Chapter 21
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Romeo
I didn’t leave Rosewood.
After dropping off Sugar’s car, I rode far enough out of town that anyone watching would’ve assumed I had, then circled back and parked behind an abandoned gas station near the edge of town.
The windows had been boarded over years ago, the pumps were little more than rusted shells, and weeds split the concrete where cars used to stop.
Nobody paid attention to places like this, and I prayed no one noticed the bike parked in the lot. I did my best to hide it, but Rosewood was a small fucking town like Diamond Creek. The kind of town where people knew everyone’s business.
I checked the time—four-thirty. The hardware store closed at five.
The call I made to Nav earlier had filled in the blanks Fiona couldn’t. Dennis Coleman, twenty-six, single, worked at the local hardware store and owned a small house outside town. Nav had also found a few other things I doubted Dennis would’ve volunteered over coffee.
I’d learned patience in Louisiana. The bayou punished anybody stupid enough to hurry. You watched. Waited. Learned patterns before you disturbed them.
Club life had only honed that skill.
Dennis made himself predictable before he ever knew someone was watching. I’d driven past the hardware store earlier and seen his car in the lot. There was only one road he was likely to take home.
So I waited.
My thoughts kept wandering back to Fiona. The look on her face when I kissed her forehead that morning had nearly ruined me. She’d wanted more—I knew that much. Probably should’ve felt smug about it.
Instead, it scared the hell out of me how badly I’d wanted to give it to her.
Not because kissing her was some line I could never cross. But because once I crossed it, I knew myself well enough to understand stopping would become a whole lot harder. Fiona deserved time to decide what she actually wanted.
Dennis Coleman apparently didn’t understand that concept.
At five-fifteen, his beat-up sedan pulled away from the hardware store, and I followed. Two cars between us through town. Three when traffic allowed it.
Dennis never looked back.
His house sat outside Rosewood on a narrow road where the properties spread farther apart. Small, one-story place with peeling paint and an overgrown yard. No close neighbors made it convenient, so I parked a block away and waited another twenty minutes. Just enough time for him to get comfortable.
Then I pulled a mask over my face and walked to the house.
The front door gave on the first kick.
Wood cracked around the frame, and the door slammed against the interior wall. Dennis appeared in the kitchen doorway, his face white with fear. “What—”
I reached him before the rest of the words left his mouth.
My fist caught his jaw and dropped him hard enough that the back of his head struck the floor. Blood immediately ran from his nose. I grabbed the front of his shirt and hauled him upright against the wall.
“You don’t listen real good, do you?”
“I didn’t... I didn’t do anything.”
I slammed him against the wall again. A framed picture beside his head fell and shattered.
“You made her uncomfortable.” I tightened my grip. “You. Kept. Asking. When she said no.”
“I was just—”
My forearm went across his throat, cutting off his excuses.
“Let me tell you something about me, Dennis.” I leaned closer. “I might be a laid-back Cajun swamp rat, but I can lean forward real quick when I need to.”
His hands clawed at my arm. I eased the pressure enough to let him breathe. If he was going to learn a lesson, he had to be conscious.
“Fiona belongs to me,” I said quietly. “And that means anyone who makes her uncomfortable, anyone who touches her, anyone who so much as looks at her the wrong way—they answer to me.”
“Please...”
My fist buried itself in his stomach and he folded and dropped to the floor. For a moment, the only sounds in the room were Dennis trying to breathe and pieces of broken glass shifting beneath my boots.
This could’ve been over at the coffee shop.
He could’ve listened when Fiona said no.
Hell, it should’ve been over the first time she said it.
That was the part men like Dennis never seemed to understand. They heard a woman’s answer and treated it like the beginning of a negotiation.
I crouched beside him and grabbed a fistful of his hair, forcing his face up.
“Here’s what you’re gonna do,” I said. “You’re gonna call the sheriff when I leave. Tell him someone broke in. Tell him they were covered head to toe. Couldn’t get a good look. Couldn’t describe them if your life depended on it.”
His eyes widened behind the blood running down his forehead.
“You got that, Dennis? Because make no mistake.” I waited until he focused on me. “Your fucking life depends on it.”
He nodded fast.
“You don’t mention me. You don’t mention Fiona. You keep your goddamn mouth shut about that part. Understand?”
“I-I swear.”
“And if you’re smart, if you want to keep breathing, you’ll leave Rosewood. Pack your shit and go. Because if I see you near her again, if I hear you’ve so much as said her name, I’m coming back.” I leaned closer. “And next time, I won’t stop.”
His head dropped when I released him.
I stood over him for another second, flexing my hands through the pain in my knuckles, his blood darkening the skin over them. The rage that had brought me here hadn’t disappeared, but the worst of it had burned itself out.
Dennis understood now.
I could see that much.
I stepped over him and headed toward the broken door.
At the threshold, I looked back. “Stay away from her. Because next time, I will fucking kill you.”
Dennis didn’t answer; he didn’t need to. I’d made myself crystal fucking clear.
I stopped at a gas station outside Rosewood to fill up and grab coffee before heading west. The fluorescent light above the pumps turned the blood on my knuckles almost black.
I took a drink and looked down at my hand.
Hours earlier, that same hand had rested against Fiona’s back as I walked her through the coffee shop.
She’d trusted it there.
That thought did more to settle me than anything else had.
Fiona would’ve hated what I’d just done.
Or maybe she wouldn’t.
I wasn’t sure which possibility bothered me more.
She knew I was a biker. She was smart enough to know the Silver Shadows weren’t a Sunday riding club. Eventually, she’d learn there were things about my life that didn’t fit neatly beside flowers and prom dates.
But tonight wasn’t the night. I wasn’t hiding what I’d done because I was ashamed of it. I looked down at the split skin over my knuckles.
Nope.
Not one damn bit.
Dennis had ignored her no. I’d made sure he wouldn’t do it again.
What Fiona didn’t need was the burden of knowing someone had been hurt because of something that involved her. She’d spend too much time wondering whether she’d caused it.
She hadn’t.
Dennis had.
That distinction was clear to me.
I wasn’t sure it would be clear to her yet.
I finished the coffee and crushed the empty cup before tossing it into the trash.
One day, Fiona was going to see all of me.
Not the version Georgie imagined when he heard the name Romeo. Not some polished man I could invent long enough to win her.
Me.
The man who remembered her favorite flowers.
The man who crossed fifteen hundred miles because she wanted to go to prom.
And the man who could leave Dennis Coleman bleeding on his floor without losing a minute of sleep over it.
Whether she could love all of that wasn’t mine to decide. That was the part I had to remember.
I swung onto the bike and started the engine. Rosewood disappeared behind me as I pulled onto the highway.
I’d told Granny Fiona got to choose what I meant to her. That truth didn’t become less important just because there were parts of me she hadn’t seen yet.
If anything, it made it more important.
And someday, when she was ready to look at the whole picture, I’d have to trust her enough to let her decide.