Chapter 60
GEMMA
It’s two-thirty in the morning and I’m dead on my feet.
So tired that I’m secretly glad Jensen hasn’t freed Cade from his driver/guard dog duties yet.
It’s been months and last I heard, Bret Barnes ran back to Dallas with his tail firmly tucked and the buddies he was with the night he nearly got himself killed haven’t so much as crossed the bridge since Colt ran them back across it.
“We don’t have to do this anymore, you know?
” I say without looking at him. We’re speeding down the stretch of highway between the Mill and town, nothing but grassland and the occasional outline of an ancient oil derrick passing by my window.
“I mean, don’t get me wrong, knowing how much this inconveniences you makes being trapped in a car with you worth it, but?—”
“We’re gonna do this until Jen says stop,” Cade says, his tone telling me he isn’t in the mood for me or my smart mouth.
Like he always does, he refused to let me tip him out tonight.
Instead of arguing, I just shrugged and quietly pocketed the money.
I’ve started putting it in a box. I’m going to give it to Gunner for his birthday this summer.
Thinking about the look on his father’s face when Gun opens up a gift-wrapped box full of money from me makes me smile.
“And I hate to disappoint you, Gemma,” he tells me, his tattooed hands flexing around the steering wheel while he sits back in his seat with a sigh. “But it’s fifteen minutes out of my day—twenty if I mind the speed limit. It’s not nearly as inconvenient as you’d like to think it is.”
It is an inconvenience.
He’d be sleeping right now if it wasn’t for me. Finally turning in my seat to look at him, I notice a split running through his eyebrow that’s been stitched up. “What happened to your eye?”
“I let a couple slip past me last night,” he says, with a wry smile.
I arch a brow at him. “Let?”
“Gotta keep the crowd interested.”
Thinking about the round of basement fights last night, I look at him like he’s crazy. “You let someone hit you?”
He gives me a shrug. “On occasion.”
“Did Sloane stitch you up?” I ask. Before I started working at the Mill there was an incident where Jensen was badly injured during a Thursday night fight. From what I’ve heard from River, Sloane ended up performing minor surgery on him in her kitchen.
“Nah.” Cade shakes his head on a low, rusty laugh. “I can handle the small stuff myself—I give that woman enough grief as it is without bleeding all over her hardwood floors at 3AM.”
I stare at him for a few moments, trying to reconcile everything I know and hate about Cade Montgomery with the man who’s driving me home without complaint.
The man who refuses to take my tips, even if he’s earned them.
The man who kicked the door on the ice shed off its hinges and saved me from something unspeakable.
“You didn’t do it, did you?”
When I say it, Cade’s face goes still. Flicking me a quick, vaguely disappointed look, he shakes his head. “Do what?”
“Kill your wife.”
When I say it out loud, the look of disappointment hardens into something that looks like disgust. “She wasn’t my wife—I don’t know why people can’t keep that particular fact straight.
” Shaking his head a little, his jaw twitches with irritation.
“It wasn’t a tire iron either if that’s your next question. ”
Remembering the bat he had gripped in his fist when he kicked in the ice shed door, I don’t have to ask.
“Okay...” Stung by his response for some stupid reason, I shake my head.
“She was Gunner’s mother—is that factually accurate?
” When he just stares out the windshield and drives without answering me, I decide to push my luck. “Well, whoever she was, you didn’t?—”
“Do me a favor…” Easing off the gas, Cade make a right hand turn, taking us off the highway.
“Don’t start romanticizing me, okay?” Making another right, he guides his car down my street.
“I drive you home because Jen’s my boss and he told me to.
I don’t take your money because I don’t need it, and I almost caved that motherfucker’s head in because I wanted to.
” Rolling to a stop in front of my house, Cade shifts his car into park and kills the engine.
“And I would have if my sister hadn’t been there to stop me.
” When he turns to look at me, I have to fight to keep myself from shrinking away from him or just throwing open my car door and running altogether.
“If not for her, you would’ve stood there and watched me turn Bret Barnes’s head into a goddamned soup bowl because I’m a fucking murderer, Gemma—I did exactly what they said I did and I don’t regret it.
Not one swing. Not one splatter—and if I could do it again, I would. ”
Opening his car door, Cade gets out while I sit here, stunned by what he just told me. That he did it. He’s not innocent. He wasn’t wrongfully convicted.
Cade murdered Gunner’s mother.
If he didn’t, why would he say he did?
Sitting here, I let out a sharp, embarrassing yelp when I feel my car door being yanked open.
