Chapter Thirty-One
“No,” Ryan growled from his place across the room. “Actually, not no. Hell to the motherfucking no.”
This felt like déjà vu. Poppy and I were sitting on Pete’s couch. Aiden was sitting where Cat had been. Gavin was standing next to Ryan. And Pete was in the same chair he’d been in during our last meeting in his home.
“Ryan—”
“Absolutely fucking no,” he cut me off, then continued to growl.
“Listen—”
“The only thing I’m listening to is you agreeing with me that this shit is not fucking happening.”
Okay. I was getting pissed. He was being a dick, and it was getting harder to keep in mind his head was going to explode when I presented my plan.
Unfortunately, I hadn’t gotten to talk to him before I’d set the plan in action.
Now his head wasn’t exploding—he was spitting fire while vibrating with fury.
“Please, Ryan,” I begged. “When you calm down, you’ll see this is the way to go. This is the in we need.”
“Calm down?” he asked in a deceptively calm voice. “Baby, you haven’t seen pissed yet.”
Oh boy.
I had a feeling he was telling the truth. As mad as he was, I figured he could get angrier.
“I was going to talk to you about this last night . . .” I stopped speaking when his already tight frame turned to stone.
“Come again?”
“Well . . . I was . . . um . . . Last night I got to thinking . . .”
Before I could stutter out more, he picked up my ramble. “You got thinking about what a great idea it would be to go from being in the frying pan straight into the motherfucking fire? Are you out of your fucking mind?”
Yep. I was pissed.
I shot to my feet, lifted my hand, and before I thought better of it, I jabbed a finger in his direction.
“You wanna be mad, fine. You wanna stand there and cuss up a storm and beat your chest, be my guest. But do not stand there and treat me like I’m a fucking idiot.
I know how dangerous this is. I told you I knew and because I did, I would be extra careful, and I have been.
I haven’t said shit about staying at your house, even though it’s probably overkill, because that’s what you need to make you feel better.
I’m not complaining about you or Gavin taking me to and from work when I could just as easily get an Uber or rent a car.
I’m not asking questions, I’m not snooping, I’m not putting myself out there.
I’m going into work and keeping my eyes and ears open, doing my part in keeping myself safe. ”
I had to pause to take a breath. And since I was on a roll, I might as well just get it all out.
“So, yes, last night I was thinking I wanted to talk to you about me accepting an invitation to a feast if Sterling asked. And also ask you if your friend who got the watches for Beckett could send something for me to wear. That way you can track me. And of course, if he tells me where the party is ahead of time, I’ll tell you so you all can get there before I do. ”
Ryan stared at me, his eyelids slits, his lips turned down, and his body still vibrating.
“Actually—” Aiden began.
“Swear to God,” Ryan cut him off. “One wrong word will set me off.”
“Brother, you’ve already detonated,” Aiden rightly pointed out. “And since you’re still smoldering, I’ll just say, you know we can make her safe when she goes in.”
Ryan didn’t say anything, but he did make a sound—a cross between a growl and snarl.
“Aiden found six women who have gone missing in the last year that fit. All in the porn scene, multiple arrests for drugs, families not close,” Pete started, and Ryan’s angry gaze went to him.
Mine didn’t. I stayed staring at Ryan, praying that when this was over, it wasn’t also the end of us.
“And since we’re piling it on, I’ll point out that if both Poppy and Chloe disappear, the jig’s up.
The man’s not stupid. He’ll know something’s up. And it might also fuck Beck.”
Ryan grunted a string of four-letter words that weren’t actually four letters but were curses, nonetheless. This tirade included a lot of ‘motherfuckers,’ a lot of ‘fucking shits,’ and more grunting about being backed into a corner and being fucked.
“Ryan—”
“Love you, Chloe, but please stop talking.”
I stopped talking.
Actually, I stopped breathing.
No, the world stopped spinning as I replayed love you, Chloe over and over.
Love.
Love.
He loved me?
Ryan loved me?
“Jesus fuck, woman, you’re going to give yourself a seizure,” Ryan seethed.
That was when I realized I was blinking—rapidly blinking. Partly because I was trying to comprehend the words I hoped I’d heard correctly and partly because I didn’t want the wetness gathering in my eyelids to fall.
Poppy grabbed my hand and tugged me back down to the couch.
“You love me?” I whispered.
Ryan gave me a ferocious scowl. “Are you shitting me? No offense to Poppy—and I’d have my reservations sending her into the den of vipers—but they’d be reservations, and I’d voice those and work with my team to do everything we could to keep her safe.
What I wouldn’t be doing was standing here losing my motherfucking mind at the thought of you going anywhere near that den.
I wouldn’t be standing here wondering if I could live with myself if I told my team we’re bagging this operation and we’re letting those girls swing, because my woman’s not getting on a fucking plane with a piece of shit unprotected, flying wherever it is that he’ll take her, then letting her loose at a sex party full of other motherfucking dirtbags who have zero morals, if I didn’t fucking love you. ”
Well.
