Chapter 38
SIENNA
The wait for my husband—or ex-husband, as I’m already calling him in my head, or better yet, my second biggest mistake—was already horrible. But the real nightmare started when he finally walked into the Saloon.
Only members of Rogue Angels MC were in the diner with me, pretending to be both customers and staff.
They had been pre-warned that he was coming and told me to expect him.
My hands started shaking like crazy at that point.
It got even worse when he finally appeared.
That caused cold sweat to erupt on my back, and made my hands shake even as I held them together in a tight fist in my lap.
But I still stood up as he entered, still smiled at him wide and told him how grateful I was that he’d come.
He strode right up to me, an ugly look on his face. The kind he always wore right before he hit me. Like a storm that comes out of nothing, with almost no warning apart from that look.
I thought he was going to punch me right then and there, and I steeled myself to take it, because I’ll do nothing to jeopardize this mission as everyone is calling it.
But he didn’t hit me.
He came right up to me and hugged me close. Jabbing a gun into my stomach and whispering, “Did you think I’d just forgive you so easily?” into my ear.
That made me shake even worse than before, sure he was going to pull the trigger and that would be that.
But instead, he said. “You’re gonna keep smiling and walk out of here with me. But don’t worry, your punishment is yet to come.”
“OK,” I whispered back. Thinking they’d grab him at any moment, that Zane would jump out of somewhere and get this monster off me.
And they tried. Trinity was first to reach us.
And Kurt shot her.
I should’ve pushed him away from me then, I should’ve run. But instead, I froze. And let him lead me out of the diner with his arm around my shoulder. Trinity was bleeding. He was shooting at the others that had come to try and get him. And I just walked out with him.
Zane didn’t appear. No one stopped him.
Then suddenly I was in his car and we were driving fast. And I still feel like I’m frozen.
“I knew this was a trap,” he says. “I know who that asshole you left with is. I know he’s a part of the biker club my friends would very much like to destroy. They will do that now. But they let me get you first as a special favor. So I can punish you myself.”
The way he says special favor makes my skin crawl. What kind of power does he have over these Hydras?
Cars are passing us in the opposite direction now. Black with tinted windows, driving in formation.
“And I will enjoy punishing you,” he adds.
I could open the door and jump out. Not because I’m afraid of his punishment. But because I want to die alongside Zane and my friends.
But that would be selling the love of my life short. He’s survived worse odds, I’m sure. All those scars on his body prove it.
And I need to live too. So I can tell him I love him. Because the way I just walked out of that Saloon with Kurt looked bad. It looked like I’d gone back on my word. That I lied. Again. And I’ll never let him think that.
“Why do you even want me back?” I ask. “Why did you chase me so hard?”
He gives me a sidelong look that’s full of poison. “Because no one takes what’s mine.”
“Yours? I was never yours! I’ve always been his.”
He’s still holding the gun he used to drag me out of the Saloon. I see it drop into his lap as though in slow motion, see the back of his arm come towards my face, also in slow motion. So I have plenty of time to grab the gun, plenty of time to point it at him before the blow comes.
He strikes me with the back of his forearm, across the nose and upper lip. It hurts like fire, I taste blood in my mouth. But I’m holding the gun firmly and this is over.
“Stop the car,” I say. Watch his face turn from the poisonous anger to bewildered confusion as he sees the gun pointed at his head.
My hands are no longer shaking. My voice is firm and strong.
We’re still on the outskirts of the city, very few cars passing by. He does as he’s told pulls onto the empty gravel lot lining the road. My husband always was a coward.
The high rises of downtown LA are shimmering and twinkling in the distance, prettier than anything I’ve ever seen.
“Now what?” he asks as we just sit there in the stopped car. He’s plotting something. I see it in the way he furrows his brow. He has permanent lines etched into his skin from doing that. Always plotting. Usually something evil.
“Now you call your friends and make then back off,” I say.
He laughs. “I’m afraid I can’t do that. They have their own agenda.”
But there’s no way they’d go with him to chase his runaway wife if he didn’t control them in some way. There can’t be.
I see him decide to fight me for the gun and I’m fully ready to pull the trigger.
“Get out of the car,” I order.
He doesn’t comply right away. I see him thinking. Plotting some more. So I press the gun to his temple.
“I can’t miss at this distance,” I say coldly.
He opens his door slowly, that poisonous, dark anger in his eyes a physical presence between us. It’s worst when he’s being forced to do something he doesn’t want to do.
He steps out of the car, and I climb over the center console and go after him. We’re standing in the twilight, LA beckoning behind him, calling me home. But I’ve never been farther from home than I am right now. What do I do? Do I shoot him?
I see him tensing. He’s going to try and fight me for the gun any second now. I can still taste blood in my mouth, and I know he’ll win the fight.
“Now what?” he calmly asks the question that’s a scream in my own mind.
I hear a car speeding from somewhere, then the screech of brakes and the crunch of gravel. Pebbles are raining down on us as the car comes to a violent stop next to us.
“See, my friends are already here to get me,” he says and laughs. “They’d never let me get shot by a bitch like you.”
But I will shoot him. And I will shoot anyone who gets close to me and tries to take me away from Zane. From my home.
For a moment I think I might be hallucinating as Zane comes out of the dust kicked up by the car and tackles my husband to the ground. Before I even fully comprehend what’s happening, Zane has one knee on the back of his neck, Kurt’s face in the gravel.
“I’m not your friends,” he growls at him. “I’m her friends.”
I run to him, drop to my knees beside him and take his face in my hands.
“Just friends? You’re the love of my life,” I say.
His face was a contorted mask of hard anger. But it’s softening now as he gazes into my eyes.
“And I’ll never leave you again, not as long as I’m alive,” I say. “Thank you for coming after me.”
He holds the back of my head and pulls me in for a kiss. And even though I taste gravel dust on his lips, and taste my own blood, this kiss still feels like taking a long sip of cool water in the desert, like the sweet nectar that is the good life, like love in physical form.
The kiss ends too soon. Like always.
“What now?” I softly ask the question that’s been screaming in my mind. I hope he has the answer.
“Now we take this piece of shit back to the clubhouse like we’ve planned all along,” Zane says and hoists my husband to his feet. “And we get him to call off his dogs.”
Kurt’s not laughing now. And his eyes are full of fear, not poisonous anger.
Zane makes short work of stuffing him into the trunk of the SUV he drove here.
Then we climb into the car and he takes the wheel, and I suddenly don’t miss anything anymore, don’t wish for anything.
Because I have it all. I’ve arrived home. Finally.