17. Austin
Austin
“ A nd you didn’t get a look at the fucker?” Booker asked as we came back inside the house, making sure to lock the door behind us.
A little more than an hour after the incident, Booker had arrived on McKenna’s doorstep—alone.
Henley had stayed at the ranch to watch over a sleeping Brynne curled up with Nightmare.
Booker didn’t want to wake her despite knowing damn well she’d be pissed as hell by the time morning came around, wanting to know exactly what had happened to her best friend.
He claimed he’d deal with it then. Better her be mad than in danger, too.
Couldn’t say I didn’t agree with him on that.
“McKenna got a glimpse at him longer than I did, but even then, the forest was dark. Moon’s barely out tonight, and from what I did see, he was wearing a black hoodie.
” My ass hit the cushion of the couch, the memory of McKenna riding me hitting me in full force.
Fuck no, I hadn’t been sleeping. The woman had been less than twenty feet away, tucked in her room.
My mind couldn’t even dream of settling with her in close proximity.
It’d been an answered prayer when her door opened and she tiptoed down that hall.
If she had wanted to wake me, I’d have shot up and bent her over this couch—just like I knew she’d dreamed of, and just like I had.
But she’d wanted me sleeping, so the best I could do was keep my eyes closed while Miss-I-Do-What-I-Want slid my cock into her warm, drenched pussy. And when she’d clenched?—
“Austin.” Booker’s voice floated into my lust-hazed mind like the cock block he was.
I cleared my throat, shifting on the seat before laying an arm over the back. He sat across from me in the chair whose placement made no damn sense—right next to the TV.
“Yep.”
“I asked if we could talk to McKenna,” he assumably repeated.
“No. She needs her rest.” I dropped my arm from the back, rubbing my neck as I leaned forward, elbows on my knees. “I’ll talk to her when she wakes up.”
Booker’s broody stare drilled into me like he was about to lecture me. That was something he was good at with Henley. Not me. So whatever he was about to say, he could save it.
“You think he was working with Lance,” I guessed.
Lance was the man we’d killed for threatening Brynne’s life.
Him and his men. He had men working for him all around, though.
We’d known shooting them wasn’t going to end the problem, and would likely only stir shit up.
What we hadn’t expected was for them to go after McKenna when she hadn’t been directly involved in any of it.
“Not a doubt in my mind. ”
My arm fell to dangle between my legs. “Why McKenna?”
“Easy target.” Booker crossed his arms, the memory of Brynne in danger likely filtering through his thoughts, if his darkening gaze was any indication. “Wouldn’t put it past his group to pick someone else out from our bunch just for the sake of it.”
“McKenna’s not with us.”
Booker crooked a brow. “No? That why you’ve been following her all over town? Why you’ve been sleeping with her?”
“We haven’t been sleeping together,” I clarified, but notably didn’t try to dodge his other assumption. I hadn’t been around the ranch as much lately, and Booker wasn’t stupid. He could guess what I was doing even if he wasn’t a witness to it.
“Messing around, then. Whatever you want to call it.” He leaned forward in his seat, mimicking my posture.
“They’re pissed we killed their head guy, and now they want revenge.
I’ve already made it clear Brynne’s not to be fucking touched, and Henley’s got no collateral good enough for them to go after. Which leaves you.”
It was no offense to Aubree, really. She and Henley had been on and off since they started.
“McKenna and I are not a thing, Booker. There’s no reason they’d go after her to get back at us. She’s not close enough.”
“Like hell.” He leaned back again, not believing me for a second. “You think I’m blind, Austin?”
“No, asshole. I think you’re delusional.”
His frown only deepened. “You flirted with her in that diner for a long fucking while. Weren’t discreet about it, either.”
“So maybe someone was already watching her.”
“Yeah—Lance.”
My brows pulled together until it hit me. He was right. Lance had gone to that diner routinely. Made a point to talk to the girls, to eavesdrop and watch who they were connected with.
“Whatever he really wanted out of this, he knew it wouldn’t end with taking Brynne. If shit goes south, always have a backup plan.” Booker visibly swallowed, lips thinning into a line before he cooled his expression. “McKenna was their backup plan.”
“We weren’t together?—”
“You were close enough that Lance took notice and likely told his men. Now they want revenge.”
“So come to the fucking source and leave her out of it.” I wasn’t afraid to fight some cocky asshole. What I was afraid of was anything happening to McKenna. I liked to think I had thick skin, but as of late, I’d found that wasn’t the case.
“Tell them that,” Booker said, knowing damn well we couldn’t.
Lance’s crew didn’t want us dead. They wanted to get even.
We killed theirs, so they’d kill ours. That was how those ego-crazy men worked.
Plus, to them, McKenna was easy. Coming after me, Booker, and Henley?
They’d be dead before they stepped foot on our ranch.
“I’m not leaving her side,” I vowed. “They’ll have to try a lot fucking harder than standing outside her window if they want to get to her.”
Booker kept quiet. No words could lighten what we knew was coming. Either they’d take McKenna, or we’d kill them first.
I wasn’t about to let anyone touch my girl, which meant there was only one fucking outcome.
“Is that bacon?” McKenna’s unusually small voice came from the end of the hall, her words raspy with sleep.
“It is,” I answered, not glancing at the overflowing plate of bacon, which sat beside the cutting board filled with every egg in this house, cooked sunny-side up—her preference. Beside that was a platter piled high with pancakes, a tower of waffles, and a stack of toast.