That answered that.
And since I was freaked way the hell out that he’d said he loved me in front of our friends, or said it at all—and not because it wasn’t what I’d desperately wanted for so long, but because it was a dream come true and in our current situation—I couldn’t run and jump into his arms and tell him I loved him back, then celebrate until the sun came up.
Not that that celebration would end at sunrise, seeing at it was already nearing on four in the morning and I’d need at least three to five hours to properly communicate how much he meant to me.
So instead of doing what I wanted to do, I told him, “You say motherfucker a lot when you’re mad.” He growled. “And you grunt and growl a lot too.”
Ryan’s hands came up and slammed on his hips while at the same time his head tipped back and he stared at the ceiling.
Okay. If this was going to work, he needed to know the truth, and I was going to have to ignore the room full of people to give it to him.
“Please don’t be mad at me. Sterling screwed me and asked Poppy first. Once she said yes, you know there’d be no way I’d let her go in alone.”
“I can go by myself,” Poppy interjected. “They can give me one of the trackers you mentioned, and I’ll be—”
I put my hand up and shook my head. “You’re not going alone.
No way. We stick together. We both go or neither of us goes.
I couldn’t live with myself if I turned my back on you.
” I looked back at Ryan and continued. “I have to do this. You know I do. But it also terrifies me, and the only way I’m going to be able to do it is if I know you’ll be there to protect us if something goes wrong.
We’ll wear trackers, and you and the guys can follow. You won’t be far away.”
Ryan was still scowling.
“I’m scared, Ryan. But I wouldn’t be the woman you fell in love with if I tucked tail and let my best friend swing and do this alone. And you wouldn’t be the man I fell in love with if you made me leave her when you can keep me safe and we can get you what you need to help the other women.”
I couldn’t say he was no longer scowling, but some of the savagery had leached out.
“You know what pisses me right the fuck off?” he asked.
At the present moment I could probably name five billion things that were pissing him off. My name being at the top of the list. Sterling would have a spot right below mine.
Wisely, I didn’t tell him that.
“No.”
“Two things,” he started. “One, the first time I hear you tell me you love me is when we’re in a fight in a room full of people.
Two, you’re right. But actually that doesn’t piss me right the fuck off, it makes me want to hunt Blackwell down and tear his head off, because now I gotta do the last fucking thing I want to do and send you into the vipers’ den and pray to God when you leave you don’t have nightmares about it for the rest of your life.
And check this, baby, listen real close, because if one fucking thing happens to you, one fucking person so much as touches a hair on your head, that’s exactly what I’ll do—rip their heads off. ”
I didn’t need to listen closely to know he was deadly serious, though I’d been straining my ears to hear every word he said.
“I won’t have nightmares,” I told him.
“You better hope you don’t,” he returned.
“I won’t. I know I won’t because I’ll have you to give me sweet dreams.”
I watched his eyes slowly close. When they opened, he growled, and it was back to being the scratchy, rough, good kind. “Come here, Chloe.”
He still looked pissed way the hell off, yet I didn’t delay standing. And when I was within reaching distance, he lurched forward, his arm going around my middle to yank me against his chest.
Ryan held me tight. I held him back just as tightly. After a few beats, I felt his stiff body start to relax.
But I turned back to stone when Pete announced, “I’ll call Shep and get his friend to expedite jewelry for Chloe and Poppy.”
“I’ll pull the satellite maps and schematics for all of Blackwell’s properties,” Aiden put in.
“I’m taking Poppy home,” Gavin announced. “I’ll stay there and finish looking into the missing women Aiden found and see if I can connect them to any of the properties.”
I turned my cheek, resting on Ryan’s cheek, just enough to glance at Poppy. She gave me big eyes, looked up at Ryan, then back to me, and smiled.
She was happy for me. In the middle of a seriously bad situation, Ryan and I had found our way and were now together.
Then in the middle of the dustup to end all dustups, which included Ryan copiously using the word motherfucker, he announced he loved me in conjunction with telling me to essentially shut up.
So I got the big eyes. I’d also known her long enough to know her smile was mostly so she wouldn’t bust out laughing.
Which, in the current climate, which was still charged with more than a trace of ferocity, wouldn’t go over so well.
“I’m taking Chloe home. We’ll be back in a few hours to strategize.”
“You can take one of the . . .” Pete trailed off when Ryan’s head turned in his direction. “Right,” he concluded on a snicker.
I couldn’t be a hundred percent positive what Ryan’s look communicated, though I was pretty positive, seeing as Pete sounded like he, too, was holding back laughter, that Ryan had clearly conveyed what our plans for the next few hours were.
Which worked for me since they aligned with my earlier thoughts. Though it was late, so I also hoped he’d factored in a nap before we drove back up to the mountains and strategized about sending me and Poppy into the vipers’ den. A place that scared the absolute shit out of me.
But I hadn’t lied. I could push through and be brave as long as I had Ryan watching out for me.