up some off-the-books shit. There’s always some idiot who wants a bouncer with a brain cell.”
“I can tutor,” I add. “Kids. College students. CrossFit bros who want someone to do their macros for them. People pay good money to have someone smarter than them tell them how to organize their lives.”
Raine snorts wetly. “You’d be so annoying as a tutor.”
“Yes,” I agree. “And they’d learn a lot.”
“This still isn’t triple. Even with all of that. And you shouldn’t have to—”
“We want to,” Elias interrupts her. “You’re not forcing us, Raine. This is the part where you let us show up for you.”
She looks at him like she wants to argue, like she wants to shout, but she doesn’t do any of that. She just sags a little. A slow deflation that looks more like surrender than defeat.
“I’m scared,” she admits, almost too soft to hear.
All the air leaves my lungs at her whispered words.
“Good,” I say, before my filter can kick in. “Me too.”
She glares at me through the last of her tears. “That’s not helpful.”
“It is,” I continue. “If we weren’t scared, we’d be idiots. Being scared means we’ll be careful. It means we know what we’re up against.”
“And we’re still standing here anyway,” Elias adds. “That’s the part you should focus on.”
Jax finally comes around the counter, not quite touching her, but close. “We’ve got you, Sunshine. Even if you hate it. Even if you try to fight us off.”
“Especially then,” I add.
She looks at the three of us. Leather and denim and tired eyes and stubborn jawlines, all of us refusing to move.
Something in her posture loosens. Not by much, but just enough to be noticeable if you know her.
“Fine,” she mutters. “But when this all blows up in our faces, I reserve the right to say I told you so.”
“Deal.”
“Put it in a spreadsheet,” Jax quips.
Elias shakes his head, a faint smile tugging at his mouth. “We’ll get ahead of it. We’ll talk tomorrow and make a list of our options.”
“Step one,” Jax starts. “Come up with a plan that does not involve Raine in an orange jumpsuit or missing fingers.”
“Ambitious. I like it.”
Raine snorts again, the sound small but real. “You all need to go home. We’ve got work in the morning. You can’t protect me if you’re falling asleep standing up.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Elias says.
I squeeze her arm one more time, then let go. “We'll follow you. Text when you’re home, or I’ll come back and kidnap you to make sure you rest.”
She groans. “Your protectiveness is multiplying.”
“That’s the plan.” Jax smiles cheerfully. “Three men, triple protection."
“Triple rent,” she corrects.
Jax is serious for a second. “Yeah. we’ll handle that part, too.”
She doesn’t believe us. Not yet.
But when we turn out the lights and lock the shop, when we ride with her toward her house and see her safely inside, I promise myself that I will make her believe. That no matter what, we will fix this for her.
But fuck.
Triple rent.
We're now the leverage that Raine didn't want us to be. We're her damn weakness when she didn't have any before.
Pets.
That's what he called us.
We’re in it now. No escaping.
Not from him.
Not from this.
Not from her.