Earsplitting.
Spirit and mind joining forces to shout at my soul that it wasn’t enough.
Howling at me not to leave her side.
It was the proof that I’d become so distracted I couldn’t see straight, heavy gray clouds sagging low from the heavens, distorting and disorienting.
Judgement skewed.
Exactly as Phoenix had accused.
I was nothing but a fool who’d gone astray.
I knew it, and I knew it was time I ended it.
I couldn’t go on like this for a second more. Pretending like I could keep her when she was elemental to our plot.
So I pressed on and dispatched the blow to my stupid, twisted heart. “Then after, I deliver her to her piece of shit brother.”
FORTY-SEVEN
SILAS
“Meems has stewon the stove. Six o’clock. She said not to be late, or she’ll come over here and drag you back by the scruff of your neck.”
Elena grinned from where she held onto the outside of the truck’s rear door, leaning in my direction. Dark chocolate hair held in a ponytail and swishing around her shoulders, eyes the same color as mine gleaming mirth.
Sweet as pie and obviously up to no good.
It’d been clear as a summer’s day when she’d come driving up in my truck with Kai buckled into his car seat in the back, claiming she was there to collect Brinley after a grueling day at work.
It was grueling, all right.
Her spirit echoing from the walls when I knew that spirit was getting ready to be ripped away.
I grunted a non-response at my baby sister from where I remained in the open bay, kneeling as I worked on my bike. The gleaming metal was essentially in perfect condition, but I was desperate to find something to do with my hands.
Trying and failing at not losing my mind.
The conversation with Cash sat like the rubble of a fallen skyscraper on my chest.
The realization of what was coming finally catching up to the indignation that had steered me in this perilous direction in the first place.
In three days’ time, my entire crew would be rushing into enemy territory.
Lives and realities and hopes at stake. Every step treacherous and pitted with peril.
Yeah, we faced down demons all the time. Took chances and risks. But this time, it was different.
This time, there was a very good chance some of us would not be coming back.
Then there was Brinley. Brinley who was blurring the lines in beauty and ambiguity. Mucking the straight shot I’d always walked and sending me stumbling to the side.
It wasn’t an exaggeration since she nearly knocked me onto my ass when she came strutting through the office door and out into the shop, still clad in that ridiculously sexy dress that this morning I’d had shoved up around her waist while I’d had her bent over the bathroom counter while I ate her out from behind. Then I’d gotten as close to fucking her as I ever had, rocking my dick through her butt cheeks then coming all over her back.
Even though she was trying to front her normal sass right then, I saw the vulnerability swirling in the whorl of golds as her gaze slanted toward me.
The connection we shared flash-fired across the space.
