Chapter 38
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
HUNTER
We pull up outside the apartment complex at ten. Two trucks. Three Sterlings. And one very nervous redhead in my passenger seat who hasn’t stopped twisting her rings since we left the ranch.
“He won’t be here,” I tell her. “I made sure of that.”
She nods, but her eyes are scanning the parking lot like she’s expecting him to step out from behind a pillar.
“Lola!”
The scream comes from across the lot. A small, dark-haired woman is sprinting toward us at a speed that seems medically inadvisable in heeled boots. She’s followed at a jog by a guy in a chef’s apron who I’m guessing is Luke.
Lola barely gets out of the truck before Violet slams into her.
The hug is instant and fierce. Violet’s arms lock around Lola’s neck, and she’s talking a mile a minute. Half of it questions, half of it profanity, all of it delivered at a volume that makes Ace raise an eyebrow from across the lot.
“Let me see.” Violet pulls back, grabs Lola’s hand gently, and tilts it side to side.
Her face goes white. Then red.
“I’m going to kill him,” she says.
“It’s handled,” Lola says quietly.
“Handled how?”
Lola glances at me over Violet’s shoulder.
“Handled,” she repeats.
Violet turns. And sees me properly. Her eyes narrow, tracking from my boots to my hat, taking my measure the way a woman does when she’s deciding whether to trust a man or stab him.
I give her a nod.
“Good to see you again.” I greet her.
She gives me a tight lipped smile. “Yeah. And you, Mr. Sterling.”
“Please, call me Hunter.”
She glances between me and Lola, and then her shoulders relax. “Okay. Hunter.”
Lola steps between us. “V, Hunter’s helping us move out. He’s offered us a place on his ranch. Both of us. You’ll have your own house.”
Violet blinks. Looks at Lola. Looks at me. Looks at the two trucks full of Sterlings parked behind me.
“I’m sorry, what?”
“There’s a guest house on the property,” I say. “Two bedrooms. Its own kitchen. Just had it renovated last spring. It’s yours for as long as you want it.”
She stares at me like I’ve just offered her a spaceship.
“Why?”
“Because Lola’s not going back to an apartment owned by the man who hurt her. And I’m not letting her best friend stay there either. There ain’t many places available in New Falls that aren’t owned by Reese or his family. I’m offering you a safe home.”
Something shifts behind Violet’s eyes. The suspicion doesn’t vanish, but it softens around the edges.
“V,” Lola says gently. “Please.”
Violet looks at her best friend. Sees whatever she needs to see. Then turns to me. “Fine. But I’m paying rent.”
“No, you’re not,” I reply flatly.
I don’t need the money.
“Yes, I am,” she argues.
“We can argue about that later,” Lola cuts in. “Can we please just go pack before I lose my nerve?”
I watch the two of them head into the building arm in arm. Violet is whispering something in Lola’s ear that makes her laugh. That’s when I see it. The friendship.
Not the kind that evaporates when things get hard. This is the kind forged in the same fire that makes family, the kind where one of them would step in front of a bullet for the other without a second’s hesitation.
A tightness pulls in my chest. That’s the kind of friendship I thought I had with Reese. I was wrong.
Violet hasn’t let go of Lola’s arm since she got here. She’s steering her through the parking lot like a bodyguard in heeled boots, checking every corner, every shadow, every parked car.
I like her.
I like that Lola has someone who loves her that fiercely. Someone who showed up in full war mode at ten in the morning with zero information because her best friend called and said something had happened.
Ace appears beside me. “The little one is terrifying.”
“Yeah. She is.”
“I like her,” he tells me.
I raise an eyebrow. I ain’t heard Ace even mention another woman since Harper took off and dragged his heart with her. Perhaps, he’s getting somewhere.
It’s taken me six years after Ashley left me to let someone into my heart again. Into my home. Maybe it’s time for him, too. I doubt his girl is ever coming back to New Falls.
I say, “Me too,” as we watch the girls.
We head upstairs. The apartment is smaller than I expected. Two bedrooms, a kitchen, a bathroom that barely fits two people standing.
I spot Lola’s phone on the floor by the couch. Screen intact. I pick it up and pocket it for her.
And then I see it. My hat. On the floor by the dining table. I pick it up. Turn it over and let the anger boil through me. And then I see his face when I was smashing it up, and I feel slightly better.
Reese must have found it. Must have held it in his hands and known exactly what it meant. That’s what set him off. That’s what turned a confrontation into something worse.
I carry it over to Lola. She’s standing in the doorway of her bedroom with a half-packed box in her arms and Violet beside her.
I don’t say anything. I just place it on her head.
She goes still. Her eyes lift to mine, and something passes between us that doesn’t need words. She reaches up with her good hand and adjusts it, tips the brim, and lets it sit.
She looks fucking perfect. She looks exactly like mine, just as I am hers. “This is coming home with me,” she says quietly.
“Damn right it is.”
The word home coming from her lips has my chest aching.
Violet watches this whole exchange with her eyebrows somewhere near her hairline. Then she looks at me, looks at Lola in the cowboy hat, and shakes her head.
“I’m going to need someone to explain the hat thing to me,” she mutters, heading back into the bedroom.
Lola grins. I grin. And something that was broken settles back into place.
It takes about thirty minutes to strip the apartment. Ace and Colten haul boxes. Luke handles the kitchen. Lola and Violet pack their rooms.
I’m carrying a stack of boxes down the stairwell when Violet appears on the landing. “Hunter. A word.”
It’s not a question.
I set the boxes down. She’s standing with her arms crossed, chin tipped up, heeled boots putting her at roughly my chest height. She looks like an angry chihuahua squaring up to a rottweiler, and she does not care.
“What are your intentions with my best friend?”
