Chapter 11
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Regan thanked Lynx for the ride and climbed out of his truck, her keys already in hand. He walked her to the door, his eyes scanning the dark tree line around the property.
“I need to access the house,” he said.
He was her new bodyguard.
Because CB hadn’t come back.
She let them inside, tapped the code into the security system so the alarm didn’t go off, and waited for him to go through the house.
He returned to the foyer. “I’ll be right outside,” he told her. “Have a good night.”
It was already after one. She locked the door behind him and reset the security system.
The house was too quiet. No click of Desi’s nails on the hardwood. No low murmur of the television from Lucy’s room. No creak of CB moving through the guest room, the steady presence she’d gotten used to hearing through the walls.
She dropped her bag on the kitchen counter and stood in the stillness, irritation crawling up her spine. A few days. That’s all it had been. A few days of CB in her space, and already his absence felt like a missing tooth—a gap she kept probing with her tongue.
She didn’t want to need him here. She didn’t want to notice that the house felt emptier without him.
But she did. And she hated it.
Her phone showed no missed calls, no texts. Nothing from him since he’d walked out of the bar and driven off to wherever he’d really gone. Not to see Wade—she was certain of that. Whatever business he’d had tonight, he hadn’t wanted her anywhere near it.
The smell of the bar clung to her skin. Fryer grease. spilled beer, and the faint cigarette smoke that always drifted in from the parking lot. She needed a shower. She needed to wash this day off and try to think clearly about what came next.
The bathroom filled with steam as she stood under the hot water, letting it pound against her shoulders.
She replayed the night in fragments. CB’s flat refusal.
The wall dropping over his expression. The Outlaws filling up the pool tables, watching her work.
Lynx’s silent presence, competent but unfamiliar.
Underneath all of it, the question that wouldn’t stop circling: What was CB hiding?
She stayed in the shower until the water turned cold, then toweled off and wrapped herself in a dry towel. Her hair dripped down her back as she padded barefoot to her bedroom, already thinking about falling into bed and trying to sleep.
She pushed open the door and stopped.
CB sat in the chair by her window, forearms braced on his knees.
Regan’s hand flew to her chest and the knot she’d made there with the towel. “What the hell?”
He didn’t move. His face was unreadable in the low light from the bedside lamp, but she could see the tension in his shoulders, the set of his jaw.
“We need to talk,” he said.
“You could have texted. Or knocked. Or done literally anything other than sit in my bedroom while I was in the shower.” Her voice came out sharper than she’d intended, but she didn’t care.
She was tired and angry and standing here in nothing but a towel while he looked at her with those steady green eyes.
“I needed to see you in person.”
“Why? So you could explain where you actually went tonight?” She moved farther into the room, putting the bed between them like a barrier. “Because I know it wasn’t to see your father.”
CB was quiet for a moment. “You’re right. It wasn’t.”
“So where were you?”
“Meeting with Ryder.”
Regan stared at him, her mind racing through possibilities, none of them good. “You met with Ryder. Why?”
“Because he texted me last night with a threat I couldn’t ignore. And because I needed to know what he was planning before I could figure out how to stop him.”
Regan’s hand tightened on the towel knot. “What kind of threat?”
CB reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. “I recorded the conversation. You should hear it.”
He tapped the screen and set the phone on the bed between them.
Ryder’s voice filled the room. Regan listened, her heart beating harder with every word. The accusation that she was investigating the Outlaws. CB’s refusal to back down. The exchange about loyalty, family, and choices.
And then the threat.
Wade’s name on everything. Paper trails leading back to a man who couldn’t defend himself. Ryder’s insurance policy, years in the making.
The recording ended. Silence pressed in around them.
Regan stared at the phone, then at CB. “He’s been setting up your father this whole time.”
“Yes.”
“To take the fall for everything he’s done.”
“Yes.”
She sank onto the edge of the bed, her legs suddenly unsteady. “Clive..”
“I know.” He stood and moved toward her, stopping a few feet away. God, he was impossibly tall, broad. “If you release your podcast to try and take Ryder down, my father will end up in prison. He’ll make sure my father dies there.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Give the recording to Claire first thing tomorrow. Then go see my dad and find out if he knows anything about what Ryder’s been doing—if he has any documentation, any proof that Ryder’s been operating independently.”
“Will he?”
“The stroke messed him up, but he has good days. Days of clarity. And he was never ignorant. He may have looked the other way too many times, but once he realizes what Ryder’s done, he’ll want justice.”
Regan looked up at him, seeing the weight he was carrying. His father’s fate in Ryder’s hands. His family’s legacy crumbling around him.
And here he was, standing in her bedroom at two in the morning, handing her evidence instead of burying it.
“This is my fault,” she said.
CB’s expression shifted. “What?”
“If I hadn’t started investigating the Outlaws—if I’d just let it go after Ray was convicted—Ryder wouldn’t be coming after you. He wouldn’t have leverage over your father. None of this would be happening.”
“That’s not true.”
“It is.” She stood, needing to move, needing to do something with the guilt rising in her chest. “I pulled you into this. I let you stay here, let you get involved with my family, and now Ryder is using your father as a weapon because of me. I should have?—”
“Stop.”
The word cut through her spiral. CB stepped closer, his hands coming up to grip her shoulders. “Listen to me,” he said. “You didn’t create Ryder. You didn’t make him set up my father as a fall guy. That’s who he is. That’s who he’s been for years, long before you started asking questions.”
