One.
Two.
Then the line snaps to the hollow, mechanical click of her voicemail. My body locks up, boots glued to the clubhouse floor.
The fuck?
I redial. My pulse hammers against my ribs violently. Same result. The screen goes dark in my hand, and for a split second, my fingers tremble with a tiny quake I can’t control.
She’s never not answered. Not since the night I worked my way into her orbit and took her number.
The last time she didn’t pick up…
My heart lurches, a trapped animal kicking at my lungs.
The shooting.
Fuck.
The memory hits me like a physical assault. The copper tang of blood, the way she seemed so fragile as blood leaked through her fingers as she covered the gunshot wound.
What if something happened?
Nausea coils in my throat, thick and bitter. I don’t breathe. I don’t even speak to the brothers. I just fucking move.
I’m out the door and on my bike in a blur of leather and adrenaline. The engine snarls beneath me, wild as the chaos in my head. Devious catches my eye, sees the madness twisting my usual lethal stare. He doesn’t ask, just rushes to throw the gate wide.
I fly through it, a two-finger salute the only thing I have left of my composure. The ride to her place is pure recklessness. I lean too hard into every turn, my bike’s pipes snarling with a threat I usually save for enemies. She lives close enough to walk, but every stretch of asphalt drags out, every red light a fresh torment.
The house is a dark tomb when I pull into her driveway.
I kill the engine, and the silence that rushes in is suffocating, as if the very life has been sucked out of the dirt here. Usually, this place is a riot of Goldie’s energy. Lights blazing in every room, music loud enough to vibrate the windows, the scent of those damn candles she’s always burning.
Now? Nothing. Just the cold, dead dark.
My heart hammers a jagged rhythm of dread. This isn’t a sharp alarm but a hollow ache of change. It’s the slow, sinking certainty that I am too late, that whatever happened cannot be undone.
I’m on the porch in two strides, my fist echoing against the wood of her front door. “Goldie!”
The silence swallows her name. I rest my forehead on the cold door.
“Come on, baby. Answer me,” I plead, my voice cracking at the edges, the normally controlled version of me dissolving into a man who’s terrified of the quiet.
Still nothing.
I slam both palms against the door, the sting biting into my hands, and let my head drop.
My breath comes in short, jagged bursts.
What the fuck happened?
I don’t move yet. I can’t.
Yanking out my phone, I jab the screen with my thumb. I press it to my ear, eyes drilling into the door, wishing I could see through the wood.
Then I hear it.
The muffled, rhythmic chime of her ringtone sings on the other side of the grain. Two rings, then silence. The mechanical click of the voicemail again is a slap to the face.