My back hummed with her presence as she entered the kitchen, and I snuck a peek over my shoulder to find her rubbing her eyes. “Is there even any food left in my fridge?”
“Of course. Henley restocked it.” I’d called him once Booker made it back home to ask him to do a few things for me. A grocery run was one of them.
I flipped the last pancake in the skillet, then set the spatula down. Her silence caused me to turn her way, only to find skepticism shining her gaze. Her hair was slightly frizzy from sleep, which I had to admit was…adorable. “What?”
“Why would Henley do that?” Her question was hesitant, like she assumed there was some underlying intention here.
“Because I cooked a majority of the food you had…?”
“Why would you do that?”
My eyes narrowed. “Because it’s eleven in the morning and you didn’t eat dinner last night.” That, and I couldn’t sit still.
She scanned the food like it might be fake. “But you don’t…feed me.”
With a huff, I grabbed the spatula once more and moved the pancake to the stack. Then, I turned off the heat source and went to wash the utensil in the sink. “Is that what’s too far, then? Cooking you breakfast?”
“Yes.” Her response came too quickly.
“Well, get used to it.”
“Why?”
I flicked off the faucet and set the spatula aside to air dry before grabbing the towel from the oven handle and drying my hands. “Because I’m not leaving until this asshole is caught.”
“You’ve said that before.”
My hands froze, my body going rigid. “You don’t need to remind me.”
Whatever she saw in me made her features soften. Made her tilt her head and morph her face into an expression of sorrow. “Austin?—”
“No, McKenna. You don’t get it.” I turned, tossed the rag on the counter so I could brace my hands against the edge.
Memories should’ve slammed into me right now, but I’d become so numb to them that they stayed rooted exactly where they’d been for the last ten years—in the box of bullshit I’d had to endure throughout my life.
Gentle hands pressed against my lower back, and then her forehead—or maybe her cheek—rested against my shoulder blade. “Then tell me.”
“You just got flighty over me cooking you breakfast. Now you want to know about my past?” I let out a half-assed chuckle. “You’re not making any sense, kitten.”
“I don’t know if either of us are right now,” she started, hands sliding around my waist to rest on my stomach over my shirt, “but we can live in this delusional moment. Even if it’s just for a second. If you’re okay with that.”
She was giving me an in, and I was hesitating.
McKenna and I were surface level. Having fun messing with each other, pressing one another to their limits in this fucked-up game of trying to avoid what was happening right in front of us.
I’d accepted it; she’d been shoving it away like it was a full-time job.
And while her outlook might have been shifting, I was still scared for her.
Afraid of what might happen if someone got to her if I stepped away for a moment.
Terrified of finding her hurt—or worse, dead.
This was my fault. The target on her back. The fear in her eyes on so many occasions. And for some fucking reason, she was slowly giving up on pushing me away.
Only Booker and Henley knew about my past, but maybe opening up to McKenna would make her realize how fucked the world truly was. How even though we lived in a small town, bad shit still happened.
I wasn’t sure if it’d make her see me differently. If maybe my past was too fucked up for even her to handle.
There was a time when even I thought it was too much.
“Brynne might’ve told you I lived on the ranch with Booker and Henley before we built that house,” I began.
“In a tent.” It was barely noticeable, but she held me a little tighter. Leaned against me a little more. Maybe my defenses needed to break down in order for hers to do the same so we could get past whatever we were doing and turn this into something…more.
I nodded. “I was a teenager. My life was…fine, I guess. My dad worked a good job, my mom stayed at home. I was an only child.” No emotion hit me in the chest or clogged my throat.
Telling her this almost made me feel like an emotionless machine.
“My dad didn’t want more kids after I was born.
Something about how my mom didn’t want to be touched like before, and how he blamed me for that.
But they never really fought over it. There’d be days where they wouldn’t speak but everything seemed normal from an outsider’s perspective.
“It was one of those periods where they weren’t talking when it happened.
I think it was going on day six, the longest I’d seen, when my dad came home with a gun and shot her in the living room.
” Now, I had to swallow. Swallow the image of my mom’s blood seeping from her body, onto that old, brown couch.
How there was a stain in the burgundy rug where it puddled.
I shrugged when McKenna’s fingers dug into my stomach.
“Then my dad lifted the gun to his head and killed himself right there in the front entry. There was a whole investigation, of course. The cops were kind of like my dad, blaming it on me.” I ran a hand down my mouth, focusing on the pancakes in front of me but not really seeing them.
“A lot of shit’s been my fault, McKenna.
” I turned around in her arms, cupping her cheeks so she’d really look at me.
“But you never have to fear when I’m around.
Do you hear me?” She nodded, eyes glistening with unshed tears over the story of my family.
Or maybe they were for the boy I never got to be.
I wouldn’t know. I didn’t think I’d cried since that day I had to call the police.
Since I watched both my parents leave our home in body bags.
I brought her face closer to mine, bending the slightest bit to press my forehead to hers. “I will always keep you safe.”
“I know,” she whispered, so much conviction in those two words.
She didn’t say anything else as I picked her up and wrapped her legs around my waist. I pivoted so I could rest her ass against the counter, and then I rested my head on her shoulder while she ran delicate fingers through my hair.
I think the sound of her heart healed something in me.
The same way I think the taste of her awakened something else in me—something I’d kept buried for a long, long time.
Desire for revenge.