“Come on,” Cade says, his tone gruff while he holds out his hand to help me out of the car. “I’m beat. Let me walk you to your door so I can go home.”
Pushing his hand away, I climb out of the car on my own and he lets me, backing up to give me room on a tired sigh.
Trailing after me, Cade follows me up the front walk, intent on fulfilling his duties so he can get back into his car and leave.
Mouth open to tell him to fuck off, I’m cut off by the sudden invasion of Cade’s muscular, tattooed arm snaking around me, banding my arms against my waist, the force of it hauling me me off the porch step.
“What—”
Lifting me off my feet, Cade clamps a rough hand over my mouth and begins dragging me backward, toward his car. Suddenly riddled with panic, I bite down hard on the hand covering my mouth, kicking my legs against his shins while my arms struggle to break free.
When my teeth break the skin of his hand and sink into the meat of it, Cade grunts softly in my ear but he doesn’t let go. Hauling me against him even tighter, he gives me a short, rough shake with the hand clamped over my mouth before he growls in my ear. “There’s someone on your porch.”
Eyes yanked wide, jaw slack under the cover of his hand, I scan the porch. I don’t see anyone.
“Don’t fucking scream,” he hisses in my ear, right before he drops his hand away from my mouth to use it to open the car door. Practically tossing me inside, he glares at me. “Stay here.”
“It’s probably Riggs,” I whisper even though I know it isn’t. Riggs wouldn’t hide on the porch. “Or maybe it’s Janet. She?—”
“It’s not your fucking cat, Gemma. Lock the doors,” he says , reaching in the back seat for his back before closing it in my face.
Face pressed against the window, I watch—confused and terrified—while Cade strides up my front walk to mount the steps, bat gripped in his fist, before he disappears from view under the dark overhang of the porch.
And then nothing.
No shouting.
No fighting.
No one gets thrown off the porch.
No one tries to run.
No one gets tackled in the front yard.
Nothing.
What the hell?
Pushing my car door open I don’t bother to close it before making my way toward the house.
Moving as quickly and quietly as I can, I climb the steps, afraid to so much as breathe.
I can see Cade, at the end of the porch, staring at someone standing a few feet in front of him, bat dangling uselessly from his lax grip.
Gaining the porch, gaze searching through the shadows, trying to put a face to who Cade is looking at, I take a few more steps before I suddenly stop.
“Emily?”
Considerably thinner than I remember. Even under the baggy, long-sleeve sweatshirt and jeans, I can tell. She’s always been what my mother called willowy but this goes beyond that.
When I say her name, the best friend I haven’t seen in over a decade tears her wide-eyed gaze away from Cade’s and looks at me. “Hey, Gemma.”
“Holy shit,” I cry out, stumbling past Cade to throw myself at her. “What are you doing here?”
“Long story,” she says, letting out a small oof when I practically tackle her. “One that’s probably best told over wine and cheesecake.”
“I don’t have cheesecake,” I tell her, squeezing her so hard she groans. “But I’ll make one.” Pulling back, I look up at her while I fight back a sob because I didn’t realize until just this very second how much I’ve missed and needed her. “Are you really here?”
Giving me a brief, brittle smile, she nods her head.
“I’m really here,” she tells me before flicking her dark violet gaze over my shoulder.
Settling it back on my face, she offers me a faint smile.
“I didn’t mean to scare anyone—I meant to surprise you before you left for work tonight but my flight was delayed and the car rental desk at the airport messed up my reservation and finding an Uber willing to drive me in, all the way from DFW…
” She flicks another nervous glance over my shoulder.
“I didn’t want to wake Riggs and I knew you’d be getting home soon, so I decided to just wait out here.
I must’ve fallen asleep on the porch swing…
” Swallowing hard, she looks over my shoulder again.
Bottom lip caught between her teeth, she chews on it for a moment before she finally speaks. “Hello, Cade.”
Shit.
Dropping my arms, I turn to look at the man standing behind me.
He’s staring at Emily with the shell-shocked look of someone who’s watching his entire life burn down around him.
Behind him, the front door opens, the sound of it snapping him out of whatever trance he seems to be under.
Mouth clamping shut, he narrows his gaze and turns his head toward the shape of Riggs, filling the open doorway behind him.
“You should’ve warned me your girl’s a biter,” he growls, jaw set at a dangerous angle.
Riggs laughs. “Now, why the fuck would I do that?”
Looking away on a disgusted scoff, Cade mumbles something under his breath before he practically launches himself off the porch. Seconds later, the car door I left open is slammed shut. Turning toward the sound, I watch Cade’s Challenger roars to life and disappear.