Chapter 6
Chapter Six
KRUGER
By the time I get back, the sun is rising and I’m fucked. I yawn as I pull up to the prospect, who is sitting on the ground next to his bike. He stands and stretches when he sees me approach.
“Any issues?”
“All quiet.”
“Alright, thanks.”
He nods, shoves his helmet on, and climbs back on his bike. I don’t bother putting mine away. I’ll pull it into the garage later.
I let myself in, hanging up my cut before locking up. I head to the kitchen and grab a glass of water, drinking it down before refilling it. Delphi’s painkillers will have worn off, so the pain will likely wake her. I open the kitchen drawer to grab them, but I frown when I see the bag is gone.
I look toward the stairs and curse. She must have already woken up in pain and come down to find them. She could have fallen and hurt herself, and I wouldn’t have even fucking known.
Leaving the glass where it is, I hurry upstairs, visions of her lying unconscious in the bathroom flashing in my head. I shove her door open, harder than necessary, and move to the bed. It takes me a second to realize she isn’t in it before I’m running to the bathroom.
I freeze when I find that empty, too. My fear of her falling turns into something else when I realize she’s gone.
I check the closet and drawers. Most of her stuff is still here, but I think a few things are missing.
I didn’t pay enough attention to what I was unpacking to be certain.
I recheck the bathroom, looking for her toothbrush. When I see it’s not there, I know.
“Fuck!” I grip my hair before pulling out my cell and dialing Pig. He doesn’t have a Bluetooth helmet, so I leave a message that he won’t pick up until he pulls over. As it rings, I search the rest of the house, finding her bag gone from my office, too.
“All quiet?” I growl when the beep sounds for me to leave a message. “She’s fucking gone, you prick. If she’s hurt, I’ll gut you.” I hang up as I move through the rest of the house before dialing Havoc.
“What the fuck? Do you know what time it is?”
“She’s gone.”
“What?”
“I went to sort out the fucking alarm. One of the windows was broken, so I had to find some wood and board it up. By the time I got back, she was gone.”
“I thought the prospect was watching her.”
“Well, apparently, he did a shit job. You better keep him the fuck away from me.”
“For fuck’s sake,” he grumbles. I hear him move, and Neveah’s sleepy voice in the background.
“Go back to sleep,” he tells her. Though I adore Tink, I want to reach through the phone and wrap my hands around Havoc’s throat.
In another life, it would be me lying beside Delphi, telling her to go back to sleep as she looks up at me with a soft smile. He’s living the life I can only dream of, and the best he’s got is “for fuck’s sake.”
“I’ll get G on it. See if he can find her.” He hangs up, leaving me wanting to throw my phone across the room.
“Fuck this.” I put my cut back on, shove my phone in my pocket, grab my keys, and head out. I take off with no destination in mind, half hoping I’ll see her, half hoping I don’t. That way, I can convince myself she’s tucked up safe in bed and not dead in a ditch somewhere.
“Yeah, like she hasn’t survived all these years just fine on her own.
Get a fucking grip, man.” I say it out loud, hoping I’ll knock some sense into myself, but it doesn’t help.
I pulled her unconscious body from a fire and breathed air into her after the explosion.
Too many times, death has been right there between us.
It’s beginning to feel like it’s biding its time to tear her from me.
I don’t know how long I ride around, but the world woke up while I was lost in my panic. Now they’re going about their day, heading to work or out for breakfast, like everything is fine. Nothing is fucking fine.
When I feel my phone vibrate, I hit the button on my helmet to answer the call. “Delphi?”
“She even have a phone?” G’s voice comes through my helmet, making me curse.
“No, it got fucked up in the explosion. I haven’t had time to replace it.”
“She got an iPad, by any chance?”
“Yeah, why?”
“She booked a cab and paid online. Picked her up down the road from your place.”
“Fuck. Any idea where she went?”
He reels off the name of a local motel. For the first time all night, I let out a sigh of relief. “Thanks, G.”
“It’s what I do.”
He hangs up as I do a U-turn and head toward the motel.
I park near the trees, keeping my bike mostly out of view, before heading inside but leaving my helmet on.
There’s a skinny kid behind the desk, looking half asleep.
He jolts when he sees me, straightening up when his eyes move over my cut.
