Chapter 14
I have to stop.
She’s been in jail and she hasn’t eaten.
I never have to make myself stop doing anything. Until her.
The devil on my shoulder says, get used to it, buddy.
I file away the details of what just happened, especially the way her thighs rubbed against my jeans all restless. The way she moaned into my throat. How her tits felt pressed against me, lush and warm.
Vera Healy is a problem.
Problems require control.
First, I slide my fingers free of her hair, watching the dark-honey strands slip between scarred digits that have no business touching her.
I peel my body away and have to force myself to physically walk backward. Step by step. But it feels as if I’ve never walked before in my life. Things aren’t working right in my body.
“Sit down,” I tell her, surprised at the rough sound of my words.
She blinks at me a few times. Her mouth is swollen. Her pupils are blown to hell.
“What did you say?” she whispers, touching her lips. “You’ll probably have to repeat it because my brain needs a reboot after that.”
“Sit down.” I point to a chair at the bar. “You haven’t eaten.”
She blinks at me again, this time, her shoulders locking. A flash of hurt rips through her expression, then gets locked down.
Haltingly, she says, “That is not where I thought this was going.”
“I know. Me either.”
She looks at me for a few seconds, then sits down. Because I told her to. She gets annoyed about it, and I turn my back on her before she can see my expression.
Because fuck if I know what my face is doing. I have one expression. Stone. Until the last twenty-four hours. Especially since she got on my bike.
Giving myself a mental slap, I get my favorite skillet down from the rack above the stove.
It takes a minute to gather ingredients. Eggs, butter, an onion, and good ham too. Moving on auto-pilot, I put the cast iron on the burner and set the flame on medium.
I have made a thousand meals in this room. It’s muscle memory. But what’s happening to the rest of me is foreign.
She’s dead quiet behind me until she shifts and the stool makes that clicking sound it always makes when you turn it side to side.
“Nobody cooks for me,” she says over the sizzle of oil and onions.
She says it lightly. Like a joke. The way she says everything.
My jaw is locked so hard my teeth hurt. I’ve taken men apart with my hands and I have never wanted to kill anybody as much as I want to rip apart the people who made her feel bad about herself.
I crack the eggs into a bowl one-handed, doing it a little too violently.
“The onions smell good,” she says quietly. “You’re browning them first. That takes longer.”
“It’s better,” I reply, my vocal cords feeling stiff.
“Yes. It really is.” There’s a slight vibration in her voice.
Please don’t cry.
I don’t know what I’d do. Give me high speed evasion. Firing a gun at a moving target. Anything but crying.
Swallowing roughly, I concentrate on the omelet.
God give me strength. There’s no telling what’s going to happen after this meal, but whatever happens, I’m wading into deep water.
She’s quiet the rest of the time I cook. When I put the plate down in front of her, I add a glass of milk, because she needs it.
“Wow, that’s impressive,” she says, looking at the food as she presses her hand to her ample breasts.
“It’s basic,” I reply. “The kind of meal that fixes hungry.”
She looks at that food for a long moment as if she’s deciding something, then dives in with gusto.
My throat squeezes like Skull’s fist is around it. All I can do is stand against the counter with my arms crossed and I watch every bite she takes. Couldn’t say a word if you shot me.
When she’s about halfway through she stops. “Tobias,” she says softly after dabbing her mouth with the paper towel I laid out for her. “You said you’d tell me all of it.”
Here we go. I’ve dreaded this moment.
But I pull the other stool out and I sit. For some reason it feels imperative that I put both my hands flat on the counter where she can see them.
Hands that kill.
“The money was clean,” I tell her first. “It came out of my club brother’s safe. It’s clean, it’s his.”
She sets the fork down, worry in her eyes. “Then why did you hand it to me?”
“Because Skull played a joke on me.” With a shake of my head, I add, “It’s about the photographer, Anna, sort of.
But it’s also about me. She did a photoshoot that ended with my club brother getting married.
She called him the day before yesterday.
Told Skull she needed a man for a stranger session.
Skull knows me. I don’t date. I said some remark about love at his wedding in front of the whole club, and he’s been waiting to make me pay for it. ”
Steady, looking right into my eyes she says, “So he sent you.”
“He put fifty grand in a box with a ribbon on it and told me it was a drop. He knew I’d go because I show up for club business like I’m supposed to. No questions.”
Fuck. This sucks.
With a rattling sigh, I say, “He wanted to see my face when a woman opened it in front of a camera. That’s all it was. He wanted to see how I could talk myself out of a mess.”
The clock on the stove ticks and I get an ulcer in my gut.
“He was going to get a picture of your face,” she says carefully. “And instead I got a felony.”
“Yes. But there’s other layers to it, the charge wasn’t related to the money in the box. That just looked bad. Really bad.”
“You handed it to me knowing what was in it,” she says, still staring into my eyes.
“Yes. I knew it was money because that’s what I do. I handle money coming and going when the job requires it. I guess some part of me thought it was an actual drop, that you were there to get the money from the club. It never, not once occurred to me that it was a joke.”
She processes this for a second, the color on her cheeks darkening when she says, “The deputies got there and I said he gave it to me, and every one of them turned around and looked at you but you didn’t intervene.”
“Yes.”
She’s very still. Her hands are in her lap now and there’s a tremble in her chin.
“Why did you do that?” she asks in a soft voice that hits harder than any punch I’ve ever taken.
“Because if I opened my mouth, the money’s connected to me, and if the money’s connected to me, then you took a payment from an outlaw motorcycle club. That’s what a prosecutor puts on a blast.”
My hands are still flat on the table. I don’t move them even though I want to comfort her.
The man who beats people to death wants to calm her with a gentle touch. What planet is this?
But I don’t. All I can offer her is the truth.
With a rough swallow and guilt crushing me onto the stool, I say, “Every single thing I could have said would have made it worse for you. So I stood there and I let them take you, and I haven’t slept at all since then.”
Her gaze could set this building on fire, but I don’t look away. She deserves better.
“You can be done with me,” I tell her. “The lawyer’s paid to see this through ‘til the end and that doesn’t change. Say the word and I’ll put you in a car right now and take you anywhere in this state and you never have to look at me again.”
“That’s the offer?” She asks, frowning.
“Yes. And whatever else you need.”
Vera picks up her fork with concentration. She takes another bite, chews, swallows, and she watches me as she eats.
After a few bites she points the fork at me. “You’re going to sit right there and tell me the rest, and I’m going to finish this, because it’s the best thing I’ve eaten in years and I refuse to let a night in jail ruin it. Plus we have to talk about that kiss.”
God. I stare at the woman. There is one thought in my head. I’m going to marry her.