Chapter Eleven
Britta
I was standing in front of the mirror in a pair of sleep shorts and an oversized T-shirt with a toothbrush jammed in my mouth, staring at my reflection like maybe she had some answers for me.
Spoiler alert.
She did not.
Toothpaste foam gathered at the corner of my lips as I scrubbed a little harder than necessary, my arm already giving me attitude for it.
My shoulder had been sore all day, but now that it was late and I was standing still, it had started its nightly routine of throbbing like it wanted a gold star for consistency.
My eyes looked tired, like the day had taken a chunk out of me, and my body wasn’t done complaining about it.
Which, fair.
It had been one hell of a day.
I brushed my teeth and mentally went over the whole mess because apparently my brain had decided that half past ten at night was the perfect time to unpack every bad thing that had happened in the last twelve hours.
Swift getting shot at.
Not shot, thank God, but shot at multiple times right outside my apartment building.
Because apparently the people trying to ruin the Saint’s Outlaws were committed enough to open fire in broad daylight on a busy street filled with college kids and people just trying to go about their day.
That was what kept circling back for me.
The insanity and that it was the kind of thing that didn’t happen in Madison. Not in the version of Madison I’d always known.
Sure, there were fights and break-ins and people getting sloppy drunk and doing stupid crap they regretted later. But men rolling by in SUVs and trying to gun down bikers in the street?
That was movie shit.
Not my life, except apparently it was.
I spit into the sink and reached for the cup by the faucet, filling it with water and swishing it around before spitting again.
Then there was Tyson.
My overprotective, grumpy, deeply irritating, secretly sweet, pain-in-my-ass brother.
Swift thought Tyson might have had something to do with the attack, or at least that he couldn’t rule it out.
And I got it. I really did. The timing was bad. Real bad.
Tyson showed up and suggested Swift take off for a while. Swift left. Then someone tried to kill him.
On paper?
Yeah. It looked awful.
But Tyson didn’t have anything to do with it.
I knew that and knew him.
He was a jerk sometimes. Pushy. Opinionated. Too nosy for his own good, but he wasn’t dangerous like that. He wasn’t the kind of man who’d hand over information that got somebody hurt.
Even if he didn’t like Swift and he thought the club should pack up and leave.
Tyson loved me too much to play games with my life. And if Swift got killed while protecting me, Tyson would carry that forever, whether he wanted to admit it or not.
I squeezed toothpaste onto my toothbrush one more time, not because I needed more brushing, but because the repetitive motion gave me something to do while my thoughts spiraled.
Why did my life have to get this messy all at once?
A month ago, my biggest concerns were whether Tempi would ever stop impulse-ordering flavored vodka for drink specials and whether the walk-in cooler was making that weird humming noise again.
Now?
I’d been shot.
A hot biker had moved into my apartment as my full-time protector.
My brother was making everything weird by acting like he needed to glare at every man within a ten-mile radius of me.
And on top of that, Tyson looked, at least to Swift and the club, like he might’ve staged it for Swift to get shot.
That was a lot. Too much, honestly.
I finished brushing for the second time, opened the little bottle of mouthwash, poured some into the plastic cap, and tipped it into my mouth. The mint burned sharp and cold, making my eyes water just enough to annoy me.
I swished it around while staring at myself again.
My hair was up in a messy knot. There were little shadows under my eyes, and from the front, I looked… normal.
Like a woman getting ready for bed. Not like someone who’d had her whole life knocked sideways.
I spit into the sink one last time, then rinsed my toothbrush under the faucet and stuck it back into the holder beside my face wash and a tube of lotion I kept forgetting to use.
For a second, I just stood there with both hands braced on the edge of the sink. “What the hell are you going to do, Britta?” I muttered to the mirror.
“You talking to me, sugar?” Swift called from the living room.
I snorted.
Of course he heard me.
The man heard everything when it counted and almost nothing when I wanted him to.
I flicked off the bathroom light and padded down the short hallway into the living room.
Swift was on the couch, one arm stretched along the back cushion, long legs spread like it was his place. The TV cast blue light across his face, making the angles sharper. Harder. He had the remote in one hand, but he wasn’t really watching whatever was on.
Or maybe he was.
It was hard to tell with him sometimes.
