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Brandy opened the glass shower door just enough to squeeze through, the water instantly soaking her white button-up shirt and chinos. She sat down across from me, her blond hair hanging limply in her face as she mimicked my pose.
Neither one of us said anything, but it wasn’t an uncomfortable sort of silence that you felt compelled to fill. She just sat there, blinking away the water as it dripped from her lashes.
If I screamed or told her to fuck off right now, she probably wouldn’t even bat an eyelash. She’d let me unleash the well of pent-up emotions churning in my gut, poisoning me from the inside out, because she understood what few people ever could.
She never talked about it, but I’d put enough pieces together to know that we now belonged to the same fucked-up club. Maybe we should get buttons, jackets, or something made that said man-haters. Then again, ball busters had a nice ring to it.
Only, unlike Brandy, whose fear had never left her, mine was rapidly dissolving into something much more destructive.
“Fuck!”
It had always been my favorite curse word because of its versatility. Some people thought if you used vulgar language that you were ignorant or didn’t have a big vocabulary. Not true. There were plenty of words I could have used, but the wretched and unholy state of things just didn’t resonate the same as fuck. ’Cause that’s what we were. Fucked.
“How do you keep from seeing him every time you close your eyes?”
All I wanted to do was forget about what happened, forget about him, but how could I do that with his image burned into my retinas.
“Find yourself a more frightening monster.”
There it was. The thing that drew her to Hunter. I finally understood why he was different. She’d found a monster willing to kill hers. Literally. But I didn’t hold out any hope that things would be that simple for me. Her monster had killed mine, and it hadn’t done a damn thing for me.
The bathroom door cracked open, Hunter’s monotone voice coming from the other side. “Stella, the guys brought back that dark-haired girl for you.”
Facing my father, and the club, was more than I could handle right now. It was going to take everything I had just to stand, say nothing about waltzing down the hall and telling a woman who’d just escaped from hell that her loved one was dead because of me.
“She’s the only one I want to see. Please ask my dad and the guys to give me some space right now.”
There was a long pause, and if there wasn’t still steam escaping through the bathroom door, I’d have thought he left.
“I’m afraid I can’t do that. Until Ryder’s had the chance to question her, she’s not to be left alone.”
Hunter wasn’t making any sense. Her only tie to the club was through me, and based on the grime plastered to her skinI’d say she was taken some time ago. There was no way she could have known Antonio sent Jules to watch me, let alone what he’d done for her. Which was something I’d take with me to the grave. She’d suffered enough without carrying around that little guilt nugget.
“What does Ryder want with her?”
“He thinks she’s the best shot we have at finding your missing CIA agent boyfriend.”
What the fuck? He had to have been talking about Jules because nobody knew I was still technically with Antonio. Still, it was a shock. Jules had been Antonio’s most trusted right-hand man, and I found it odd with how paranoid Antonio was that in five years’ time he’d never once fingered Jules for an agent. Not that any of it mattered now. Jules was no longer a threat to any of us.
“Hunter, you can let her go. She won’t be able to help you because Jules isn’t missing.”
My muscles protested when I uncurled my limbs to stand. Brandy immediately shot to her feet to help me, but I shook my head. It took me a few tries, and I was dizzy as hell, but I finally stood on my own two feet.
“He’s dead.”
CHAPTER 17
SWITCH
“What are you doing out here? I thought you told Ryder you were going back to the hotel to get some sleep.”
When I looked over my shoulder, a tiny orange dot burned brightly from the shadows beneath the old oak tree.
“Yeah, and I thought you quit smoking. Again.”
Mad Dog had fallen into and out of love with nicotine more times than any person I’d ever met. When his wife was alive, it was a game the two of them played. He’d try his best tohide it, Pat would confront him about his “cancer sticks,” he’d quit, and after a while the cycle would repeat.
When she died, I thought for sure he’d quit swinging back and forth on his cigarette pendulum. Then, a few weeks later, Stel stormed into the bar, pulled the cigarette from between his lips, and put it out in his beer. He’d looked over at me, winked, pulled out a stick of gum, and popped it into his mouth. I guess they both needed to pretend that things were normal in order to heal and move on.
