Chapter 7
CHAPTER
SEVEN
Addie
I'd clocked the black truck on my way home.
It pulled in behind me about a mile out and stayed three car lengths back, not even trying to be creative about it, then peeled off into the lot at Locke Garage when I turned onto Ridge.
Could've been anyone. Half this town drove black trucks. I had bigger problems.
My door was jacked to hell.
The damage showed from the lot, keys still in my hand, hands cramped from the wheel the whole drive from the clubhouse.
The frame around the lock was splintered out, wood hanging in pale ribbons against the paint I'd sanded and rolled myself three weeks ago.
My shop. My grandmother's legacy. Kicked in like it meant nothing.
Inside was worse. Gran's dye pots knocked sideways, the deep indigo one cracked and bleeding color across the concrete.
My workbench shoved hard against the wall, fabric bolts I'd organized by weight scattered across everything.
The upholstery shears Gran left me, heavy and old, the handle worn to the shape of her grip, thrown into the corner like trash.
Whoever did this came to make a point, and they'd goddamn made it.
I swept until my shoulders burned, straightened what I could, and tried not to think about how a twist knob on the stairwell door was the only thing between my bed and whoever felt like kicking their way in next.
Downstairs took an hour. Upstairs took my knees out from under me.
Gran's lipstick. The coral one, still sitting in the medicine cabinet because whenever I saw it I heard her voice.
A little color never hurt anybody, Adelaide.
Like she was daring the world to disagree.
He'd used it on the bathroom mirror, block letters, neat and measured like he'd practiced. You'll always be mine.
This fucking psychopath used my dead grandmother's lipstick.
I walked into the bedroom on legs that didn't feel like mine.
Two bras. Three pairs of underwear. Cut open with something sharp, laid out across my comforter like a goddamn display.
He'd gone through my drawers. Touched my things.
Stood in Gran's bathroom and uncapped that tube and taken his sweet time because trashing the shop was a message.
But this? This was him crawling inside my life and proving he could do it whenever he wanted.
My jaw ached from clenching. Nails bit into my palms. Every muscle I had was pulled tight and pointed at one thing, and that thing was Corbin's face.
Done. So fucking done.
I called the sheriff because that's what you do. Hutchens showed up twenty minutes later with his notepad and his camera and those campaign-poster eyes. Dusted for prints. Photographed boot impressions near the frame. Nothing usable.
"Anybody who might target this property? Anybody you've recently associated with who might attract this kind of attention?"
Even now, the man couldn't help himself.
"No, Sheriff. Not that I can think of." The lies where Corbin was concerned had become a nasty habit I couldn't seem to break.
I went to the front window. That black truck from before. Still sitting in the Locke Garage lot with the engine running, tinted glass aimed at my building. The garage was closed for the day. Nobody sat in a parking lot that still unless they'd been told to sit still.
The stubborn, overprotective son of a bitch put a prospect on me. Gave me space from him, sure. Real generous. But he still had someone on my goddamn tail. I couldn't decide if I wanted to scream or if my pulse did something warm and stupid and flattered by it. Damn him.
There was only one motel in Amberlin Falls. Corbin liked the finer things, champagne taste on a beer budget, so a place like the Pinewood Motor Lodge would've had him crawling out of his skin. But it was the only option, and Corbin wanted to watch more than he wanted to be comfortable.
I knew time was of the essence. Once Cage learned of the sheriff’s visit, he would go after Corbin. He'dplaying right into Hutchens's hands.
The utility room window faced the opposite direction from the prospect's truck.
I shoved it open, swung one leg over the sill, and got exactly as far as my hips before the whole operation went to shit.
Stuck. Full-on wedged in the frame, half in and half out, dangling there like a goddamn pi?ata while I cursed Gran's genetics because the women of my bloodline weren't made to crawl out windows.
Two shoves and a word my mama never taught me got my hips past the frame, and I dropped graceless and pissed, a bruise already blooming on my right hip. Sonofabitch.
I half-ran, half-limped to my truck out back, checked my mirrors twice, and hightailed it to the Pinewood Motor Lodge on the county road. Six rooms. Neon sign missing two letters. Backed in right in front of door six like he was a goddamn getaway driver. Always ready to run. Just never from me.
