Ranger came bursting into the living room. Crushing glass and debris under his heavy boots, he snatched the gun out of her hands, handed it off to the scarred man, and then she was in his arms. The smell of leather and musk consumed her, and Toni’s knees buckled. Tears broke through the wall she’d somehow erected to remove herself from the reality of what she’d done.
She’d killed her father. She’d killed Wayne Anderson. Was he perfect? No. But hetried. He kept on trying. He stumbled, he fell, he didn’t make the smartest of choices, but he kept ontrying.
She clung to Ranger’s shirt, only vaguely aware that he was completely holding her upright. His strength, his steadiness… There were no words to describe how much she needed them in that moment. He was essentially a stranger, and yet there was no one she’d rather have hold her right then.
Not even her mother.
Fuck, her mom! How was Toni supposed to tell her that she had killed her husband? They’d been through so much together, all stemming from a teenage pregnancy. And now it was over? A single shotgun blast later, and it was all for nothing? What had been the point? The struggles? The highs, the lows? What had it all been for if it was just going to end like this?
Warm air hit her cool flesh, and it took Toni a minute to register that she was outside. Was she rocking? Why was she rocking?
Lifting her head, she realized they were on her porch swing. She was curled up on his lap like a small child as he held her tohim, not seeming to care in the slightest as she got snot, tears, and drool down his shirt.
“Why is it we keep meeting when one of us isn’t fully dressed?” she mumbled against his chest.
His low chuckle reverberated through her, settling something deep inside her. “Maybe it’s fate telling us not to fight it until we just show up already naked.”
She snorted. “I didn’t know who you were before.”
“Well, it wasn’t like we sat down and got to know each other first. I also didn’t place your name until Susan showed up.”
Toni wasn’t sure if that made her feel better or worse about their… Was it a one-night stand? Maybe. One-night stand adjacent, at the very least.
He pressed his lips against her hair. “Want to tell me what happened?”
Toni shook her head. It was bad enough that she said it out loud over the phone to Steel. Admitting it to the guy she just had an adjacent one-night stand with, and was stillhugelycrushing on, was a bit too much for her sanity.
The front door opened to her left. But as Toni lifted her head to see what was going on, Ranger snapped out, “Wait!”
She froze, thinking he meant her. He shifted them forward on the bench carefully, always keeping one hand on her, as he removed his leather cut. Once it was off, he laid it over her lap and around her hip, and it wasn’t until she felt the warm leather against her bare skin that she realized just how exposed she was at that moment.
Her cheeks flamed. Great! Now she was a murderer and a flasher! Her list of crimes just kept piling up.
Ranger turned her flaming face towards him. “They didn’t see anything. I made sure of it.”
His calm voice soothed her worries, and on top of it all, she really needed that. “Thank you.”
He kissed her forehead before calling out, “She’s decent.”
The door opened the rest of the way, and Ghost and Lucky stepped onto her covered front porch. Though both intimidating men with their tattoos and leather, Lucky was the taller and broader of the two. But there was something so purely dominating about Ghost that immediately put him as the leader, even without her knowing he was club president.
Lucky approached her first, reaching out to touch her shoulder. “Are you okay?”
“Fuck. I didn’t even ask that,” she heard Ranger mutter, which was completely adorable.
To Lucky, she nodded. Then thought better of it and shook her head.
The look he gave her was one of understanding and sympathy. “You don’t need to tell us what happened. It changes nothing about why we’re here or how we’re going to help you, but I am still going to ask.”
Her eyes flicked between Ghost and Lucky as Ranger ran a comforting hand up and down her back. Lucky was speaking rather than Ghost. Was that because he was the one she was familiar with? Was the plan to lead her into a false sense of security?
But she knew how this worked. She called in a favor from Steel, but that favor got the MC to her doorstep. She would now owe the motorcycle club something, and she wasn’t sure that was a check she wanted cashed.
She met Ghost’s intense gaze. He was the leader, the one who would make the deal. “What is it you want? In exchange for making this go away?”
He lifted an eyebrow. “What makes you think I want anything?”
“I know how this works,” she snapped, frustrated by his evasiveness. “You’ll call me at some point in the future and needsomething. I won’t do anything illegal. I won’t destroy evidence or lie to a jury. That’s not the sort of attorney I am.”
