Chapter Five
Landry
K eegan leads me out of his booth with his hand wrapped firmly around mine, as if to keep me from disappearing on him. He cradles Lily with his other hand, keeping her tucked up against his chest.
“Elodie, I need you to cancel my appointments,” he says as soon as we step into the waiting room. “I’ve got some shit to take care of.”
The girl behind the counter, Elodie, is staring at him and Lily with wide eyes. I see the questions on the tip of her tongue. Before she can ask them, Lily whimpers.
Keegan immediately nuzzles her little head. “Daddy’s got you, baby girl.”
Elodie gasps, drawing his attention.
“Don’t ask,” Keegan growls at her. “Not right now.”
She stares at him for a long moment before nodding and then peeking over at me. I’m not sure how I missed it, but I think they’re related. Siblings, maybe. They have the same nose, same lips.
I want to step behind Keegan and hide from her probing gaze, but I don’t.
“You’re the one my brother has been obsessing over,” she murmurs eventually, her lips turning up at the corners.
I glance up at him, my eyes wide. Obsessing?
“Elodie,” he growls as if telling her to stop talking. But I see the truth written all over his face.
He meant it when he said he looked for me. He…missed me. I’m not sure why that hurts so much, but it does. Maybe because I didn’t expect it. I thought about him every single day. I missed him all the damn time. And I wondered, every second, if he ever thought of me. But I never let myself truly believe that he did or that he was out there, missing me the same way. I think it would have broken me had I known.
Being locked up was hard enough. I spent every day in a single room with no one to talk to except the baby growing in my belly. No one hurt me. I was invisible behind that door, like treasure in a freaking vault. Except, the treasure was the baby growing in my womb. The one they wanted to take. I think they were afraid I’d hurt myself or lose the baby if they bothered me too much, so they did the opposite and didn’t bother me at all.
Loneliness may be the worst punishment of all. The effects are insidious. I felt like I was slowly losing my mind. And maybe that’s what they wanted…for me to lose it. For me to forget who and what I needed to fight for.
Memories of that one perfect day with Keegan and the need to protect Lily kept me going. It kills me a little to know that he’s been suffering too. I never wanted that for him.
“Oh my gosh. She is!” She stares at me. “You’re from here?”
“I…no.”
Her brows furrow as she glances at Keegan. “I thought you said…?”
“I lied,” Keegan snaps.
“What? Why?”
I gape between them, not sure what they’re talking about.
“I can’t believe you lied to us!” Elodie cries, glaring at her brother.
“Enough, Elodie,” he snaps, the warning in his voice clearer this time. “She wasn’t your business or Coby’s. She still isn’t.”
His sister laughs quietly.
“I need you to call Dillon and tell him to meet me at the MC clubhouse. Tell him it’s important.”
My gaze flies to him, anxiety churning through me. I don’t want to go see an MC. The last place I want to be is anywhere near an MC.
Keegan must sense my anxiety because he squeezes my hand. “It’s okay, sweetness,” he murmurs. “Do you trust me?”
I don’t even hesitate before I nod. Maybe I shouldn’t trust him. He could take our daughter, keep me from ever seeing her again. But I know instinctively that he isn’t that kind of guy. I wouldn’t have fallen for him if he were. And I did fall. So damn hard.
Is it possible that he fell too? It can’t be…can it?
“I’ll get him out there,” Elodie says, her voice soft.
I peek over at her to see her watching us with a look on her face that makes my heart ache. It’s some combination of happiness and sorrow that I don’t understand.
“Come on,” Keegan murmurs, wrapping his arm around my waist to lead me out of the shop.
“What did you lie about?” I ask, curious.
He sighs heavily. “I told them I met someone here in town, and then she disappeared. Figured it was better than admitting that I was hung up on someone whose name I didn’t even know.”
“Oh,” I whisper, swallowing hard. “I’m sorry.”
He squeezes my waist as we head toward a massive black truck parked a few spots from the front door.
He pauses beside it, muttering a curse. “I don’t have a car seat.”
“I do.” I point at my car. The thing is so old it’s more rust than metal at this point. I stole it from a junkyard in Dallas. I figured by the time anyone noticed it was missing, I’d be long gone. I stole the tags from an elderly lady in New Mexico because I knew she wouldn’t notice, either.
I feel worse about that than I do about stealing the car. But I couldn’t afford for Garrick and the MC to find me, and I had no money. I’ve stolen virtually everything to get me to this point…to get Lily to safety. If I go to prison for it, at least she’ll be free. At least I won’t be back in their hands.
“Jesus Christ,” Keegan mutters, scowling at the car like he wants to set it on fire, but he carefully passes Lily to me before stomping toward it to get her car seat. He grabs her bag and everything else he can carry, too.
By the time he stalks back toward us, his arms full of what few belongings we have, I’m thinking about running just to keep him from getting his hands on me. He looks like he’s ready to commit murder.
“You’ve been living in the car,” he growls.
I glance down at my feet as shame crashes through me in a tidal wave.
“How long, Landry?”
“F-five months,” I whisper. “I pretended I was going into labor. When they took me back to examine me, I snuck out.” I was so fucking scared they were going to catch me, but I don’t tell him that. I don’t tell him that I was too scared to go to a hospital when I went into labor three weeks later, either.
An old country doctor and his wife delivered her in a spare bedroom at their house in New Mexico. We stayed with them for two weeks. Even though I couldn’t pay them, they were kinder to me than anyone else has been in a long time. They sent me on my way with a car seat, baby clothes, and five hundred dollars in my pocket.
One day, I’ll be able to pay it back.
