Chapter Twenty-One
Rune
As soon as I stepped into the doorway, Fallon’s gaze was on me. Not far behind him was my Uncle Reign, the club’s previous president. Both men had basically seen it all. But both were also a mix of concerned and pissed.
“Alright, I’m gonna start,” Dezi announced, making everyone look over at him. “I’ve been keeping shit from everyone too. So if you guys wanna be pissed, you gotta include me in that.”
“What have you been keeping from us?” Fallon asked, looking like he needed a drink.
“Well, one night, I walked in and something with Rune and some chick seemed hinky. So I checked out the cameras.”
“Not in the mood for dramatic storytelling here,” Fallon said. “Get to the point.”
“Well, imagine my surprise to see that pretty lady walk into the clubhouse and pull a gun on Rune.”
You could have heard a pin drop.
“The fuck?” Uncle Reign said, shooting me a look.
I held up a hand.
“I’ll run through this quickly so we can get to the judgment and questions part. Yes, Carmen came in here planning to kill me. No, I didn’t tell anyone. I wanted to figure out what it was about. So I had Junior track her down. Went to see her. Long story short, there was a drive-by at her place.”
“For fuck’s sake,” my father hissed.
“At the time, we thought the drive-by was something to do with Carmen and her sister’s duplex neighbor. But I got the girls to a hotel and in the process, realized that Carmen believed that while I was in Puerto Rico, I killed her best friend. I didn’t. But I was there. I saw it. It was fucked.”
“Rune…” Croft said, eyes wide.
I held up a hand. I knew he had words for me. But there would be time for that later.
“Anyway. I came back home. But then Carmen showed up because two men broke into her house, bound, and tried to kidnap her. Under all her makeup, she’s a bruised mess,” I told them. “I have Junior on the cameras around her house. And now by the shore. Hopefully, he pulls up something.”
“So this is about her, not you?” Fallon asked.
“I think it might be both. I think… I think this is related to Vicky’s murder. Maybe the real killer doesn’t like that Carmen and the one person who saw him kill this girl are getting chummy, comparing stories…”
There were a million questions then, demands to know about that fateful night. All the while, I could feel my father’s gaze on me, his eyes guarded, but I knew him well enough to know he was somehow blaming himself for the trouble I’d gotten myself into after I moved away from home.
I was going to have a lot of uncomfortable talks ahead of me. But I wanted to get all the facts out first, answer all the questions, get the whole club on this since I was clearly out of my depth doing it alone.
It was a solid forty-five minutes before some of the guys started filing out. Then I had my private talk with my father, then my brother, before, finally, Fallon.
He’d calmed down a lot by then and made his way behind the bar, pouring us each a drink. “I don’t like secrets,” he said.
“To be fair, I didn’t think this was something that could come back and bite me, or I would have told you about it. There was no reason to assume that anything from Puerto Rico would follow me here. Yes, my brother and I did some shit over there, but it was over when we left.”
“Until Carmen started digging around.”
“Yeah, I guess. I don’t know. There are more questions than answers right now. I’m hoping Junior can get us something.”
“I think we obviously need to focus on this fuck who killed that girl.”
“I agree.”
“You can get Paine or Jackson to draw up a sketch of him.”
“That’s a good idea.”
“And it might be worth your time to get more information out of Carmen.”
“More? I think she’s told me everything.”
“She could tell you how she got your name. Who pointed in your direction? Why? That kind of shit.”
“Right. Yeah. I can do that.”
“Good. And I think this part goes without saying, but your ass is staying in the clubhouse until this is sorted. And, unfortunately, you also have to tell your brothers that they’re stuck inside too.
You guys all look too similar to be out on the streets.
These shooters don’t seem like geniuses. I don’t want them making mistakes.”
“Yeah, that’s smart.”
“I’d say I’m sorry to give them more reasons to be pissed at you, but this is the clusterfuck you created, man.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “I know.”
“Alright. Go talk to your girl. She’s probably had her ear to the door this whole time.”
I didn’t correct him.
About her being mine.
Was it probably another lie?
I don’t know. Maybe.
But it felt right to hear her referred to as mine.
Whether she was or not.
I made my way into the hall, sucking in a steadying breath, then moving into my room.
Carmen didn’t have her ear to the door.
She was on the bed, back against the headboard, my pillow clutched to her chest. The TV was on, but the sound was too low to hear. Her phone was down at her side, and I imagined she’d been in touch with her sister at some point.
“Hey.”
“Hey,” she said, giving me round eyes. “Is everything okay?”
