Chapter Eighteen #3
He laughed. “No one. I just wanted to get close to you and needed an excuse.”
I snorted, remembering how much I’d wanted to get close to him too. “You wouldn’t have needed an excuse.”
He shot me a sly grin. “Yeah, I figured that out pretty quickly.”
I watched him for a few minutes, mulling everything over. I had about ten million more questions for him, but all of them were minor, and only half of them were about trying to figure out what was going on. The rest could wait, I decided.
“Those were my biggest questions,” I said. “Now will you tell me what you think is happening?”
“I think my dad has some involvement in it, but I’m not sure how much,” he said.
“This is too messy for him to be behind everything. It’s too big, too volatile.
If shit pops off between the Jokers and us, the bigger clubs will get involved, and it will start a war between them. Dad would never want that.”
“And he wouldn’t intentionally put you in this kind of danger,” I said, remembering the concern on Liam’s face earlier.
“No, he wouldn’t,” Jakob said.
“So what happened?”
“I think shit got away from Dad somehow, and we need to find out who the fuck Redding really is before I start making assumptions about anything else.”
“Which is why you want to talk to Daniel.”
Jakob nodded. “We need to get this out in the open. Daniel might have the missing piece of information we need, and if we don’t figure this out soon, he and Dad might try to get rid of each other.”
“Get rid of each other,” I said, “like… ”
He glanced over at me as we slowed to a stop at a red light. We were back in the nicer part of town, only a few miles from Daniel and Eva’s house. “You know exactly what I mean,” he said.
“Yikes” was all I managed to squeak out. No wonder Jakob was wound so tight. His gang leader and father had been about a heartbeat away from trying to kill each other this whole time.
He reached out and tipped my chin up, pulling me from my dark thoughts. “We should go somewhere when this is all over.”
“What?” I asked, fighting the urge to lean into his touch.
“Get out of town for a long weekend. Unwind.”
I arched a brow at him. “You mean fuck each other for three uninterrupted days.”
His gaze dropped to my lips. “Yeah, that.”
I grinned, but a heartbeat later, it fell. “I’m still mad at you for keeping me in the dark about everything.”
He stroked his thumb over my lips, gaze drifting down to watch the movement. “I didn’t know how long you’d stick around. No point in telling you anything if you only wanted a one-night stand, helped me get into Magnolia, and then bounced.”
Okay, when he put it that way, his initial silence made sense but not his continued evasions.
“What about later?” I asked. “Like, anytime since you brought me home.”
“I don’t have a good reason for that. At least not one that doesn’t make me look like an asshole, so I’m sorry.”
That made three apologies in five minutes. He must have set a new world record for men.
“Be open with me going forward, and I’ll work on forgiving you.”
“Deal,” he said.
The light turned green in my periphery, but I couldn’t pull my eyes from him.
The way he stared at my mouth, the ease with which he’d apologized, the fact that every moment I spent with him, I saw some new side of him—it was turning me into an addict.
I never wanted to look away from him. Because it meant I might not see the way the ice in his eyes melted when he turned to me, or I might miss out on another hint of the dark humor I’d glimpsed the other day or the goofiness of this morning when he’d crashed down on top of me and started snoring.
Someone behind us honked.
Jakob gave my cheek a slow, lingering stroke like he had all the time in the world.
The honking grew more persistent.
“Jakob,” I said, staring up at him.
Finally he let me go.
A few minutes later, we pulled into Daniel and Eva King’s long driveway.
The house looked different in the light of day, smaller, a bit grungier.
The beer cans on the front lawn didn’t help.
A small army of people milled around outside, cleaning up.
The front door stood open, young men and women moving in and out of it, carrying trash bags stuffed to bursting.
“New recruits?” I asked.
“Yeah, the poor bastards,” Jakob said.
I shuddered, feeling bad for whoever pulled vomit duty. They’d need industrial carpet cleaner and a stronger stomach than I had to face that dining room.
Jakob parked the car right outside the garage and then turned to me in his seat. “Daniel’s not like my dad. His temper gets the better of him sometimes.”
“You’re not going to try to provoke him, are you?” I asked.
He shook his head. “No, but his back is against the wall. And if he already thinks I’m in on it with my dad, anything might set him off.”
“Sounds like an injured animal,” I said.
“He is one. Let me take the lead?”
I nodded.
“And try not to get between us if shit goes down.”
“I’ll try not to,” I said.
Jakob pushed open his door. “Let’s get this over with.”