Chapter Twenty-One #2
It wasn’t until the sound suddenly cut off and there was an uncomfortable silence that had my ears ringing that I realized what it was.
Motorcycles.
A lot of them.
I sucked in a shaky breath, realizing I was going to be okay. Even if Marco or his men were still around somewhere, the bikers were here. With, I imagined, their guns.
It was over.
I could hear the rumble of male voices, and then Kylo was back in my bedroom with Velle on his heels.
“How you doing, sweetheart?” Velle asked, moving toward the side of the closet, his posture casual, but I could see how tight his jaw was.
“Alive,” I said.
“We can work with alive,” he said, offering me a smile as the swish of shards of glass moved across the floor and into the dustpan.
Kylo was rushing but trying to be thorough.
“How’d you get your dog in there with you?” Velle asked, sensing that distraction was what I needed so I didn’t start freaking out now that I was safe.
“I had pepperoni pizza in my hand,” I admitted. “I tossed it in.”
“That’ll do it,” Velle said. “Are you hurt?”
“I… no. No, I’m okay. I heard their shoes crunching on the gravel and I just… ran.”
“Good instincts. I want to mentally prepare you,” he said, wincing a bit.
“They trashed my house.”
“They did. And it wasn’t like they were just tossing it to look for hiding spaces. They were just… assholes.”
“I figured,” I agreed. “After what they did to my shop.”
“Okay. I think I got it all, but I’m going to lay down the comforter from your bed so we can coax Ernest out,” Kylo explained. “Then Velle can pick him up and carry him outside.”
I was going to ask why he couldn’t pick up Ernest, but at the sound of his name, Ernest pushed at me from behind.
So the second the comforter was down, I crawled out, then moved aside to let Ernest do the same.
Ernest was quick.
Velle was faster.
He swooped down, snagging my chunky dog around the middle before he could rush off the blanket. Then he picked him up and carried him. Ernest’s front legs went over Velle’s shoulder. His tongue lolled out, then licked Velle’s ear.
“Yeah, nice to meet you too, bud,” Velle said, moving out of the room with him.
“Hey, you’re okay,” Kylo said, watching me with growing concern in his eyes.
It wasn’t until he said it that I noticed my body was shaking head to toe, all the adrenaline seeking an exit now that the danger had passed.
“Yeah,” I agreed. Even my voice sounded shaky as I dropped back on my heels. Tears pricked my eyes, and I lifted my hands to try to hide my face, saw the grime coating them, and dropped them with a pathetic sob.
Kylo, hesitant before, dropped down with me then, reaching for me—filth and all—and pulling me until I was on his lap, my legs on either side of his, my head buried in his neck.
The familiar scent of him, the feel of him, only seemed to make me cry harder.
His arms tightened around me, squeezing me almost to the point of cutting off my air.
“You came,” I choked out.
“Of course I came. I’m not gonna let them do anything to you,” he vowed.
I believed him.
No matter what had happened between us, no amount of trying to repaint him as the bad guy could make me believe he was a bad man.
He wanted to protect me.
“Why are they looking for me?” I managed, my voice thick with tears.
“I don’t know,” he said, rubbing his hand up and down my spine as if to try to ease the upsetting reality of those words. “My best guess is they found out you’re linked with us somehow.”
And wanted to punish me for going behind their backs.
Thank God I had a hiding space.
Because there was no way there wasn’t some awful torture in my future if they’d located me.
I expected the tears to drag on and on like they had the night of the delivery. But maybe my system was adjusting to the fear, the uncertainty of my life now. Or maybe the meds were evening me out, letting me get more control over my emotions faster.
All I knew was that I didn’t completely soak through Kylo’s shirt this time. Though I probably did smear him with the dirt and grime from the crawl space.
“You don’t smell bad.”
“I… what?” Kylo asked, his hands pausing in their path up and down my back.
“Teddy said Huck said you smelled bad.”
A weird, short snort escaped Kylo at that.
“I guess I did for a few days. I’ve taken showers since then,” he admitted. “You talked to Teddy?”
Neither of us moved to pull apart.
And I was choosing to let myself think it was because I was still scared and vulnerable. Even if I knew the truth; it just felt good to be held by him again.
“He came to the shop.”
“To talk to you about the plants?”
“No. Well, that was mentioned in passing. But no. He came to talk to me about you.”
“Me?” Kylo asked, fingers tightening on my back until he forced his hands to relax. “I’m sorry, Rue. That wasn’t his place. He should have left you alone.”
