“There was no need to. She was always a conniving cunt, nothing had changed. She shot Cassidy. If we let her go, she might come back to finish the job and take both of you out for spite. That bitch will never be satisfied if she knows you got a happily ever after with the girl she stole you from to begin with.”
“She didn’t steal me from Cass. We were never together.”
“No, but you were meant to be,” Grunt said and I felt it then. Years of missed moments with Cass. The heartache, missing her, hating myself for all the shit I got wrong. It was all there at the surface as regret swam heavily in my gut.
22.OPTIONS
CASSIDY
The menof the club looked bone-tired by the time their meeting ended. Still, Knuckles made his way over to me along side Grunt. “One quick thing, while we were questioning Simone, she asked to speak with you. To apologize for shooting you because supposedly she didn’t mean to hit you. I wouldn’t dignify her request at all, but I’m not telling you about it for her sake. I wanted to give you the option to say your peace to her, if you needed to.”
I shook my head. “I gave her enough of my time when she gave nothing in return. I’m certainly not going to change my mind after she shot me, and I haven’t forgotten that she used me in her lies for years. That damage is still a problem in the way you react to things. She can rot in hell with the knowledge that I refused to speak to her.”
When neither Grunt or Knuckles moved to relay that message, I second guessed myself. “Do you think there is anything we can learn from me talking to her that you guys can put to use?” I asked.
“No, Cass,” Knuckles said.
“She just wants to fuck with your head some. Simone might claim she wants to see you to apologize, but that bitch doesn’tcare who she hurts. She wants to see you to know if she hurt you badly enough to feel good about it - whether she was aiming for you originally or not. She probably also wants to put a little worm in your ear that would taint shit between you and Knuckles. He might have given you the choice to go down there and talk to her, but I wouldn’t allow it because that bitch always has a fucking agenda.”
I nodded and then turned to Knuckles. “Are you done here? Can you take me home? I want to sleep in my own bed.”
“Her security system is updated and we’ll put someone outside on the property in case all of our visitors didn’t leave when they were supposed to,” Grunt informed him.
They said something quietly to one another and then Knuckles came back over to me and helped me out to a truck instead of the motorcycle. “Your friends are getting their shit together. They want to go back to the ranch, too.”
“Are you okay with everything you learned?” I still didn’t know all of it but I had heard swaths of conversation. Enough to know Simone had ties to both the mafia and the cartel and she was using her close position with the MC for years to feed information to one, the other, or maybe both. It wasn’t all clear and I might never know since it was club business.
“It was a lot to digest, but Simone was already a part of my past until her name kept popping up every time I turned around. I’ll fill you in on everything she had to say, but it needs to wait until tomorrow. For now, I want to take you home, get comfortable, and crawl into your bed behind you. For a month, I’ve slept on that lumpy-ass hospital cot. I want a bed, and I want you in my arms where I know you’re safe.”
“I think that can be arranged,” I agreed because I wanted the same thing and I wasn’t going to fight it any longer. It felt like if we continued to let our past keep us apart, then Simone won. The cartel won. The mafia, too. Whoever is against us wouldwin by us not being together and I wasn’t willing to give any of them the satisfaction. As silly as the sentiment sounded, because I doubted any of those entities except Simone, gave a rat’s ass about me and whether I got close to Knuckles or not.
When we got to my house, the trip from Phoenix and everything that came after caught up to me. I was beyond exhausted and realized what Dr. Roberts warned me about was true. The hospital was like a bubble and while I got up and walked and exercised to try to heal quickly, there was a different pace set by life. There were more things going on around me that I had to spend brain power to process.
I never realized how much energy all the outside stimuli from day-to-day took, but going from the hospital with minimal effort necessary on my part, and relative quiet to a long motorcycle ride, being surrounded by an entire MC, the reunion with my friends, and then all the shit with the cartel, Simone, and her dad being the Mafia Don for the Morelli Organization… I was done. It was too much.
“My bed.”
“You need to eat and get your meds,” Knuckles informed me.
“No, I need to drop into a coma for a couple days and then eat everything in the house.” He chuckled but pulled me into a hug. “No jokes about being in a coma for a while. I nearly lost my fucking mind waiting for you to wake up from surgery and then you would drift back out so fast.”
“Sorry, I guess on my end, it was just a big nap to avoid the pain. I didn’t think what it must have been like for you on the other end.” I could see the worry and frustration in his eyes as he cataloged every single inch of my face. “I’m really not hungry. Bigfoot’s mom fed me, but I’m pretty sure the food came from your grandma, so you know I’m filled to the brim.”
“Figures she was lookin’ out for you. I told her I was bringing you home.”
“I haven’t spoken to them in weeks. Are they doing okay?”
“They’re just fine. They want to see you as soon as you’re up for visitors, so we’ll have to plan a family dinner.”
“Family dinner?” I questioned.
“Yeah. Dinner with you, me, my grandparents, all our best friends.”
“So, we’ll need to hire a caterer for this shindig?” I teased. He swatted my ass and shooed me up the stairs.
“Go get in bed. I’m going to grab something from the kitchen and I’ll be up in a minute.”
The “something” James grabbed from the kitchen was a drink for me to take my pills with. Bless the man, he was looking out for me better than I was myself. I would have gone to bed without taking them and woken up hating myself, especially after that trip.