I sat down beside him and tucked my legs under myself, careful of my shoulder and even more careful not to think too hard about how easy it felt to sit next to him now. “I was just talking to myself,” I confessed.
One corner of his mouth twitched. “You do that often?”
I laughed softly and leaned into the back of the couch. “More than I should probably ever admit to.”
That got a low chuckle out of him.
It was half past ten, and somehow I was still awake.
After the whole confrontation in the hallway with Tyson, the rest of the evening had gone weirdly quiet.
Swift had smoked at the window. I had sulked around my own apartment like a brat for a while because, apparently, being the center of an attempted murder plot did not make me more emotionally mature.
Then we’d watched TV until I dozed off for a bit on the couch.
When I woke up, I made a frozen pizza because if there was one thing trauma and healing hadn’t taken from me, it was my desire for carbs covered in cheese.
And now here we were.
Two people who had definitely become something to each other, even if neither of us seemed really interested in naming what that something was yet.
“Not tired?” Swift asked.
I shook my head and grabbed the remote, paging through the apps until I found reruns of Family Matters.
“Apparently not,” I said. “Which feels unfair because I’ve been exhausted for like ten straight days.”
Urkel’s voice filled the room, nasal and cheerful and somehow comforting in a deeply embarrassing way.
Swift looked at the screen. “You watch this?”
“Don’t sound so judgmental. This is quality television.”
He huffed a laugh.
We watched in silence for a few minutes.
Or more accurately, I watched, and Swift sat there being broad and warm and distracting while trying to pretend he wasn’t paying attention to me.
Urkel knocked something over.
Someone on the sitcom shouted.
I smothered a yawn behind my hand, and Swift looked over immediately.
“I might be a little tired,” I admitted with a laugh.
“You think?”
I rolled my eyes. “Okay, rude.”
He shifted slightly toward me; his arm still stretched behind me on the couch.
“Sugar, you’ve been running on spite and pain meds for the last week.”
“That is a wildly unfair but not inaccurate assessment.”
“Mm-hmm.”
I clicked the volume down a little and let the remote drop onto the cushion beside me.
The apartment was dim except for the TV and the little lamp in the corner by the chair. Outside the window, city light leaked through the blinds. Not enough to brighten the room much, just enough to remind me Madison was still out there doing what it did.
Swift was close.
Not touching me but close enough that I could feel the heat from him.
Close enough that if I turned my head, I’d be looking right at him.
So of course, that’s what I did.
His eyes were already on me.
And there it was again.
That strange little jolt in my chest that had been happening more and more with him. Not quite panic. Not quite nerves. Something hotter and more dangerous.
His gaze flicked over my face slowly, like he was reading something there I hadn’t said out loud. “What were you really doing in the bathroom?” he asked.
I blinked.
“Brushing my teeth.”
His mouth twitched. “Other than that.”
I blew out a breath and tucked a piece of hair behind my ear. “Thinking.”
“About?”
I hesitated, then shrugged. “The shooting.”
His expression changed just a little. Not softer. Just more attentive.
“My brother.”
That got his full attention. “And?” he asked.
I looked down at my hands folded in my lap. “And how everything feels impossible right now.”
He didn’t answer right away.
Didn’t fill the silence just to fill it.
That was one of the weird things about Swift. He didn’t talk unless he meant it. Every word that came out of his mouth felt chosen instead of tossed around.
Finally, he said, “It’s not impossible.”
I looked back at him. “It kind of feels impossible.”
His eyes held mine. “I know.”
Something in my throat tightened. “Do you?” I asked before I could stop myself.
He leaned back slightly, his expression unreadable in that way that made me want to throw a shoe at him and kiss him at the same time.
“Yes,” he said simply. “I know what it feels like when everything goes sideways and you still have to keep moving.”
There was no drama in it. No pity. Just truth.
And maybe that was why it hit me, because he wasn’t trying to make me feel better. He was just meeting me where I was.
I swallowed. “Tyson didn’t have anything to do with it,” I said quietly.
He nodded once. “I know you think that.”
“I don’t think it. I know it.”
His jaw shifted. “I hope you’re right.”
I hated that answer.
Because it wasn’t cruel or dismissive. It was worse; it was reasonable, and reasonable was hard to argue with.
I shifted a little closer without meaning to, just enough that my knee brushed his thigh.
Neither of us moved away.