“No. No, I’m glad he came,” I admitted. Even if I hadn’t gotten a chance to make up my mind about what he’d said.
“Rue…” he started, then stopped, the words failing him. Then, after a breath so deep it must have burned, “Rue, I’m so fucking sorry.”
My heart squeezed.
“I hated lying to you. I should have just… told Huck to go fuck himself. I never should have screwed you over like that.”
“It was a job.”
“Darlin’, you were not a job. Yes, it was a job to meet you, but nothing that happened between us was a job. That was all real.”
“You followed me,” I said, not willing to let him off the hook just yet. “For days. You wrote down everything I did and relayed it to your boss.”
“Not everything,” he said, arms squeezing me quickly, like he was willing me to believe him. “There were things that weren’t his business and I didn’t tell him.”
“None of it was his business.”
“No,” he agreed. “No, it wasn’t. But I thought you’d feel less… exposed if it was me instead of one of the other guys. I knew you’d feel more betrayed, but maybe not as horrified by someone else knowing… everything.”
It was the same point Teddy made. It wasn’t wrong.
“The hotel…” I said.
Kylo inhaled hard, his head falling forward a bit.
“I know,” he said, voice small, rough. “I know. I told myself over and over that you never would have made the choices you did if you knew the whole picture. I knew it was wrong. But then… no. No, there’s no excuse.
It was wrong. I knew better. You should have been given a choice with all the information included.
I didn’t give you that. And I’m sorry. I don’t have anything else to say about it other than I’m really fucking sorry. ”
His head pressed to the side of mine so when he spoke again, his breath was warm on my ear.
“But I also don’t regret it,” he admitted.
“Being with you… I could never regret it. That was… I don’t know.
It was everything,” he told me, making my heart swoop.
“I’m just sorry it can’t feel that way for you, now that you know the truth. ”
But it could, couldn’t it?
If I let it.
If I released the betrayal, if I trusted in the truth of his words.
It could just be a rough bump in the road leading to somewhere amazing.
All I had to do was believe him.
All I had to do was put my faith to rest in the fact that it hadn’t been fake for him, even if he hadn’t been completely truthful with me.
“Did you lie to me about anything else?” I asked. “Other than why you came to the shop? And that you were following me?”
“No. No, anything I said when we were alone and getting to know each other, that was all real. Except I danced around my job and why I lived partially at the clubhouse. Everything else was real.”
“Did you tell the club everything I told you?”
“Absolutely not.” I’d barely finished speaking before he was talking over me, his voice fierce.
“They only knew things that were pertinent to your involvement with Marco. They didn’t even know about the spa or the pool or any of that.
And I would never tell them about… about anything else that happened between us. That would never be their business.”
I let what he said sink in, working to filter it, organize it, and try to wrap my head around what I was thinking and feeling about everything.
“Oh, in the interest of full transparency, I might have been a little rude to your grandmother.”
“My grandma?” I asked, pulling back, eyes wide. Of all the things Kylo had been, he’d never shown a hint of rudeness.
“She blocked the driveway on the day I was trying to peel out of there after Velle confronted me about rotting in my bed for days. She wanted me to reach out and apologize. I told her you didn’t want to speak to me and just… pulled off without saying much else.”
She hadn’t mentioned that.
Though she had pleaded with me to give Kylo a chance to explain himself, even though she had no idea what was going on.
She wouldn’t have done that if she thought the way he spoke to her was out of line.
Not my grandma. Not after the life she spent with a man who never missed a chance to be awful to her. She would never beg me to give a man a second chance who she even suspected was anything like her husband had been.
If there was a part of me that didn’t trust my instincts, that same part did trust my grandmother’s.
“I’m sure you weren’t as rude as you think. She would have mentioned it if you were. Something about not giving that ‘no-good biker’ another chance.”
“She might still say that if or when she learns the truth.”
“Honestly, I don’t think so. She’s obsessed with soap operas and high-stakes romances. She would probably think it’s romantic.”
“It was,” Kylo said, eyes sad. “Until it wasn’t.”
“I’ve never hated anything in my life as much as I hated hurting you.”
I believed him.
Yes, I believed him. About everything.
And if he was being honest with me now, if he knew what he did was wrong, if he’d been torn up about it, and if he had apologized, what else could I expect from him?
The ball was in my court.
To forgive.
Or to hold onto my resentment.
Honestly, it was no choice at all.
“I see that,” I agreed.
Then I leaned up and pressed a soft kiss to his lips.