“But—”
“No.” His grip tightened slightly. “I see what you’re doing. You’re trying to take responsibility for all of it so you can control the outcome. If it’s your fault, then it’s your job to fix it. If you’re the one who caused the damage, then you get to be the one who saves everyone.”
Regan opened her mouth to argue, but the words died in her throat. He was right, dammit.
“That’s not how this works,” he said. “We’re partners. That means we share the weight. You don’t get to carry it all, and you don’t get to decide that my choices are somehow your responsibility.”
“Your father?—”
“Is my father. My problem. My battle.” His voice softened, but his eyes held hers, unwavering.
“I’m not asking you to save me, Regan. I’m asking you to let me stand beside you.
That’s it. Not behind you, not in front of you.
Beside you. We’re both good at what we do. Together, we can be unstoppable.”
She felt the resistance in her chest, the part of her that wanted to argue, to insist, to take control. It was safer that way. If she was the one driving, she couldn’t be let down. She couldn’t be abandoned.
But CB wasn’t asking her to give up. He was asking her to let go—just enough to make room for him.
“Partners,” she said quietly, turning the word over and over in her head.
“Partners.” He released her shoulders and held out his hand. “Agreed?”
She looked at his hand, then at his face. The steadiness there. The certainty.
She didn’t take his hand. She reached up and pulled him toward her instead.
His mouth found hers, and this time there was no hesitation, no interruption, no stopping. She kissed him like she’d been waiting to do for days—because she had been. Through all the fear and doubt and anger, this had been underneath it, building pressure, waiting for release.
CB’s hands slid into her hair, tilting her head back. She could feel the restraint in him, the careful way he held himself, giving her control of the pace. But she didn’t want careful. She didn’t want restrained.
She wanted him .
Her fingers found the hem of his shirt and tugged. He broke the kiss long enough to pull it over his head, and then his mouth was on her neck, her collarbone, the curve of her shoulder where the towel had slipped.
“Regan.” His voice was rough against her skin. “Are you sure you want this? It…”
“Complicates everything. Yes, this is exactly what I want.”
He pulled back just enough to look at her, his eyes dark in the low light. She saw the question there—the need to know she wasn’t doing this out of relief or adrenaline or some misguided attempt to thank him.
She answered by letting the towel drop.
For a moment, he just looked at her. Not with the hungry urgency she’d expected, but with something quieter. Something that made her breath catch.
“You’re beautiful,” he said. Not a line. Just a fact. He traced a finger over her tattoo. “I fell for you the first day at the bar.”
Then his hands were on her waist, pulling her against him, and she stopped thinking about anything except the feel of his skin against hers.
They moved to the bed, and CB laid her down with a gentleness that made her chest ache. She’d expected heat, urgency, the kind of frantic passion that had consumed them the previous night.
But this was different. He touched her like he had all the time in the world. Like learning her body was something worth doing slowly.
As he kissed over her skin, she guided his hands. She tugged on his jeans and soon, he toed off his boots, and the pants were on the floor with her towel.
She arched into him as he traced down her sides, her hips, her thighs. His mouth followed, pressing kisses to her stomach, the inside of her knee, the flat of her stomach. She felt worshipped. Seen. Known.
When he finally settled between her thighs, she pulled him down to kiss her again, needing his mouth, his weight, the solid reality of him pressing her into the mattress.
“Clive.” She breathed against his lips.
“I’m here.”
And then he was guiding himself inside her, pulling back, sinking in again, easing her open so she could take all of him in.
It was the best kind of torture. He moved slowly at first, letting her adjust, watching her face. She wrapped her legs around him and urged him deeper, and his expression shifted, control giving way to need.
She stopped breathing when he seated himself all the way.
After a moment, they found a rhythm together, building toward something she could feel gathering at the base of her spine. She dug her nails into his shoulders and let herself be carried by it, trusting him to catch her when she fell.
“Let go,” he murmured against her ear. “I’ve got you.”
She did.
The release crashed through her in waves, and she heard herself cry out, felt him follow her over the edge moments later. He shuddered against her, his face buried in her neck, her name on his lips.
Afterward, they lay tangled together in the dark, her head on his chest, his hand tracing lazy patterns on her back. The house was still quiet, but it didn’t feel empty anymore.
“Partners,” she said softly.
She felt his chest move with a quiet laugh. “You already agreed to that.”
“I know. I just—” She propped herself up on one elbow to look at him. “I’m not good at letting people help me. I’ve been doing everything on my own for so long that I forgot how to share the load.”
“I noticed.”
“But I want to try. With you.” She hesitated, then added, “This thing with Ryder—we handle it together. I won’t go off on my own, and you won’t shut me out again. Deal?”
CB reached up and rubbed a thumb over her cheek. “Deal.”
She settled back against his chest, listening to his heartbeat slow. Tomorrow, they’d take the recording to Claire. CB would visit his father. The cease and desist would be delivered, and Ryder would know they weren’t backing down.
The fight was just beginning. But for the first time since this all started, Regan didn’t feel like she was facing it alone.
CB’s hand stilled on her back. “Get some sleep. Tomorrow’s going to be a long day.”
She closed her eyes, her body heavy with exhaustion and release and something that felt dangerously close to hope.