Chapter Eight
Rune
“Yo,” someone called as my sneakers pounded the pavement.
The sun was unyielding, the humidity set to tropical rainforest. Sweat poured down my body, and my legs were getting wobbly.
I had no idea how long I’d been running, but judging by how my body was starting to feel, it was longer than was probably healthy in the kind of heat that was burning up Jersey on that particular day.
The long drive home from Carmen’s neck of the woods had done nothing to clear my head. So instead of driving home, I’d driven right to the beach, taking time to grab basketball shorts and sneakers out of the saddlebags, changing, then taking off down the pathway along the beach.
I slowed, squinting against the sun to see who was hollering. Only to find my brother standing there.
“What the fuck are you running from?” he asked, making his way toward me. When he was close enough, a bottle flew through the air, making me reach up to snatch it before it whacked me in the face.
Electrolytes.
“Thanks,” I said, untwisting the cap and chugging the contents.
I wasn’t sure how long I’d been running, but I did know that it was too long without a drink.
“You’re gonna get a damn heat stroke running in this,” Croft, not usually a worrier, scolded.
“How’d you know where I was?”
“Aviela told me she saw you running when she drove down the shore… then still running over an hour later when she drove back.”
“Why didn’t she stop?”
Unlike Croft, our sister absolutely was the worrying sort. Squarely stuck in the middle, and the only girl, she worried both about the recklessness of her older brothers and our little brother.
“I think Aviela knows when a situation is a sister thing and when it’s a me thing.”
“This isn’t a you thing either. It’s not a thing at all. I needed to blow off some steam.”
“Blowing off steam is one thing. Risking heat exhaustion is another. What’s going on? You’ve been weird as fuck for days.”
“Weird as fuck because I didn’t want to party twice?”
“It’s more than that, and you know it. What’s going on up by the city?”
Fuck.
Fuck.
My brother and I had a deal. We had our location on for each other. I’d turned it off the first time I went to confront Carmen. But I’d forgotten when I’d left that morning.
Of course, he checked if he was already suspicious about me.
“Went for a ride.”
“A ride. To some random duplex. Then some fancy-ass house?”
He’d not only looked me up, he’d researched where I’d been. That was so unlike Croft that it hadn’t even crossed my mind to worry about that.
“The tracking was probably off.”
Croft’s head tilted, scenting the lie like a hound.
It was hard to lie to your twin.
I’d maybe only pulled it off once or twice in our lives. And only because it was a life-or-death situation.
“Rune, who is Carmen Torres?”
How’d he even guess it was Carmen and not Sofia?
Croft’s lips tilted up, revealing his one dimple. “The little sister is too young for you.”
Right.
If he wanted to assume this was just a hookup sort of situation, I could lean into that.
“I mean, I guess it makes sense.”
“What does?”
“Why you don’t want to hang out with the club girls. Carmen the jealous type?”
“It’s… not like that.”
“Well, it’s like something. Who travels an hour for a booty call? When there’s plenty right at home?”
“Someone who likes what they got a taste of?”
It wasn’t a lie. So it didn’t land like one. It just wasn’t my truth.
Though I wouldn’t mind getting a taste of Carmen.
And how fucked up was that? Wanting the woman who wanted me dead?
“Rune.”
“Croft.”
“A man who just had a great hookup doesn’t go on a punishing run in the sweltering heat.”
“You’re reading too much into this.”
“I don’t think I am.” He sighed and looked off toward the waves. “Are you in danger?”
“No.” She hadn’t even been able to pull the trigger before she interacted with me. Now that she had, I was a solid ninety-eight percent sure there was no chance she was going to try again.
“If that changes, you gonna tap me in?”
“I always have before.”
“And you will this time.”
“Yes.”
“Alright. Now get on your bike. I’m following you home in case you lose consciousness or some shit from all the sweating.”
“When did you become such a mom?” I asked, but followed him back toward our bikes.
I wouldn’t admit it aloud, but I felt like shit. I absolutely pushed it too hard. I needed a shower, some food, and more electrolytes.
So I followed Croft back to the club, ordered food for everyone, then jumped in the shower with another bottle of electrolytes, chugging as the cool water cascaded down my body.
And what did I think about in that shower?
Carmen.
Bent over in those damn biker shorts of hers as she scrubbed the baseboards, her round ass giving me all sorts of ideas I didn’t need to be thinking about a woman who wanted me dead.
“Fuck,” I grumbled when my cock got all sorts of ideas of what I should have done instead of tell her that she was cleaning wrong. It would have been so easy to walk over there, kneel behind her, pull down her shorts and panties…
No.
Dammit.
