Chapter 24 #2
I couldn’t stop myself from slipping off my leather cut and draping it around her shoulders.
Her fingers curled around the black leather.
She looked so vulnerable in that second, and it suddenly hit me how close I’d come to losing her.
I tugged her into my arms before I could think it through.
I needed to feel her close to me. I needed to feel her breath against my skin. I needed proof of life.
“You could have been killed,” I growled softly. “Why the hell did you follow us out there? What were you thinking?”
“I-I saw Finn—he was sneaking around, following you. I was worried he was about to get into trouble,” she babbled. I could tell by the look in her eyes that she was being honest, and yet… it wasn’t the whole truth. Not by a long shot.
“And you knew we were riding into trouble, because?”
She stared at me, a muscle working in her jaw. She didn’t know how much to tell me. What to let slip. And I had no idea what my little Goldilocks’ intentions were now that the lines had blurred between us, but one thing was clear… it was time for her little mystery act to end.
I pulled her close, gripping her hips. My rage and anxiety were barely tethered. The image of her with a gun pressed to her temple was seared into my head, and I couldn’t get it out.
“It’s time to tell me what the fuck is going on with you. You show up in my bar, full of secrets… and you walk into my garage, and sit in my lap, and fucking lie to me. Tell me, Isabelle, or I fucking swear, you aren’t leaving here until you do.”
Her hands were still pressed to my chest, my heartbeat pounding against them. I wanted to hold her close and be reassured that she was safe, unharmed, still whole. But the time for burying my head in the sand about this woman had come to an end.
I used everything I had in me to pull away from her, placing a step between us.
She blew out a long breath. “You have a mole in the Harbor Hounds. Someone is plotting against you.”
“And you know this because?”
“I heard them. Tonight, they were plotting with Teddy, that guy from the rival club. They said they were going to put you in the ground,” she said, and a long tear dashed down her cheek, glistening in the moonlight.
I stared at her, my heart beating hard in my barren chest. This woman, brave and reckless and so fucking smart and beautiful, was crying for me. She was worried about me. Me. The forsaken.
I smoothed back her hair and ran my thumb up her smooth cheek to wipe away her tears.
I should care more about what she’d revealed.
A mole in the MC? It made sense, considering how much trouble we’d been having lately with what was usually run-of-the-mill business.
Someone was trying to bring us down, or at least, challenge me.
I’d put down a few coups in my time as Pres, but I had no clue who might be trying to fuck me over this time.
Regardless, all I could think about was Isabelle, my little Goldilocks, crying for me.
Throwing herself into trouble to save me.
“I’m not in the ground. I’m right here. I’m fine. Where did you hear this?”
She swallowed and stiffened. I felt the boundary then of her secrets. The things she’d been hiding since she walked into my bar, and my life. My heart.
This was it. Nowhere to go from here, but to confess all.
She wet her lips. “I heard it in The Clutch.”
“When?”
“Tonight.”
“You weren’t at The Clutch tonight.”
She nodded slowly and took a deep breath. “I heard it. I wasn’t there.”
“Explain.”
“I dropped something that night you hauled me into the room behind the bar. My bag dropped and I guess it rolled out… I didn’t even know it was working. I swear, I haven’t been listening.”
“What rolled out? Stop dancing around it, Issy, and tell me the goddamn truth.”
“A bug. A listening device. It looks like a pen, I guess that’s why no one has found it—”
I stepped back, her words taking me off guard. “You brought a listening device into my bar? On purpose?”
She nodded slowly. I could hardly believe this was reality. What was happening?
I waited, not trusting myself to talk just yet.
“I’m a journalism student, and I write for the HHU school paper,” she whispered. The words rent the air like gun shots.
I took in her words. A journalist? The parts of her that had never made sense suddenly slotted into place. A journalist. Yes. That tracked.
“I-I wanted to do a story on you and the Hounds. I thought you were involved in gunrunning…”
“Yeah, well done. You were fucking right, Goldilocks,” I growled out. My blood felt hot and sticky in my veins. I was mad. Pissed. Furious. And… disappointed. “So, should I expect to see my name in the headlines tomorrow?”
“No!” Her eyes were alarmed. “I was going to do a story on you, that’s why I came to the bar the first night, but I gave it all up. I don’t care anymore.”
“Why not? You must have gotten more than you need for your exposé tonight.”
She shook her head. “I already decided that I couldn’t do it. I gave it up, ok?”
