Chapter Eighteen
Rue
Honestly, I had no idea what on my bucket list could be at the house with all his buddies. I spent the whole ride there racking my brain (and going over my list) for any possibilities.
I’d narrowed it down to a possible poker game when we’d pulled into the lot.
When I saw all the bikes lined up and a man standing in the door, I figured that had to be what it was.
It didn’t explain, though, why Kylo had become a barrel of nerves with each mile we’d driven.
I knew anxiety when I saw it.
It was in the ticking muscle in his jaw, the way his shoulders had inched up, his tight posture, and that strange, faraway look in his eye. Like his mind was a million miles away.
It was so strange to see those things on him, though. He’d always been so calm, so laid-back, so unflappable.
But he was definitely, you know, flapped as we climbed out of the SUV at the house and made our way toward the door.
“You remember Huck,” Kylo said, moving past the hulking man who was eyeing me.
“Hey, babe,” Huck said, tone friendly, if maybe a bit guarded. “Come on in.”
I probably wouldn’t have felt a weird prickle up my spine at it if it weren’t for how strangely Kylo was acting.
I moved into the house, following the path made by Kylo into the kitchen.
“Hey, Mackie,” I greeted the bird who was hanging off the side of his cage to try to steal a beakful of potatoes off a plate on the table.
It wasn’t just Huck and Kylo who moved into the kitchen. Oh, no. Several of the guys I’d already met came as well as a few men I didn’t recognize who looked closer to Huck’s age.
“Is… is everything okay?” I asked, swallowing hard, fighting back the urge to rush to the back door and make a break for it.
Something about the air in the room felt wrong.
“Can you take a seat?” Huck asked.
I glanced over toward Kylo, who was slumped against the wall, his head lowered, refusing to make eye contact with me.
What the hell was going on?
“Everything’s okay,” the guy I’d met briefly named Velle said. He was tall with a swimmer’s build, black hair, a beard, dark eyes, gauged ears, and a hoop in his nose.
His tone was soothing, reassuring.
But shouldn’t it have been Kylo trying to assure me that everything was okay?
Still, I was kind of trapped. Big, hulking men were blocking all the exits.
I stepped backward and sat down at the table, wondering if the knife still sitting on the plate was something I should try to reach for.
“We just need to talk to you about some things,” Velle said, moving to sit on the other side of the table, getting on my level, everything about him relaxed.
But Kylo seemed to only be growing tenser by the second.
“Okay,” I croaked, finding my mouth too dry to even swallow past the fist lodged in my throat. “Talk about what?”
I asked Velle.
But it was Huck who answered.
“Marco,” he said.
The whole world felt like it lurched.
My hand slapped down on the table, feeling like I was falling, and desperately trying to hold on.
“Marco?” I asked, looking over at Kylo.
But he was still studying his shoes.
“Yeah, about this tall,” Huck said, gesturing. “Stupid swagger. Cocky attitude. You know him from smuggling guns in through your delivery trucks.”
Oh, God.
How did he know that?
Why was he bringing it up even if he did?
What the hell was going on?
“I, uh, don’t know what—” I started to deny. That was the agreement I’d made with Marco. I told no one. And then nothing happened to my grandmother.
“Babe, don’t,” Huck cut me off. “We have more than a little proof.”
“How—” I started. But it was just then that my gaze moved back toward Kylo.
That was it.
Why he was being weird, why he was tense, why he wasn’t looking at me.
It was him.
All along he’d been playing me.
He wasn’t just really into plants. And he definitely hadn’t been just passing by when he found Ernest and brought him back to me.
He’d been spying on me, watching me, stalking me.
As if sensing the intensity of my gaze, Kylo’s head lifted.
I saw it all there. The guilt, regret, the apology.
But none of that was good enough.
Because not only had he been working me, but he’d made me trust him, like him. He’d slept with me. All the while knowing he and his friends were going to confront me.
He held my gaze, accepting all the betrayal, hurt, and anger my eyes had to be tossing in his direction.
My body tried to process all the sensations at once, each thought and feeling knocking into one another until it was impossible to tell one from the other.
All it came down to, though, was betrayal.
I’d trusted him.
He’d used that.
He’d misused that.
My jaw went to granite as my gaze cut away.
I looked at Velle instead.
“Who are you?” I asked.
“We’re… a club.”
Club.
Wasn’t that what Kylo had called this place? His clubhouse. But what kind of club involved a bunch of men who rode… oh.
Oh.
They were a biker club.
I wouldn’t claim to know a whole heck of a lot about biker clubs. But I’d seen a documentary or two about some of the outlaw biker clubs that dealt in drugs, prostitution, enforcement, and extortion.
That wasn’t what this so-called ‘club’ was into, though.
Oh, no.
Because they were asking about Marco.
Which meant they were into weapons too.
“You’re arms dealers,” I said, glaring at Kylo.
“Yeah,” Huck said, drawing my attention back to him. “And Marco is operating on our turf. Which was how we came across you.”
“So you, what, sent someone in to schmooze me? Learn about me?”
“Something like that, yeah. We needed to know if you were in bed with Marco or not.”
My hand slipped to my wrist, rolling my chunky bracelet around, knowing the bruise was still vivid blue and purple beneath from Marco’s hand.
“I don’t willingly do business with men who drag me around and let their men threaten to rape me.”
“What?” Kylo barked, outrage clear in his voice.
I couldn’t bring myself to look at him, though. Him and his fake concern, his manufactured kindness.
“Yeah, Marco is scum,” Huck agreed. “But we needed to be sure. After the last delivery, we became that.”
