Chapter 21 #2
Bile climbs the back of my throat, and I fight the urge to gag because that would leave me open to an attack.
No weaknesses.
Don’t let him see it.
I’ve always known that any weakness can be exploited—in the ring, on the mat, or in life.
I just never realized I’d be dumb enough to allow it to happen to me.
Run.
You have to run.
I back away from him on shaking legs, all the way to the door that leads outside, that leads to freedom, that gets me far away from him.
“Bishop, don’t go. Let me explain.” His voice wavers, his gaze swimming with uncertainty and fear. He watches me grab the knob. “You don’t even have goddamn shoes on—”
“I don’t fucking care.”
I throw the door open and race out into the rain, running and not looking back, the screwdriver still clenched in my fist.
* * *
GAGE
Fuck.
Fuck.
Fuck.
Fuck.
Fuck.
Fuck.
Fuuuuuck…
I pull out my phone from my back pocket as I run toward the door after her, pausing inside the jamb only long enough to fire off a quick text.
We have a problem: A huge one.
My hand shakes as I hit send and run out onto the driveway with my heart in my throat.
I scan the street in both directions, searching for any sign of her. The neighborhood of mostly old, rundown service buildings and abandoned properties is silent this time of day.
And completely empty.
Shit.
The falling rain has washed away any potential signs of footprints that would allow me to track her, and she’s far too smart not to hide immediately, not to make herself invisible any way she can as fast as she can.
But she can’t have gotten far.
She was only a few seconds ahead of me. She’s barefoot. And she doesn’t know the neighborhood.
Those factors all play in my favor, which is good, because I have to catch her before she does something really stupid.
Which way would she go?
Frantically looking left and right, I wrack my brain, trying to put myself in her position if I had just walked into that.
She would go toward home.
Toward safety.
Toward her damn gun.
The vision of her clutching that screwdriver flashes through my head. Her trembling hand. White knuckle grip on the only weapon she had. The fear and hatred in the bourbon eyes that only last night looked at me with such warmth and affection.
No.
More than affection.
Last night changed things between us, and we both knew it. This morning should have been a new beginning for us. A step in the right direction. A step toward our future. Which is why that look of betrayal she just gave me will haunt me forever.
I have to find her.
Convince her to let me explain…
She’ll try to find a phone, unless I can find her first. I turn left and race down the wet sidewalk, my boots splashing through growing puddles, sending water flying up and soaking me even more, but it doesn’t matter.
Nothing does right now except finding Bishop.
She’s terrified, angry, and has nothing but the clothes on her back and the screwdriver in her hand.
The chill in the air makes me shiver as much as the fact that she’s out here barefoot, running down the filthy street, looking for anyone she might be able to trust who can give her access to a phone, a way to contact one of the Hawkes.
Time isn’t on my side. Once she makes that call, it will be too late.
I check every alleyway.
Behind every building.
Inside the burned-out, abandoned houses half a block from my place.
For twenty minutes, I scour the entire area, but there isn’t any sign of her.
Where the hell did you go, Hellcat?
Knowing her as well as I do, I’m confident she ran hard and fast. The fact that her body is still recovering from a severe concussion and weak from the injuries she sustained being thrown by the blast would be irrelevant to her.
Once the adrenaline kicked it, she would have been gone and not looked back.
All out until she felt safe.
A middle-aged woman turns the corner ahead, approaching me huddled under her umbrella carrying a small bag from the store up the street.
I jog up to her, plastering on a smile when the gaping hole in my chest where Bishop lived feels like it’s stealing my ability to breathe. “You haven’t seen a woman run by, have you? Barefoot with long dark braids wearing a man’s T-shirt?”
She narrows her gaze on me, her hand tightening on the umbrella so much that her knuckles whiten. “What makes you think I would tell you if I did?”
Fuck.
I sound like a goddamn scumbag kidnapper chasing after my captive who just escaped my evil clutches. It would almost be funny if it weren’t so close to the actual truth.
The woman keeps walking, glancing back at me several times with an intensely suspicious look that tells me she’s probably going to pull out her phone and record me, too.
Let her.
It doesn’t matter at this point. By the time the cops show up, I’ll be long gone. Just like Bishop is…
“Fuck!”
My scream rips through the air, but there isn’t anyone around to hear it. The woman who had every right to be suspicious of me must have turned down one of the side streets, leaving me standing here with nothing but my regret.
I shouldn’t have left her alone in the loft.
I should have known a goddamn lock wasn’t going to stop her from getting into that room.
But I got complacent.
I got too comfortable having her in my space and in my life.
I forgot what the fallout would be if she ever discovered what I have been keeping from her.