I bite the inside of my cheek to keep from smiling. “My intentions?”
“You heard me. Because let me be very clear.” She takes a step closer.
Points a finger at my chest. “If you hurt her, I will end you. I don’t care how big you are.
I don’t care how many brothers you have.
I don’t care about your ranch or your trucks or your stupid hat.
I will burn your life to the ground, and I will enjoy doing it. Are we clear?”
The laugh is right there. Sitting in my chest. Begging to get out. I swallow it.
“Are you threatening me?” I ask.
“Absolutely, I am.”
“Right here? Right now?”
“I’ll threaten you wherever I damn well please.”
“With that finger?”
“With whatever I have available.” She doesn’t back down an inch. If anything, the finger presses harder into my chest.
I nod slowly. Giving her my full attention, because this woman has earned it. I don’t think she has any idea she’s talking to a mafia boss like this. People have lost body parts for less.
“Violet. I have no intention of hurting Lola. She’s the best thing that’s walked into my life in a very long time, and I plan on spending whatever time I’ve got making sure she knows that every single day.”
She narrows her eyes. Not satisfied.
“And if I do hurt her? Then I’ll hand you the matches myself.”
She stares at me for a long beat. Searching for the lie and not finding one.
“Okay.” She drops her hand. “But I’m watching you, cowboy.”
“I’d expect nothing less.”
“Good.” She straightens up. Smooths down her top as if we’ve just concluded a business negotiation. “Now go carry those boxes. You’re not just standing there looking pretty.”
She turns on her heel and marches back into the apartment. I hear her shouting at Ace to be careful with her makeup bag. Ace shouts back that he’ll be careful when she stops throwing shoes at him.
I now see why Luke runs after her like a lost puppy.
I pick up the boxes and head downstairs, and this time I let the laugh out.
Lola is leaning against the truck in the parking lot, the sun hitting her red hair, wearing my T-shirt just tucked into her sweatpants at the waist, looking like she belongs in my life more than anything I’ve ever owned.
“Did Violet just threaten you?” she asks, biting back a smile.
“She did.”
“She’s the best person I know,” she says.
“Yeah.” I set the boxes in the truck bed and turn to face her. “I can see that.”
She pushes off the truck and then wraps her arms around my waist.
“Thank you for this,” she says. “For all of this.”
I hold her tight and kiss the top of her head. Breathe her in.
Then I pull back. “Violet, Luke—you two ride with Colten. He’ll take you to the ranch. Get you settled in the guest house.”
Violet frowns. “Why? Where are you going?”
“We’ve got one more thing to take care of here.”
Lola looks at me then, at Ace, who’s leaning against the other truck with his arms crossed and a grin spreading slowly across his face.
“What kind of thing?” Lola asks.
“The fun kind.”
Violet opens her mouth to argue, but Luke gently steers her toward Colten’s truck. “Come on. I think this is a them thing.”
She glares at me over her shoulder the entire way. I give her a wave.
Once Colten’s truck disappears down the road, I turn to Lola. “This is Reese’s apartment.”
“Yeah. I’m aware.”
“He owns the furniture. The fixtures. The appliances. Everything that’s left in there belongs to the man who put his hands on you.”
She stares at me. I watch the realization dawn across her face. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”
Ace opens the truck bed and pulls out a baseball bat. Holds up a second one. “Ladies first,” he says.
Lola looks at the bat. Looks at me. Looks at the building.
And then she smiles. This time it’s more wild. “Give me that,” she says, taking the bat from Ace.
The three of us head back upstairs. The apartment is empty now.
Stripped of everything that belonged to Lola and Violet.
What’s left is Reese’s—his couch, his coffee table, his kitchen stools, the TV he mounted on the wall, the bathroom mirror with the stupid backlight he probably bragged about when he gave them the tour.
Lola stands in the middle of the living room. Bat in her good hand, my hat on her head.
She takes a breath, then she swings.
The coffee table goes first. The glass top shatters on impact, and she lets out a scream that’s been building since last night; it almost seems cathartic. She brings the bat down again, and the legs buckle. Again, the frame collapses.
Ace whoops and puts his boot through the TV.
I take the kitchen apart. Stools cracked against the counter. Cabinet doors ripped off their hinges. His fancy espresso machine launches across the room and explodes in a shower of plastic and chrome.
But it’s Lola I’m watching, and trying not to get a hard-on.
She moves through the apartment like a storm.
The couch cushions get slashed with a kitchen knife.
The bathroom mirror shatters under the bat, and she doesn’t even flinch when the glass hits the tile.
She smashes the light fixtures. Puts holes in the drywall.
Rips the shower curtain down with her bare hands.
She’s crying and laughing, both at the same time. Swinging that bat with her good arm while her bandaged hand stays pressed against her ribs, and every hit is a word she didn’t get to say. Every hit is a door she couldn’t lock. Every hit is a man who told her she didn’t have a choice.
She has a choice now.
She stands in the middle of the wreckage, chest heaving, bat resting on her shoulder, my hat tipped sideways on her head. The apartment is destroyed. Every surface broken. Every wall marked. Reese won’t recognize it when he comes back.
Good. Let him stand in the ruins and know exactly who left them.
She turns to me. Eyes bright. Cheeks flushed. A streak of sweat cuts through the dust on her forehead.
“I needed that,” she breathes.
“I know you did.”
Ace kicks the espresso machine across the floor. “Can we do this every weekend?”
Lola laughs. A proper, full, from-the-gut laugh that bounces off the destroyed walls. I take the bat from her. Pull her into me and kiss the top of her head. “Now let’s get you home, firefly.”
She adjusts the hat on her head, takes my hand, and walks out without looking back.
Turns out Sterling Ranch didn’t become a real home until I had Lola Jackson in it with me.