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“Yeah,” Pony said. “Yeah. So as much as I want to hate you for lying to me, for coming to my family… and they are my family, Piper, the MC is my family… for coming there and sneaking around and…”
He still wasn’t looking at her, but his voice had calmed down to its normal steady tone.
“But I can’t,” he said. “Because I did the exact same thing, in my own way. Halfway across the world and carrying a rifle, but it was the same.”
“Ever since I met you, I felt like…” Piper said, “…like we had this connection. Like we just fit together.”
He held up a hand to stop her. “Piper.”
“I’m not saying this to hurt you, Pony. I’m saying this because… because the entire time I was undercover, I kept hoping and praying that I wouldn’t find anything to use against you. Even though I was told that was my job, I prayed every day that you would keep being the man I thought you were. Because I didn’t want to have to do anything that would hurt you.”
Now it was her turn to stand up and pace, trying to burn off the excess emotions coursing through her and threatening to derail her senses.
“I put that heroin in there,” she said. “I did. I was terrified. Harris was threatening me with… shit, with everything. And if it all came apart for me, then how was Carly…”
She shook her head. “But I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t. It was wrong, but more than that… I couldn’t do that to you. That’s why I came back and got rid of the heroin before the FBI could show up. For you. I kept thinking about what would happen to you if I left it in there and I… I couldn’t let that happen to you. No matter what happened to me after that.”
Pony was silent, his fists still resting on the desk, but they weren’t clenched any more.
“I mean,” Piper said, “since we’re being honest, I wasn’t exactly expecting an assassination attempt from my boss, but still.”
Pony actually let out a little laugh at that, and his fists uncurled and rested palms-down on the desk. Piper stopped her pacing.
“The worst part about all of this,” she said, “is that the one man who really understands me, who I want and need in my life more than any other man I’ve ever known, is the one man who the world doesn’t seem to want to let me be with.”
Pony closed his eyes tight, still not looking at her. “Yeah,” he finally said. “Yeah.”
She felt like she’d run a marathon, but there was still one more thing, the biggest thing, that had to be said. That had to be asked.
“Where do we go from here, Pony?”
There was a long pause.
“I don’t know,” he said. “We’ll figure it out, I guess.”
Piper said, “We?”
“Yeah. I don’t know that things can be the way they were between us, but… even if I can’t love you, it doesn’t mean I have to hate you.”
“I guess that’s a start,” Piper said. “Thank you, Pony.”
The motel door handle rattled loudly, startling Piper for a second. She laughed at her little over-reaction to the sudden noise and moved to open the door.
“It’s fine, Carly, we’re done talking,” she said loudly, adding to Pony, “She forgot to take the key card.”
Piper opened the door.
It was not Carly.
24
Piper had all of a microsecond to register the face of the man in the doorway as belonging to one of the hitmen who’d shot her earlier. A microsecond for her heart to leap into her throat, before the hitman shoved her hard enough to knock her over backwards.
She hit the floor on her back, hard, as the two gunmen swarmed into the motel room. Their guns were in their hands, and they had Pony covered before he could so much as twitch.
“Guns. On the ground!” one of the hitmen said.
Piper looked at Pony, who returned her look.