“Yeah, baby, everything’s fine. The whole club is working on this now.”
“Are you being punished?”
“Punished? No. I mean, I’m not allowed to leave here. Neither are my brothers. Or you. But aside from that, it was more just some uncomfortable conversations about why I’d been keeping shit from the club and my family all this time.”
“Do they blame me?”
“No, of course not. You didn’t do anything.”
“I tried to kill you.”
“Eh, hardly. You were working with bad information. That’s not really your fault.”
“Was that your dad? Who showed up by the beach?”
“Yeah.”
“You look just like him.”
“Yeah, his genes are strong.”
“And he’s not mad at me? That I tried to kill you?”
“Baby, no one is mad at you. Shit happens. Trust me, this isn’t even the craziest story of this club’s generation, let alone our father’s generation. Did I tell you how my dad met my mom?”
“No.”
“My father was doing a drop.”
“Guns?”
“Yes. And my mother… stole the gun. She was an arms dealer too. So, trust me, he gets the crazy shit that can happen around the club.”
“But maybe they see it through a different lens because those are, you know, their love stories?”
I slid an arm around her, pulling until she moved to rest her head on my chest.
“Are you so fixated on this because you think they might hurt you? Or because you’re concerned about what they might think of you?”
“I trust you if you say they don’t want to hurt me.”
“So, you’re anxious about what they think about you.”
“I guess. A little.”
“Because you want them to like you?” I asked.
Carmen shifted, her body tensing up on me again.
“I care that Sofia likes me too,” I told her. “And Chip. I know he’s not technically your family, but he’s something like it.”
“Sofia loves you. And Chip really respects you.”
“And you want my family to like and respect you too.”
“Yeah.”
“Because you are thinking that you might want to keep being a part of my life?” My heart thrummed at the idea that she might be having the same kind of future thoughts that I was.
“I’m going to be here until we figure this out.”
“Baby,” I said, but said nothing else, waiting until she fought back her anxiety and angled her head up to look at me. “What’s going on in that head of yours about this?”
“This?”
“Us?”
“Us?”
“There’s some kind of us going on here, don’t you think?”
“I… don’t know?”
“No? Feels like there’s something to me. Know you didn’t know me before the whole attempted murder thing, but I’m not a man who spent all his days hanging out with a woman. At least not just one woman.”
“You’re kind of stuck with me?”
“Am I? Have I been? At your house? At the hotel? Here? I could be sleeping in the prospect room. But I’m here. Where I want to be. With you.”
“What are you saying?” she asked, voice small, hopeful.
“I guess I’m saying that my crazy ass is starting to fall for the woman who spent a year tracking me down to kill me.”
Her lips twitched at that.
“That’s not quite as crazy as starting to fall for the guy you spent a year hating and plotting to murder.”
“Touché.”
“You don’t have to say you’re interested in me just because we’re, you know, kind of involved.”
“I think it’s more than ‘kind of,’ and I would never say something I didn’t mean. I’m not saying I’m good at this or know what I’m doing. But I am saying… I’m interested in giving it a shot. If you are too.”
“My life isn’t here, though.”
“Maybe not. But I’m not suggesting you uproot your life and move into my windowless clubhouse bedroom. You don’t live that far away.”
“True. But what if…”
“What if things go well?” I asked. “You’re already expanding your business.
You could hire someone to take over the jobs you do and run your business from Navesink Bank.
You could even open another branch of it here.
But I think we’re getting ahead of ourselves.
Right now, you’re here. I’m here. We’re both interested. We can… explore that more.”
Carmen sucked in a deep breath and crawled up my body until her face hovered over mine. “Like this?” she asked.
Then her head dipped and her lips pressed to mine.
It was a soft kiss at first—a little hesitant and uncertain. But it wasn’t long before the desire was building, before Carmen’s knees were planting on the sides of my thighs, so she could shift upward and feel the hard press of me against her.
A groan slipped out from between her lips, muffled by mine, as every instinct told me to grab her hips and use them to grind her against me.
“We shouldn’t,” I murmured against her mouth.
“Yes, we should.”
“Your ankle,” I said between kisses. “And hand.” Her lips moved from mine to my neck, her tongue tracing the pulse point there, making desire shoot down my spine. “And ribs.”
“Are you trying to convince me or yourself?” she asked as her lips moved down my throat.
“Both.”
“Well, stop,” she demanded as she looked up at me, the hunger clear in her dark eyes.
“I can do that,” I said, snagging her chin and dragging her up for a kiss. Harder. Hungrier.
She sighed against my kiss.
Then I threw my weight, rolling her under me.