“Great. So now you know. Can I go?”
“Actually, that’s not all we need from you.”
My arms crossed over my chest as I stared down Huck, surprised by how defiant I felt.
I knew it was all bluster; that once I was alone, the anger would fall away to reveal all the mushy, more uncomfortable feelings that would take over.
I could deal with them when they came. I hoped. For the moment, I was going to cling to my rage. It prevented me from coming apart at the seams. The last thing I wanted was for Kylo to get the satisfaction of seeing that.
“What do you want then?” I asked, proud of how strong my voice sounded.
“We’ll start with information.”
“Fine.”
Huck’s gaze slid to Kylo but I refused to let mine follow.
“How did you get tangled up with Marco?”
That part was easy.
The shop’s old supplier in South America went suddenly out of business. I’d needed to scramble to find someone new, not knowing that when I signed a contract, I also somehow signed up for a lifetime of dealing with Marco and his crew.
Everything had worked as usual.
Until the truck showed up.
Then a caravan of men.
And then there was Marco, a gun in his hand, looming over me and telling me exactly how things were going to go from that moment on.
The threats that would happen if I didn’t do what he wanted felt a bit grandiose at first. Until I went to visit my grandmother and found Marco sitting in the lobby.
Then I knew. I knew down to my bones that he was completely capable of killing my grandmother to make me do what he wanted.
It wouldn’t stop there, either.
Traeger was at risk.
And, of course, my own life.
“Is it just the one delivery a month?”
“Yes. Though I did hear murmurs last time that they might need to ship more.”
“Did you get a date for that?”
“No.”
“I heard you unloaded the goods this last time,” Huck said.
My jaw tightened enough that my damn teeth ached and the pain shot up to my temples.
“Yep.”
“That wasn’t usual?”
“No.”
“Babe, fucking work with me here.”
There was a growling sound coming from Kylo’s general direction. But I stayed focused on the man who was clearly the boss around here.
“I’m answering your questions.”
“Why was it different this last time?”
“Because my anxiety was out of control,” I admitted, the words snarling out of me, angry that I had to talk about something so private with practical strangers.
“I couldn’t seem to make myself go outside to meet the truck to get my plants out.
Marco didn’t like that. He dragged me out. Then he made me do it.”
“Why?”
“To exert power, I guess. But I also thought that maybe he wanted to try to get my prints on the gun to have that to use against me in the future too, if the threats against my grandmother and Traeger weren’t motivation enough.”
To that, Huck nodded.
“Did you get your fingerprints on them?”
“I tried not to. I used paper to pick them up then cradled them in my arms. But I don’t know. It’s possible. I was kind of freaking out.”
“Understandably,” Velle said. “That had to be stressful.”
I didn’t need him to psychoanalyze me.
I wanted them to leave me alone.
I wanted to get out of this clubhouse.
Then, I don’t know, just walk down the street where I could meet a ride-share to take me back to Kylo’s to grab my car.
After that, well, I wanted to climb into my bed and cry my heart out.
I sucked in a deep breath.
“Anything else?” I asked.
Huck and his people had several more questions about Marco, about his crew, and about the exact names of the suppliers and distributors I was using.
“We might be in touch again,” Huck said when he had no more questions.
I slowly got to my feet.
“Fine,” I ground out. “But don’t ever send him again.”
I jerked my head toward Kylo but couldn’t make myself look at him.
“Or I will tell Marco exactly who you are, where to find you, and that you’re looking to take him down.”
With that, I strode toward the front of the house, proud of how calm my gait was when my insides felt like they were trembling.
I made it to the door, both relieved and devastated that Kylo didn’t rush up behind me, try to stop me, or attempt to explain.
Not that there was anything he could say to make this better.
But my heart ached for him to be sorry, to beg for forgiveness, to give some sign that this wasn’t all just a job, just a way to get close to me to get information.
Tears stung my eyes as I threw open the door.
The night air was soupy and hard to breathe as I walked calmly out of sight, then broke into a run around the back of the assisted living center, where I opened the app and ordered a ride.
I stood there, my insides shaking, my heart breaking, but holding it together as I waited for the driver, then got dropped off at Kylo’s.
The lights were off, and there were no signs that he might be around, but I still ran to get in my car, then reversed out so fast I nearly took out one of the neighbors’ mailboxes.
It wasn’t until I pulled into my driveway that the dam finally broke.
I didn’t even recognize the pained animal sound that escaped me, something a mix between a scream and a sob that echoed back to me in the small space as my head slammed into the steering wheel while the tears flowed down my cheeks.
If I thought the crying session I’d had in Kylo’s arms the night of the last delivery was bad, it didn’t even hold a candle to how I broke down there alone in my driveway.
I wasn’t even sure how I got inside, or when.
I just knew I damn near had to crawl toward my bedroom.
I fell into bed, curled up, and just let the grief consume me.
Because I thought he was different, that he understood me, that he wasn’t scared off by my struggles with my mental health.
But no.
No, that wasn’t it at all.
He just had no choice. He had to stick with me.
Hell, he probably wasn’t kind or understanding at all. He was just playing me. Toying with my emotions. Making me trust him. Making me like him. And, after all that stuff at the hotel, making me maybe—just maybe—start to fall for him.
I cried myself slowly to sleep.
Then I woke up and cried some more.
I called out of work just to cry some more.
I thought the tears might never dry up.
Until, sometime that next night, they did.
And something cold overtook me, something hard, something I didn’t even recognize.
Only then was I able to get back to my life.