Everyone in Raven Falls knows who the Raven Souls MC is.
“I’m looking for my wife.”
His mouth drops open, and he looks uncomfortable. “I can’t give that information out, sir.”
I pull my helmet off. When he gets a look at my face, he blanches, his face paling even further than before. If that’s possible.
“My wife, Delphi Anders. What room is she in?”
He swallows, but I can see the name jogs something in his brain. Delphi’s like that— hard to forget.
He swallows and looks to the ground. Something about his actions rubs me the wrong way. I just don’t know why.
“She’s in Room 39.”
Ironically, it’s the fact that he does what I ask that pisses me off. He folded so fucking easily. For all he knows, I’m a nasty ex set on harming her, and he just gave me everything I needed to do so. I reach over the desk and grab him by the scruff of the neck.
“Not again,” he cries out.
I frown because I haven’t laid a finger on him until now. “I get that I’m at fault for this shit, but it pisses me off how easily you caved. What kind of man puts a woman in danger like that?”
“I don’t get paid enough for this shit. You guys have marital issues, then keep it in your own damn house.”
I shake him a little before letting him go.
He hurries away through a door behind him, slamming it closed.
I shake my head when I hear the flick of a lock before moving behind the desk.
I sit in the chair the guy just jumped up from and awaken the computer from standby mode.
It takes me a second to find the information I need.
When I do, I get a spare key for Del’s room.
In just a few minutes, I’m strolling across the lobby to the rooms, finding it on the ground floor.
I pause outside her door and look around.
I don’t see anyone else about as I hold the keycard up to the lock and wait for the light to flash green.
I push the door, but it won’t open even though it’s unlocked.
I jiggle the handle and try again. She must have wedged something against the door to prevent it from opening.
Smart woman. Of course, that only works when you don’t rent a room on the ground fucking floor.
I turn back the way I came, counting the rooms as I pass them. When I make it outside, all I have to do is count the windows. I don’t know whether to be happy or pissed when I find her room with the window ajar. Does this woman have no self-preservation skills?
I slip my hand inside and pull the window open farther.
My eyes land on the bed. Delphi is lying in the center, the covers kicked off.
Her T-shirt has ridden up around her waist. My eyes land on her ass, covered only by a pair of black bikini briefs.
They’re nothing special as far as underwear goes, but they might as well be see-through for how my cock reacts.
As quietly as I can, I climb through the window, but I needn’t have worried.
She doesn’t stir. Once inside, I bend down and unlace my boots before toeing them off and slipping my cut from my shoulders.
I look around and see the desk chair wedged under the door handle.
I drag it back to its rightful place before hanging my cut on the back of it.
I don’t bother stripping out of the rest of my clothes, not trusting myself to keep my body under control if I do. I climb onto the bed beside her and gently maneuver her onto my chest. Only then does everything inside me settle.
When she wakes up, the peace will once more devolve into war because she’s not in the right headspace to understand what this is.
How do I convince this woman who thinks the worst of me that I’ve loved her for a whole lot fucking longer than she has hated me?
That when I pushed her away, it was more from fear than anger.
She thinks I hated her, but I never did.
I wanted to. God, did I ever. Life would have been so much easier for both of us that way.
I almost convinced myself that she was the villain, made easier by those around me fanning the flames of blame.
Looking at her now, I wonder how I doubted her for a second.
It’s hard to get your head around how you could be so damn wrong about someone.
I wanted to believe she fooled me, but I was only fooling myself.
When I think back to that night, to how we all turned on her, I’m confronted with the fact that we let our anger cloud our judgment and reasoning.
It became an enraged entity demanding its pound of flesh, and we fed it with a callousness that shocks me even now.
Maybe if we’d manned up and fixed shit after the dust had settled.
And maybe if we’d thought about it with a level head, she’d have come around a little easier.
Now we’ll never know. Instead of falling on our swords, we doubled down, never doing anything to bridge the gap and hear her side of the story.
We went from victims to bad guys, and I’m not sure anything I say can change that.
With my thoughts a chaotic mess, I’m surprised I drift off to sleep as quickly as I do. I’m grateful for the reprieve when, a few hours later, I’m woken by a squirming woman trying to get away from me.