Keegan looks like he wants to hit something as he digests the news. But he just touches my cheek gently and sighs before opening the back door of the truck. Once he tosses our stuff in, he quickly gets Lily’s car seat settled in, figuring out all the safety straps a lot faster than I did the first time.
He’s so gentle with her when I pass her to him. He kisses her little head before buckling her in and then helps lift me into the passenger side. His hands around my waist send a jolt through me.
He stares into my eyes for a long moment before releasing me. My heart pounds against my ribcage as I fumble with the seatbelt as he circles around the truck.
We don’t speak for several minutes as he drives. I don’t know what to say. I’m so damn tired of running. I’m tired of being afraid. This is the first time since that day in his arms where I feel…hope. And that’s a dangerous thing. But I feel it anyway.
“You aren’t driving that car anymore, Landry,” he finally murmurs, glancing over at me. “It’s not safe.”
“I…” I open my mouth to argue and then snap it closed and nod instead.
“I’ll get you a new one.”
“That isn’t necessary, Keegan.”
“It is,” he disagrees. “You need something safe, especially if you’ll be driving around with Lily in the car.”
My heart leaps into my throat, fear pinging through me. “Keegan, I…”
“I know what you want,” he says, his voice tight. “I know why you came. The answer is no, Landry. I’m not taking her so you can turn yourself over to them. You’re staying right here with her.”
“They’ll come for me,” I whisper, hands clenching into fists. “I can’t be anywhere near her when they come.”
“You aren’t leaving our daughter, baby.”
“You think that’s what I want?” I swallow hard, refusing to cry. “The whole time they kept me locked up, the only thing I thought about was getting her out…getting her to you so they couldn’t take her.”
“They aren’t taking her,” he growls, his hands white around the steering wheel. “And they aren’t taking you from me again, either.”
I stare at him with wide eyes.
“I’ve spent every day of the last year praying you’d come back into my life, sweetness. One day wasn’t enough. You’re mine. I knew it that day, and I’m even more certain of it now. I’m not letting those motherfuckers get their hands on you again now.”
“You don’t know them, Keegan. W-what they’re capable of. What they’ll do.” I shiver, squeezing my eyes closed. “As far as they’re concerned, I’m their property. In their eyes, that makes her their property too. And I stole her from them. They’ll never stop looking.”
For long moments, he doesn’t say anything. But I feel his hand in mine, gently prying my fist loose before he links our fingers together. Almost immediately, I feel calmer. Safer. Like I did back in Colorado a lifetime ago, when he wrapped me up in his arms and took me up to his room. For the first time in a year, I felt safe. I feel that way again now.
And just like then, it’s a dangerous feeling. Because I’m less safe now than I was then. And so is he. So long as I’m here, he and Lily will never be safe.
“I need you to trust me again like you did in Colorado, sweetness,” he murmurs, his voice a soft rumble threatening to annihilate my defenses. “I swear to you that they won’t get you and they won’t get Lily. But you have to trust me to keep you safe.”
I want to trust him. Everything in me screams at me to trust him. But how can I when it’s his life I’m gambling with? When it’s our daughter’s life?
How can I not?
“I’m scared, Keegan. So fucking scared,” I whisper.
He makes a sound in the back of his throat that kills me a little. It’s like my pain is his, like he’s dying because I’m hurting.
“I know, sweetness. I know,” he whispers, clinging to my fingers. “But I can fix this. The sheriff and the MC will help keep you safe.”
My eyes fly open wide. “S-Sheriff?”
“Yeah. Dillon Armstrong.”
My heart stalls. It feels like my throat is going to close up on me. “I…I…”
“Breathe, Landry baby. Just breathe.”
How he expects me to do that when I’ve spent the last three months committing one long crime spree, I don’t know. If the sheriff finds out, the only place I’ll be going is jail.
“I m-may be in trouble,” I whisper reluctantly. “Legal trouble. Um, for the car. And…other stuff.”
“Shit.” He shoots me a look. “You stole the car?”
I jerk my chin in a nod, refusing to meet his gaze. “And the tags. And…other stuff.”
He doesn’t say anything. He probably regrets promising to keep me safe now. Why wouldn’t he? The mother of his child is a thief and a liar. Probably not the kind of woman he wants to tell anyone he was involved with. And now, we have a kid together.
“We’ll handle it, Landry baby.”
I whip my head in his direction, my eyes wide. “What?”
“We’ll handle it,” he says firmly. “You did what you had to do to survive and keep Lily safe. No one will hold that against you.”
“Except the sheriff,” I whisper.
He chuckles quietly. “Dillon isn’t that kind of sheriff.”
Not that kind of sheriff? I don’t even know what that means. Aren’t all cops the same kind of cop?
“Has Lily seen a doctor lately?”
“No,” I whisper, feeling two inches tall again. “I…” I exhale a breath. “I went into labor in a little town in New Mexico. A doctor delivered her at his house. I was afraid that any sort of paper trail would lead them to us.”
He sighs quietly.
“You probably think I’m a terrible mom.”
He glances over at me, surprise in his eyes. “Is that what you think?”
“Why wouldn’t you?” I ask bitterly. “I’ve been driving around with her in a stolen vehicle since she was born. We lived in it. I can’t take her to the doctor. I’ve stolen most of what we have.” Tears burn at my eyes. “She deserves so much better.”
“You both do,” he says softly, and I know he means it.
But with the weight of my decisions choking me, it’s hard to see it that way. I did what I had to do to protect her and keep her away from Garrick and the MC…but it doesn’t make the guilt of my crimes any easier to swallow.
I’m not sure anything will ever do that.