Harlow
God, she was tired. She’d reached the point where her body had simply given up producing enough adrenaline to keep her properly terrified.
Across the room, Wade and Butcher stood near the bar talking quietly about her.
She knew it without hearing a single word.
Butcher kept looking in her direction, and every time he did, Wade said something that made the other man look increasingly irritated.
Finally, Butcher shook his head, and Wade shrugged.
Butcher looked amused, but Wade didn't. “Sit down and finish eating.”
Her irritation flared. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me,” Wade insisted.
“I heard you. I'm choosing to believe you didn't actually order me to sit down and eat my dinner,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest. She noticed the way that Wade looked her over, but chose to ignore it.
Butcher coughed into his fist, and Wade shot him a look. “I'll leave you two to it,” Butcher said.
“Coward,” Wade muttered.
“Nope, I’m just smart,” Butcher corrected. He walked away.
Harlow stood there with her arms still crossed over her chest, staring Wade down. “Well?”
“Well, what?” he asked.
“What were you talking about?” she questioned.
“You,” he said. She was happy that he at least had the balls to own up to it.
“I gathered that,” she grumbled.
Wade leaned one hip against the bar. “You got somewhere safe to go?”
The question knocked some of the anger out of her, and she looked away from him. “No.”
“Do you have any family that can take you in or help you?” he asked.
She laughed bitterly. “My father is the reason I was marrying Frank. I have no other family.”
“What about your mother?” he asked.
She sucked in her breath. The very last thing she wanted to do was tell a stranger about her mother. “She’s dead.” His expression shifted, and she hated the pity she saw in his eyes.
“I'm sorry.” The simple sincerity in his voice caught her off guard.
“Thank you,” she said.
“Do you have any brothers or sisters?” he asked.
“Nope, unless you count my imaginary friend, I’m an only child,” she joked.
“Okay, well besides your imaginary friend, do you have any friends you can stay with?” he asked.
Harlow thought about that. There were women she had lunch with and women who invited her to charity events and shopping trips.
There were women who attended the same parties and knew which designer she wore without ever knowing what made her laugh.
But she wouldn’t call any of them her friend.
“My father made sure most people understood that getting too close to me came with conditions. So, I didn’t have any friends, really,” she admitted. Again, the look of pity that flashed in his hazel eyes pissed her off.
Wade's jaw tightened. “Then you're coming home with me.” There it was—his endgame. He said it so simply that she wasn’t quite sure if she had heard him correctly.
Harlow stared at him. “Did you just say that I’m coming home with you?” she asked.
Wade crossed his arms over his chest, mimicking her stance. She let her eyes roam over his body, and he smirked at him. “I did,” he admitted.
“You can't just decide that,” she said.
“Sure I can,” he countered.
“No, you can't,” she insisted.
“Just did,” he said with a shrug.
“You are unbelievably irritating,” Harlow spat.
“I've been told,” he said.
“Frequently, I imagine,” she added. His lips twitched—damn him. Why did he keep almost smiling at her like that? And why did she keep noticing? “I don't know you,” she reminded him.
“Nope, you don’t,” he agreed.
“You could be a serial killer,” she said.
“That’s possible,” he breathed. Her mouth fell open, and Wade chuckled—actually chuckled. The sound was low and rough and did something strange to her stomach.
“That isn't funny,” she insisted.
“Oh, come on,” he said. “It’s a little funny.”
“I’m serious,” she insisted. She wanted to stomp her foot for good measure, but decided against it.
“So am I. You don't know me, and you shouldn't blindly trust me.” That answer surprised her. Most dangerous men spent a lot of time convincing people they weren't dangerous. Wade seemed perfectly comfortable admitting that he was.
“Then why would I go home with you?” she asked.
“Because you already know what happens if Frank finds you,” he reminded. The little bit of humor she'd been feeling disappeared. Wade seemed to regret the words immediately. His expression softened. “I'm not trying to scare you, Harlow.”
“You don't have to. Frank already took care of that,” she grumbled under her breath.
His gaze dropped to her wrist, and she instinctively covered it.
“I won't hurt you.” Her heart gave an uncomfortable squeeze.
She'd heard those words before. Frank had said them, her father had said them, and she learned quickly that men had a funny way of defining hurt when they were the ones causing it.
“You can't promise that,” she insisted.
“Yes, I can.” His certainty made her look at him.
“You don't even know me,” she reminded.
“Don't need to know you to know I don't hit women,” Wade said.