I pounded on the door. The second he opened up I threw the cut-up clothes at his chest and walked in after them, because I wasn't doing this where the whole county could watch. The door swung shut behind me on its own weight.
"Get the fuck out of my town, Corbin."
There it was. That face. That wounded, soft, I-can't-believe-you'd-hurt-me face that used to make me crawl back and apologize for whatever I'd apparently done this time. "Adelaide. I had to get your attention. You blocked my number. You won't talk to me."
"Because we're finished."
"You don't mean that."
"Eight months finished."
"Adelaide, please. Just listen?—"
"I'm with someone else."
Everything drained out of his expression. Every rehearsed wound, every soft note, gone. What was left underneath was something I'd only seen once, the night I put his ring on the counter and walked out.
The ashtray hit the wall behind me. Ceramic everywhere.
"You still love me." Flat. Dead. "I know you do."
"No."
He was on me before I got the second word out, his grip finding my arm, the other fisting in my hair and wrenching me around.
My hip cracked against the dresser, pain shooting white up my side, his fingers twisting until my scalp burned and my body was back in Lexington, back in that apartment where he cried after and I held him because I thought that was what love looked like.
"You're mine, Adelaide. You always were. Nobody else gets to have you."
The day I left Corbin I installed an emergency app on my phone and linked it to the sheriff's office. Before I had knocked on his door I had tapped it. Location shared. Alert sent.
I could barely hear the bullshit he was still cycling through over the blood rushing in my ears when the sound hit me. I'd called the county for sirens. What came up the road was engines, low and heavy, shaking the walls before I even saw them.
His grip told me before his face did. Then every bit of color he had went out of him.
One kick and the cheap wood blew inward, chain popping, and then Cage filled the doorway with Mercy and Reap crowding in behind him.
Corbin didn't get a word out before Cage had him by the collar and threw him into the dresser so hard it cracked against the wall.
I pressed myself flat, back against the doorframe, shaking, watching Cage's fists connect with Corbin's face over and over until Mercy got both arms around him and hauled him backward.
"We'll handle him, Prez. Take care of your woman."
Cage turned to me and his whole body was vibrating, chest heaving, split knuckles dripping onto the carpet, and I must've looked just as wrecked because he closed the space between us and pulled me against him, one palm cradling the back of my skull.
Leather, and under it the copper smell of blood on his knuckles.
I buried my face in his chest and broke. Just for a second. Just enough.
"Baby." His voice cracked. "Baby, I've got you. Did he hurt you?"
"No." Smaller than I wanted it to sound. "You got here in time." I pulled back enough to see his face. "How?"
He looked at me like I'd wrecked his whole afternoon. He shook his head. "Angel, I knew you'd figure out the first tail. You're too fucking smart for your own good. But you are trouble with a capital T." His forehead dropped against mine. “So, I sent two."
Two. He'd planned for the version of me that crawls out tiny windows to go confront the man she was told to stay away from.
"I was so scared." It was out before I could catch it. "I shouldn't have come here. I just wanted to start over without him hanging over everything."
"Nothing gets to you again. Not him, not the county, not anybody." His thumbs traced my cheekbones, holding my eyes. "They’ll have to put me in the ground first. I fucking love you, firecracker."
I curled my fingers into his shirt and pressed my face against his jaw and breathed him in until my chest stopped trying to split open.
Ledger filled the broken doorway. Corbin groaned on the floor behind us, barely conscious, blood on his chin.
"Take him to the clubhouse, Prez?"
"Don't." I said it before I finished thinking it. "Don't take him there. Don't do whatever you'd normally do." I looked up at Cage. "Not for me. I don't want that weight on you."
The cost sat on his face. He looked at Mercy. Mercy looked at Reap. Nobody was happy about it.
“I want it airtight," Cage told Ledger, his voice running on fumes. "Assault, stalking, breaking and entering. Every charge the county can file. Before morning."
Ledger already had his phone out. "It'll hold."
They hauled Corbin out between them and I kept my face buried in Cage's chest, his heart slamming against my cheek, sirens finally rolling in behind the bikes like an afterthought.
"The paperwork better be enough." His arms tightened around me. "Because if he comes near you again, there won't be paperwork."