I couldn’t be fantasizing about fucking a woman who clearly hated me. I mean, once I figured out why, and if she was willing… I wasn’t so good of a man that I wasn’t down for a hate fuck.
But in the interest of not confusing shit further, I didn’t reach down and give myself the relief I was craving. I tossed my drink into the trash, then scrubbed my skin until the sticky sweat feeling was gone, climbed out, and dried off.
I walked out of the bathroom in a pair of basketball pants and nearly jumped out of my fucking skin.
“The fuck?” I asked the man sitting on the edge of my bed. “What are you doing in my room?”
Dezi shot me a look that suggested I should know exactly why.
“Funny thing,” he started. “I get a good read on people. They don’t notice it. It’s easy to write me off. Goofy guy who likes donuts.”
“Anyone who has ever seen you in a bar fight wouldn’t call you goofy.”
He ignored that.
“But it’s good I’m underestimated because no one knows I’m clocking them.”
Shit.
“And I was clocking you at that party. You and that girl dressed like a thief in a children’s movie that was shaking like a shopping cart with a bad wheel.”
Oh, he was really clocking us.
“Had some suspicions about it, so I drove off but circled back. Imagine my surprise when she came bolting out of the gate like her ass was on fire. So, I said to myself: That shit’s weird. Decided to figure out how weird. Imagine my shock when I saw this…”
I hadn’t noticed the tablet sitting on the bed beside him until he reached for it.
I knew what that was.
That was the tablet with the app that Junior had built to connect to the closed-circuit security system the Rivers brothers’ security experts installed in the club.
Fuck.
There was no bullshitting myself out of this one as he turned the tablet to face me then hit play on the paused video.
Then there I was, checking out the hot chick as she asked for me.
“This is my favorite part,” Dezi said as he dug in his pocket for a candy bar, then nipped it open with his teeth.
Carmen pulled the gun.
“And now some random hot guy is gonna come in looking for donuts. And you’re gonna protect the gunwoman from being found out.” He paused the video. “So I guess my question is… why?”
“Why what?”
“Why did you protect her from being found out? Do you know her? Some random hookup where you didn’t make her come and she’s holding a grudge?”
To that, I snorted. “No.”
“You sure? ‘Cause that’s the face of a woman with a lot of pent-up anger.”
“I’m not denying that. But I don’t know why or what I did to deserve that.” I exhaled hard. “Who else knows about this?”
“No one.”
“Why not?”
“Way I see it, a man keeps something like this from the people who care about him, he must have some reason. Not my place to kick this up to the boss man. Not unless it becomes necessary.”
“I appreciate that.”
“You know what you’re doing?”
“Does anyone?”
“You make contact?”
“Yeah.”
“She try to kill you again?”
“No.”
“Think she’s gonna?”
“No.”
“Alright. Well, this is me saying that I know what’s going on. And I’ll let you handle it your way, but if I sense shit went sideways, this video is finding its way in front of Fallon.”
“I understand. I’m working on this.”
“If you need backup, you know where to find me.”
“I appreciate that. I appreciate all of this,” I told him.
To that, Dezi shrugged. “Who hasn’t nearly gotten themselves killed over a woman?”
He got up, taking the tablet with him.
“The food’s here, by the way.”
With that, he was gone.
Alone, I dropped down on the bed, staring up at the ceiling as I dragged my hands down my face.
“Fuck,” I sighed.
It was bad enough that my brother was suspicious about what I was up to. It was a whole other thing to have someone like Dezi, who I wasn’t particularly close to, know almost as much as I did about the situation.
That said, I did trust Dezi.
He was someone who never played by the rules, so he wouldn’t see it as disloyal to the club that I wasn’t letting everyone in on what was going on.
I needed to go back.
I had to get Carmen to fess up to what she thought I’d done. Then decide where to go from there.
Best case, she was completely mistaken about the whole situation, and the two of us could just move on with our lives.
Worst case, I did do what she thought I did. And I’d have to find some way to understand that anything I’d done in my life was necessary, that I only hurt or killed people who were trying to do the same to me. Unfortunate? Yes. But everyone had a right to fight back when they were provoked.
I folded up and made my way out to the kitchen on aching legs to grab a plate of carbs and fat that I’d more than earned after that run.
A headache was pounding in my temples even after I was hydrated and fed.
When the girls started to show up and the music grew loud, I took myself up to the glass room for some quiet.
I meant to spend some time trying to figure out what I might be able to say to make Carmen talk to me.
But I passed out and dreamt of her instead.
Her on her hands and knees, ass up.
Her on my lap, bouncing around as she drove herself to the edge.
Beneath me, all soft and sweet, her nails scraping down my back…