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As for me, I had to remind myself to take it easy, to obey speed limits, to pause at stop signs, and not to gawk at the cop cars and ambulances blocking off the street.
My heart was a shaky, inconsistent thing as I drove down several streets before parking to make the call.
"Come on, you idiot," I grumbled as the phone rang and rang.
I was frantically trying to redial when there was a knock on my window, making a scream catch in my throat as panic started to course through me again, sure it was the cops, that I was found out, that I was never going to get to see Che again, to know what happened to him.
It took a long second to gather the strength to put the phone down and turn my head, seeing a torso, then a face as he bent down.
Che.
When I say I flew out of the car, I mean so frantically that my belt tripped me up for a moment and I slammed the door into Che's legs in my rush to open it, to get outside, then to fling myself at him.
"I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry," I told him, my arms going around the back of his neck, holding on tight. "I waited. I wanted to wait longer."
"That wasn't the plan," he told me, arms going around my middle, squeezing. "I know you didn't want to leave me," he added, pressing a kiss to my temple. "It's okay. I'm not mad."
"Were you safe? No one saw you?" I asked.
"Everything is fine, Sass," he assured me but pushed me backward. "We can talk about this somewhere else. We're still too close to this," he told me, making me realize what we were doing, that we were still close enough to see flashing lights.
"Right," I agreed, breaking away, feeling the loss of his nearness more than was likely normal, as I slid into the driver's seat, and waited for Che to get into the passenger side. "Did you hide the guns? The gloves? The mask?"
"I handled everything like we planned, Sass. Except for the phone. But you still have one too."
"We will deal with them before we go back," I told him, pulling deeper into the neighborhood, trying to get and stay away from the main area of town.
I didn't know how well the local cops knew these bikers, if they were on their radar, but I didn't want them to have any reason to look twice at Che.
"Are you okay? Did you get hurt?"
"No. Did anyone else?"
"No. Everyone is back at the apartment already."
We'd all agreed to crashing there one more night, to make sure most of the police work and news was done by then. Remy and Seeley would then take the car, drop Remy and the animals back at the clubhouse, then Seeley would dispose of the car. Another beautiful, reliable racing car getting crushed and hidden away in a junkyard. My heart ached a bit at that.
After Remy sent word that all was good at the clubhouse, everyone else would start heading back, finally giving Teddy his privacy again.
He'd been the most gracious host I'd ever seen. And Ayanna and Harmon were right. He'd catered to every need we had, often going out of his way to go the extra mile for things none of us had even asked for. Like getting snacks delivered when he was at work, or picking up fun, girly stuff like press-on nails, face masks, and bath bombs to pamper us.
I didn't know his story, and I understood that no one else truly did, but I selfishly found myself wanting to know more, needing to know what had made him so conscientious toward the fairer sex, how he was so good at sensing even the slightest changes in our voice or countenance.
I wanted to think maybe someday he would trust me, but I knew that, eventually, I would have to move on again, get back to my life. Once my problems were handled, there was no reason I couldn't start taking jobs again. And in a profession such as mine, you didn't get to stay in one place and hope they came to you. You had to go out there and get them.
It hurt more than I was willing to admit even to myself to think of leaving. It would get harder still if things continued to grow between me and Che.
But his life was in Golden Glades.
Mine was... the road.
"Here, pull over here," Che demanded, pointing toward an alley behind a strip that hosted three separate take-out restaurants.
Pulling apart his phone, he made his way out, reaching into his pocket for a rag to scrub his prints off of it, then tossing each part of the phone in three separate dumpsters, likely getting good and coated in grease from the Chinese food, sauce from the pizza joint, and fermenting fish from the sushi place.
