I follow his gaze and glance down at my chest, at the hole in the lacey neckline and the nearly black blood leaking out of it. With a frown of my own, I hook a finger under the edge of the torn lace and pull it back, noticing for the first time that …
“Oh, I was shot,” I say, and then the dizziness and the swirling scenery, the confusion and the blistering cold, it all makes so much more sense.
“Fuck,” Sin murmurs, and then he manages to catch me as I fall forward.
That’s the last thing I remember for days.
It’s a monumental task to get my tired lids to part, to take in the blurred scenery and try to make sense of it. Am I back in that bedroom again? I wonder, reaching out a hand and finding a warm male body sitting on the edge of the bed. I must be. And this is Grey.
The man squeezes my hand, and a hot thrill shoots through me, like a shock of adrenaline to the heart. I snap to, sitting up suddenly as the man withdraws his hand. It takes me several more blinks to bring the room into focus and realize that I’m in my grandmother’s old bedroom, the one that still smells like her perfume.
Though … this house hasn’t really been a home in a long, long time.
Instead, this is where the club buries the bodies they don’t want found. It may as well be a graveyard, a cursed place full of death and pain and misery. Underneath this house, there’s a sea of skeletons tumbled together in a mass grave.
I shiver and rub at my face with both hands. The motion makes the bandage on my shoulder pull, and I wince against the pain.
“Easy,” the man breathes as I drop my hands to my lap, realizing as I do that it isn’t Grey sitting there: it’s Crown. Crown. Fucking Crown. Born Calder Reid, ex-cop, Boy Scout among thieves, six foot five with auburn-highlighted brown hair that curls in such a sweet, endearing way that it almost tricks me. Almost.
“No lectures?” I manage to choke out, but then the coughing starts, and Crown is offering me a glass of water. I push it away, and he growls at me.
“When someone’s trying to help you, don’t fight it.”
He scoots closer to me, wraps a strong arm around my waist, and forces the water to my lips. He tilts the glass in just such a way that I’m forced to either drink it or let it spill all down my front. I choose the latter and Crown curses at me. My eyes are narrowed as I stare at him, and he finally pulls the glass away.
He looks at it then back at me before taking a huge drink and then offering it up again.
“It’s not poisoned; don’t be a stubborn little brat for once in your life.”
The way he’s staring at me, the way he’s talking to me, it isn’t how I’d expect him to treat a traitor of the club. He’s angry, that’s for damn sure, but why wouldn’t he be?
I Tased him. I stole his bike. I freed a hostage—a hostage who just so happens to be the prince of the mafia that the club’s been locked in war with for decades.
Rightfully, my head should be on a pike. Instead, I’ve been tended and washed, dressed in clean panties and a tank top, my shoulder cared for. My hair is even brushed and tangle-free. Reluctantly, I accept the glass and swig the remainder of its contents, swiping my arm across my lips as Crown and I examine one another like we both suspect the other of something nefarious.
It’s weird to be back here, like waking up in another world. Have three months really passed?
“Gidge,” Crown starts, sweeping hair back from my face. The gesture seems to annoy him as he withdraws his hand, staring down at it like it’s the traitor—rather than me. He opens his mouth to talk and then pauses, eyes flicking toward the bedroom door.
Somebody’s coming. I can hear the cacophony of boots as they make their way up the stairs.
“Listen to me,” Crown continues, turning all the way to face me and taking my head in two, big, tattooed hands. Our eyes meet, and I almost want to cry. I want to throw myself into his arms and let him hold me. And like, since when has that ever been a thing? We have never had that kind of relationship. It’s like the devil begging to be pulled into God’s embrace. Except … I know that Crown is anything but godly. Tears will not help me now—even if I were to realize that crying doesn’t necessarily make one weak. Maybe it’s that I’m just not strong enough to let my true feelings show? “After Grainger brought you to the compound, you bummed a smoke from Sin, and that’s the last thing I can recall. Only the five of us know you traded us for that boy.”
He keeps our gazes locked, squeezing me just a bit tighter than he should.
Wait.
Wait, wait, wait.
What?
“Who are you and what have you done with Crown?” I whisper, but he leans in even closer to me, putting our foreheads together. His voice is low and urgent and as close to desperate as I’ve ever heard it.
“Gidge, that’s all that I remember.” He pulls away from me just in time for the bedroom door to open. Cat walks in first, followed by René, Gaz, Sin, Grainger, Beast, and a handful of higher-ups and favorites of his. Then there’s little ol’ me, wearing nothing but a tank, panties, and a heart that’s close to bursting.
In club culture, the club comes first. Always. Forever. No matter what. It comes before wives and daughters, sons and cousins and grandparents and best friends. The club is life. The men are each other’s brothers in a way that marks the rest of the world secondary. Loyalty comes first and is prized above all else. Disloyalty is punished by death.
When I say blood in, blood out, I do not mean it euphemistically.
Then there’s Crown.
Mr. Black and White, choose a side and follow the rules, Boy Scout motherfucker.
For him to lie for me … for him to keep lying for me. No greater declaration need ever be said. The world’s greatest romantic gesture, and I don’t even know what to do with it.
Only the five of us know you traded us for that boy.
It doesn’t take a genius to parcel out who those five are. Me. Crown. Sin, Beast, Grainger.
I swallow hard and let out a long, slow exhale.
I’ll deal with the anger inherent in that statement later. Traded us. Ouch.
He thinks I chose Grey over him, over all of them. In a way, I suppose, I did. In my defense, I wasn’t aware that any one of them was a real option.
“Morning Gidge,” Cat says, pulling a chair close so he can sit in front of the bed.
“It’s Gidget,” I correct automatically, but the familiar quip seems strange, almost foreign. When I took Grey and ran, I was giving up this life forever. No, no, not just giving it up, as if it were some passive thing. I was throwing it as far and as hard as I could. I was making a guarantee and a promise that I would never come back. Yet, here I am.
Cat snorts and reaches out to ruffle my hair with his big hand. I stiffen up because, you know, the last time we were in a position similar to this, he put a gun to my forehead, pulled the trigger, and then dumped my bloody dog in my lap. Excuse the fuck out of me for not trusting the guy.
My brother glares daggers at me, his distrust apparent but unvoiced.
My eyes travel across the other faces in the room. Even though Sin tries to keep a straight face, he can’t. He cracks and gives me a small, crooked smile, the scar on the edge of his lip pulling his mouth up in such a way that he looks like a wolf. A pack predator. Just remember, Gidge, you are still a bear. You are still solo, even if it looks like you have allies.