I let myself believe that those people in that bed together last night were who we really are and not two people who have been lying to each other and themselves.
What the fuck do I do?
Tipping my head back, I stare up at the gray sky and let the cold rain pelt my face, as if that can somehow wash away everything I’ve done to her. Every lie I’ve told and every misstep I’ve taken since I arrived in New Orleans run through my head.
There have been so many.
Most relating to Bishop.
And now it’s too late to fix it.
My phone buzzes in my pocket, and I reluctantly reach back and tug it out, glancing at the screen.
Then we should meet. Now.
I start walking back toward my place, still idly searching behind every building along the way, as if she’s still going to be here, but it’s futile.
Bishop already found somewhere safe to hunker down and make a phone call to one of the Hawkes. She’s already told them what she found, and they’ve already come to the same conclusion she did—that they were my targets.
And she isn’t wrong about that.
But she is wrong about everything else.
I walk back up the driveway toward the shop feeling numb, like my brain doesn’t want to process what just happened, how quickly everything went to shit.
The door still stands wide open, and I step through it and slam it closed behind me, the old glass in it rattling. I lean back against it and drag in a shaky breath, building up the courage I need to follow through with what I’m about to do.
It’s the only thing I can do. The only chance I have to potentially salvage anything.
I pull out my phone again and hit dial on the number that just texted me.
A familiar voice answers. “Are you on your way here?”
I squeeze my eyes closed against the headache suddenly forming behind my eyes and pinch the bridge of my nose. “No. Bishop Clarke found everything.”
“Shit.”
“She ran from my place. I’m sure by now, all the Hawkes know.”
“This is bad.”
Underfuckingstatement of the year.
“I know.” I swallow thickly. “I have to go after her. I have to go explain.”
“If you do that, you’re a dead man.”
I know it isn’t an empty threat or a warning.
It’s just the truth.
But I can’t leave things like this.
I can’t sit here and wait for Saint to appear and kill me with his bare fucking hands, which the man could do easily. I can’t wait for Atlas to show up and pound me into a bloody fucking pulp. I can’t wait around to see what the Hawkes would do to me if they go on believing what Bishop does.
Especially after the phone call I was on earlier that provided so much information I didn’t know before. It made so many things clear that hadn’t made sense, things I would have told Bishop had she given me the chance. But I can’t say I blame her for running.
I would have done the same in her position. And now, I have to fall on my sword. “I’m going over there. I’m going after her.”
“Don’t let your personal feelings get in the way of your job.”
“This isn’t about that.”
It’s a lie, of course, and we both know it.
My personal feelings have been in the way from day fucking one.
I end the call before he can say anything else or try to talk me out of it, then pull out the battery and SIM card from the phone and crush them beneath my boot.
There isn’t any time to second guess this decision.
I’ve already wasted too much of it looking for her when there wasn’t a chance in Hell of ever finding her if she didn’t want to be found.
As soon as I hit the top step, her jasmine scent hits me, mixed with the smell of sex and comfort we found together over the last several days. The pain that hits my chest is so intense that I double over, trying to find my breath.
“Fuck!”
I stagger to the edge of the bed and collapse there, burying my face into my hands.
You knew this would happen.
You knew she would figure out the truth eventually, that you would have to explain.
I thought I’d have more time.
I thought I could control it, that I could present it to her in a way that she would understand. But now, everything has blown up the same way Gabe’s car did the other day, and there’s no way to put the pieces back together.
But it doesn’t mean I won’t try.
I push up with one last longing look at the bed, then quickly strip out of my wet clothes and put on dry ones.
My eyes rake over all of Bishop’s things now scattered around my place so casually.
She was comfortable here. She may still have been itching to get back to work, but she had settled in and stopped acting like I was holding her prisoner.
She had finally begun to accept that everything I was doing was because I wanted to help her.
But now?
That all looks like a lie to her.
And it feels like one to me.
I tug open the drawer of my desk and snag the keys to the car I keep parked the next block over, then race back down to the shop and into the side room, where I grab one of the burner phones from the drawer there.
Snagging my leather jacket from where it rests draped over the seat of my Harley, I take a second to scan the shop in case I never come back.
It wasn’t much, but it became more of a home than I’ve ever had anywhere else during my adult life. And that was all because of Bishop.
I tug my jacket on, my hand slipping into the pocket and tightening around the metal there for a second before I step back out into the rain that has now tapered off into nothing more than a mist.
It may have washed away the path Bishop took when she fled from me, but I’m very good at finding people, and there’s only so many places she would go, where she would feel safe, where she’d feel protected.
Which means I’m about to walk into the lion’s den.