“Was that before or after we fucked?” I demanded. I could hardly wrap my head around the betrayal. I’d never seen it coming. I was blindsided.
“Before!” she cried, having the audacity to sound offended. “As soon as anything happened between us, I dropped it.”
Why? Because you feel the same way about me as I feel about you?
The question roared in my head, and I wanted to know more than anything, but all of this was too fucking dangerous.
Tonight had gone south in the worst possible way.
The vision of Isabelle standing there, a gun pressed to her temple, chilled my blood.
She didn’t belong in any of this. That question had ceased to matter.
So, I didn’t ask. I couldn’t. Because there was a very real chance that if she gave me the slightest fucking inch, I’d take all of her.
Instead, I turned away, trying to put distance between us.
She followed. “I said I couldn’t do it. I didn’t want to anymore— I wanted to help Rosie with Finn.”
“You know Rosie? You already knew Finn?” I demanded, I couldn’t get my head around it.
She nodded, her eyes sparkling in the moonlight with unshed tears. The extent of the secrets she’d been keeping was dawning on me. I knew what I needed to do.
“I’m not really interested in your reasons for lying to me, or sneaking into my club with bad intentions. Hounds don’t tolerate snakes.” I made my voice cold and harsh, a desperate bid to keep her back.
So, that was that. The attraction, the first I’d had in years, was going nowhere.
She couldn’t be trusted. Who she was, and what she was doing, put an end to any idea of continuing this little thing we’d started.
Had she gone that far just to get a story?
Ambitious girl. I could almost respect it if it didn’t piss me off so much.
Isabelle swallowed hard. “Snakes?”
“Yeah, rich girl little snakes who think they can go around and break club rules, if they’re pretty enough. If they swallow well enough.”
Isabelle flinched like I’d slapped her. The words were like poison, burning my mouth on the way out, but I needed to say them, every single thing. She needed to stay away.
“I don’t want to see you around anymore. I won’t warn you again. All that shit you said at the diner? You were right. Don’t fight those instincts. This time, fucking listen. This life is too dangerous for someone like you.”
Someone worth something.
I turned on my heel and strode away.
“What about you? It’s too dangerous for you too, then. What if your life didn’t have to be like this?” she called out to me, stopping me in my tracks.
“Excuse me?”
“You’re too good for this, Cole. Can’t you see that?”
I turned and studied her by the moonlight. Slowly, I walked back to her.
“Too good for this?” I repeated. “It’s my family legacy.”
She shrugged, fearless again already, after almost getting killed. “So? Mine’s being a country club Stepford wife, but I don’t want that life. I’m realizing now that I have to fight it.”
I tilted my head to the side, considering her. She really was one of a kind, and she never should have gotten mixed up with me.
“I was born for this. It’s in my blood. It’s all I am. This is my level, Isabelle, and maybe that bothers you because you don’t like the thought that you get all hot and bothered for a loser who runs guns and drugs, a man whose life will end young, in some abandoned lot somewhere.”
“Yeah, maybe that does bother me! It should bother you, too!” she shouted at me. She was worked up, her chest rising and falling, her eyes bright with unshed tears.
This girl, beautiful and smart and fucking fearless, was about to cry for me again, and I couldn’t stand it.
This needed to end right now, before she became any more invested in my survival.
She couldn’t continue to have that bright and shiny hope that was more alien to me than anything else.
It tore apart something hard and dark inside me that I couldn’t stand to look at too closely, just in case I realized how fragile it was.
“Take your happy endings, and the turn-your-life-around shit the fuck out of here. I don’t need your bright-eyed, bushy-tailed fucking spoiled little rich girl optimism. We don’t live in the same world, Goldilocks, and I can’t pretend that we do.”
I turned and started back toward my bike. I had to get the hell out of here, now, before something inside me broke.
“Cole!” Isabelle’s voice pulled at my heart, tempting me to turn around and go back to her. No. This ends now.
“How am I going to get home?” she called after me. “My phone is dead. My car is—”
“Not my problem,” I tossed over my shoulder at her.
I got on my bike and kicked it to life. I took off and put a few miles between us before I pulled over and called Maddox.
“I need a pickup, Watson’s Pass. Precious cargo.”
“So precious you left her there?”
“She’s safer there alone, than anywhere with me,” I ground out. “Make sure she gets home safe.”
“Got it, boss.”