“That's not the only way someone can hurt you,” she said.
Something dark moved through his eyes. “No,” he said quietly. “It's not.” For several seconds, neither of them spoke. Then Wade pushed away from the bar. “Finish eating. We'll leave when the rain lets up.”
Harlow planted her hands on her hips. “There you go, ordering me around again.”
“Get used to it,” he said.
“I'd rather not,” she countered.
“Then we're gonna have fun.” She glared at his back as he walked away and noticed that the infuriating bastard was smiling.
An hour later, the rain hadn't stopped. If anything, it had gotten worse.
Butcher had sent most of the club home, leaving two prospects behind to help Wade close.
Another couple of Savage Bastards were apparently going to stay outside and keep an eye on the place in case Frank returned.
Harlow didn't know how she felt about that.
These men didn't know her, and they owed her nothing.
Yet they'd drawn guns and stood between her and Frank without hesitation.
Her own father hadn't done that for her, and that realization hurt more than she wanted to admit.
She sat at the bar now wearing a pair of gray sweatpants she'd had to roll several times at the waist, and an oversized Savage Bastards T-shirt one of the men had found in a storage room.
Her wedding dress was stuffed inside a black trash bag.
She'd stared at it for a long time before Wade tied the bag shut.
Twenty thousand dollars worth of satin and lace.
Her father had insisted on paying for it because, according to him, a Kane didn't walk down the aisle in something cheap.
Now it was covered in mud and blood and sitting beside a bar dumpster.
Harlow couldn't remember ever hating anything more than she did that dress.
She twisted the engagement ring around her finger.
The three-carat diamond caught the light.
Frank had selected it without asking what she liked.
Everything about their relationship had been chosen for her.
The restaurants they ate at, the clothes she wore, the details for the wedding she ran out of, and her entire future were all chosen for her.
Harlow pulled the ring off and stared at it in her palm.
Wade appeared on the other side of the bar. “You okay?” he asked.
She nearly laughed. Was she okay? “No.”
“That’s fair,” he said.
She looked at the ring again. “Do you have a lost and found?”
Wade raised an eyebrow. “Yeah.”
“Put this in it,” she said, sliding the ring across the bar.
Wade stared at it and then back at her. “That thing's probably worth more than my truck.”
“I don't want it,” she insisted.
“Sell it and keep the money to start over,” Wade said.
“I don't want his money,” Harlow breathed. “I don’t want anything from him.”
“Pawn it and donate the cash,” he said. Harlow paused because that wasn't a terrible idea.
“Who would I give the money to?” she asked.
Wade shrugged. “Women's shelter.” Her eyes lifted to his. Something about that suggestion made her chest ache.
“Okay, I like that idea,” she breathed.
He pushed the ring back toward her. “Then keep it until you can do that.”
Harlow closed her fingers around it. “Thank you,” she whispered.
Wade nodded. He didn't make a big deal out of it, and she liked that about him—which was dangerous.
She couldn't afford to like anything about Wade.
Not his rough voice, not the tattoos covering his arms, not the way he seemed to notice every time she became uncomfortable, and definitely not the way he'd pointed a gun at Frank without so much as blinking an eye.
Harlow had spent years around men who bragged about their power, but Wade didn't have to. His was simply there.
“Ready?” he asked.
She looked toward the windows. “Are we really going to your house?”
“Yep,” he breathed.
“You live alone?” she asked.
“Yep,” he said.
“Any girlfriends I should know about?” she questioned. He cocked an eyebrow at her, and Harlow immediately regretted asking. “That isn't what I meant.”
“Sure it wasn’t,” he said. He smirked at her, and she wasn’t sure if that pissed her off or turned her on.
“I was asking because I don't want some woman coming home and finding me sleeping on her couch,” she insisted.
“I have no girlfriend, no wife or fiancée,” he said. His gaze dropped pointedly to the ring still in her hand. “Apparently, you're the one with the fiancé problem.”
“Former fiancé,” she corrected.
“Good.” The word came out so quickly that Harlow blinked. Wade seemed to realize it too, and something passed between them—warm, unexpected, and dangerous.
Harlow looked away first. “Do you have a couch?”
“Yeah,” he said.
“Good,” she said. If she was going home with him, she needed to know exactly what she was walking into.
“You're not sleeping on it, though,” he insisted.
She groaned. “You can’t be serious,” she said. “I won’t sleep with you, Wade.”