She quieted, resting her chin on her folded hands on his chest, drawn into herself for a long moment. “I’ll need to talk with him, and to Rhys. I need to explain. I just hope they can forgive me.”
“They need to understand, that’s all,” Hunt said to reassure her. He knew his friends, and he knew once they understood that Lottie wasn’t a liar, but that she was afraid and hiding from very dangerous people, they would forgive her. “Do you need Phoenix to support yourself financially?”
She shook her head. “Phoenix paid for my condo, and the rest I’m saving for school and the clinic. I can live on what I make from dog walking. It’s just…”
“You’re going to miss it?” he offered.
She nodded. “Phoenix is a part of me now. The sex. The fantasies. The adventure. I don’t even know what it’ll be like tonotbe there.” He saw her swallow and understood. He’d feel like something was missing if he didn’t have Phoenix. “Do you ever think they’ll let me back in?”
“That I don’t know,” he told her honestly, not sugarcoating it. “The choice remains with Rhys. But what I do know is that Rhys, Zoey, Archer, Elise, Kieran, and Hazel, are all your friends regardless of if you’re in the club. They’re not going to abandon you once they understand all this.” He ran his hand down her back and gave her ass a hard squeeze. “Besides, I plan to keep your nights busy enough you won’t be missing Phoenix.”
She laughed softly, and the sweet sound eased the tightness in his chest.
“It must feel good this is all out in the open now,” he said.
“I’m not really quite sure how I feel right now, other than raw.” He got that but didn’t feel the need to comment and stayed silent. She took his hint and pressed forward. “How do you think Elise found out about my past when a hacker buried it?”
Hunt sighed deeply, letting his hand fall to her arm. “I suspect she herself has a very talented hacker in her pocket.”
“You think?”
“Yeah, there’s no other way she’d get the information she does without one. We don’t discuss it. Some things are better left unsaid between us. Especially if they tiptoe the line of the law.”
“I guess that makes sense.” Her hair fell over her shoulder as she tilted her head, watching her finger trailing over his abdominal muscles, lost in her thoughts. He let the silence fall between them, giving her this moment to sort through her emotions. He couldn’t imagine how fast her head was spinning.
He wasn’t particularly thrilled when she finally broke the silence and said, “I’m going to get Elise to find a way to contact my brother tomorrow to arrange a meeting.”
Hunt fingers froze along her spine. “You’ve already told me he is dangerous, so why go out of your way to see him?”
She heaved a long sigh. “I want to know what he wants. If he wants the money back, I have it in my bank account. Like you said, we have to deal with this. I don’t want to run anymore.”
Hating this idea wholeheartedly, Hunt shifted onto his side and leaned his head on his hand, needing her direct eye contact. “It’s not a good idea to meet with him until you know what he’s after.”
She watched him in a way he had never seen, and it made his blood go cold. Haunted eyes stared back at him. Eyes that had seen far too much, far too young. “If Leo wanted to hurt me, I’d already be dead.”
Hunt pushed up into a sitting position. “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”
Lottie sat up, too, pulling the sheet with her, covering her chest. “No, but it’s true, nonetheless. My brothers are bad,badguys. They don’t fuck around. There’s something they want, and it’s better for me to find out what it is and give it to them before this gets dragged on.”
Instead of shutting this down immediately, Hunt considered this from every angle. Her safety was his only priority. “What was your relationship with your brothers like when you lived in Chicago?”
“They were classic big brothers for as long as I could remember,” she said, the tiniest hint of a smile on her smile. “Protective. Loyal. Treated me like I was a princess.”
“But something changed?”
“I grew up,” she explained, her hair falling over her shoulder again, drawing Hunt’s focus to how mind-blowingly beautiful she was, until she added, “When I realized the crimes they were involved in, things between us became strained. They didn’t understand why I hated what they did.”
He didn’t even want to ask. “Did they ever get rough with you back then?”
She adamantly shook her head. “No, never, nothing like that. There was just this divide that I’m sure they felt too. So many secrets lived between us that we became people living in the same house who barely knew each other, but my mom held everything together.”
“Then she was murdered?”
“I—” She visibly swallowed. Then nodded. “Yeah, our family unraveled after she died. I didn’t want to die too.”
Her vulnerability hit him hard in the chest. Needing her warmth, he cupped her cheek. “You’re so fucking brave. To leave, knowing that if you were caught, you’d get killed. To start over in a huge city. Knowing no one. You’re an amazing woman, Lottie.”
She gave a small, sad smile. “You say 'brave.' I say terrified.”
