The call ended but not before he heard her sob.
Did he make a mistake by telling her? Maybe he should’ve left her in the dark and not drug out the nightmare of her past.
But then, maybe he shouldn’t have returned Matthew’s call in the first place.
Why did he?
Why?
Worse, why would he even think about going back there?
If he did, could he even do it alone? Without Saylor? But, in truth, he’d never force her to go. To take her back to the place that caused her nightmares.
Caused them both nightmares for years.
He had successfully put it all behind him.
Until the phone call.
If he was smart, he wouldn’t go.
If he was smart, he never would have called Matthew back.
If he was smart, he would’ve burned that note.
Apparently, someone forgot to remind him that he wasn’t smart.
Chapter Two
Reilly didn’t know what to say. From where she sat, that whole conversation between Rev and Saylor was confusing at best.
She wasn’t sure if she should be upset or angry. Not at him, but for him. When she had stepped outside and saw his shoulders hunched, his head hidden in his folded arms and his phone on the table next to a still smoldering pot pipe, she knew something was very wrong.
Whoever the person was whose name and number she’d written on that slip of paper had given him some sort of bad news. She wouldn’t have even known that Rev was Michael Schmidt if the caller hadn’t happen to mention that Michael might be using the name Mickey.
However, the bits and pieces of conversation she heard didn’t give her enough to go on. So, she said the only thing she could come up with. “I’m sorry about your father.”
He turned those stunning eyes—the bright blue orbs that created flutters in her belly and lower—toward her. “Don’t be.”
“You’re not upset about him being sick?”
“Don’t give a fuck about him bein’ sick,” he answered.
“When I came outside you looked… upset.”
“Nothin’ to do with him havin’ cancer.”
Cancer?
She wanted to keep probing but whenever she bugged the guys, they usually shut her down or shut her out. They all had their secrets, every last one of them, and usually didn’t share. If they did, she imagined it was with each other and not with anyone else. Or for some of them, maybe they shared with their ol’ ladies. Something she wasn’t.
But she knew they didn’t sit around simply talking about shit. Not like the Fury sisterhood did. In fact, when one of the guys saw the ladies gathered—especially when they were drinking—they usually got the hell out of there as fast as possible so they wouldn’t get sucked into whatever the women were up to.
She imagined them screaming, “Gird your loins!” in warning as they ran away.
The longer she sat there without him saying anything else, the more she realized Rev probably wanted to be left alone with whatever was going on in his head. But usually none of them had any difficulty telling her to go away. She’d been told plenty of times to “fuck off” or “get fuckin’ lost.” None of that offended her since it didn’t take long after coming to Manning Grove, and becoming a part of the club, to figure out that was just the way the guys were.
They not only hid their secrets, but their feelings, too.
If she wanted to have a long and somewhat meaningful conversation with someone of the male variety, she did it with her hairdresser Teddy from Manes on Main. That man could talk.
He could also listen. And he certainly could give some great advice. Especially on how to use makeup to minimize the visibility of her scar.
Men bent the ears of their bartenders. Women chatted with their hairdressers. It was the way of the world. At least in a normal world.
The MC world was definitely not normal. Not even close.
“I’ll leave you alone.” She tried to keep the disappointment from her voice.
As soon as she got to her feet, he snagged her wrist and yanked her back down. Maybe he needed some company but didn’t want to ask for it. “You know Dutch is going to have a fit. We’ve been outside for too long.”
“He can wait.”
Yes, he could. Whatever was going on with Rev was more important. Not that Dutch would know. Or care.
But Dutch’s blow-ups tended to peter out pretty quickly and if they didn’t, Reilly only had to teasingly tug on the man’s salt-and-pepper beard and blow him a noisy kiss. That usually disrupted the gruff biker’s rampage and also got her a silent thanks from the four mechanics who were usually Dutch’s targets. Not only with words but sometimes flying wrenches.
She’d also stepped in plenty of times in the past year to prevent Rook and Dutch from coming to blows. She couldn’t imagine how many fights the father and son got into before she rolled into town.
Okay, maybe she didn’t quite roll into town. In actuality, she’d been driven by Judge to the farm from her sister’s house so she could hide out and be safe from her psycho ex-boyfriend. Then after she torched the asshole to death, she decided to stick around.
Any reasonable woman would want to stay when surrounded by a bunch of hot, growly, alpha bikers. The Fury was a single woman’s wet dream.
Though, the truth was, she had nothing and nowhere else. Except for her sister Reese, who was now a part of the club, anyway.
So really, Reilly belonged here. In this town, a part of the Fury family and, even better, the Fury sisterhood, even if she wasn’t an ol’ lady. And might never be.
She just didn’t belong being a secretary in an auto repair shop.
Her sister was right. She had a business degree she was wasting, one Reese helped pay for. She needed to think seriously about doing something with it. To have a clear direction instead of simply floating along.
She had only stayed working for Dutch because it kept her busy, had put enough money in her pocket to rent a tiny studio apartment within walking distance of the garage, allowed her to score a reliable used car and gave her enough “scratch” to buy some really sexy boots.
Admittedly, she had a thing for boots. Ankle, shin, knee or even thigh-high. She loved them all.
But now? Now, she needed to get serious about her future.
Answering phones at Dutch’s Garage was only her “now” and not her future. She loved the assholes, but the dead-end job wasn’t challenging enough.
She was pretty sure Dutch was surprised to see her when she walked in every morning with their donuts and coffee from Coffee and Cream from the other end of town. But she figured the cash stuffed into the coffee can in the break room was better spent on decent coffee and fresh pastries than that generic ten-pound bag of beans Dutch bought at some warehouse store near Williamsport.
They could drink that crap the rest of the day but they should at least start their morning out right. However, her daily lattes and glazed crullers had widened her hips, slightly thickened her middle, and made her bras overflow.
She needed to do something about that, too.
But not this minute. Right now, she had another issue to deal with. Reilly reined in her thoughts and studied Rev’s quiet profile.
The man was hot as fuck.
Hot. As. Fuck.
While most of the Fury men were considerably hot, Rev was at the very top of that roaring flame.