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Jax
Well, she’s gone. Hightailed it out of the parking lot so fast she barely made the turn onto the main road. Gone and left me here in the dark with so much stuff, it’s gonna be hard to carry it all.
That’s something I never expected her to do.
I thought I had at least the rest of this night to persuade her to let me stay.
But that’s all right.
I’m not going anywhere and I have the rest of my life to try and do that. It doesn’t have to be tonight.
She’s headed for the motel she was staying at before. We passed it on the way to the mall, she mentioned where it was while we were having dinner. It’s less than two miles back the way we came, and I have no time to waste if she’s planning on leaving as soon as she checks out. Which in her current mood, I think she might.
Gone is the Harper who likes to take long pauses to think before she does anything. Or so it would seem.
I jog to the shadows cast by the trees beyond which the trains she wanted me to take out of here are parked and grab a pair of jeans, underwear and a shirt from one of the bags then change. The boots she got me fit, but are hard as concrete and will probably take the rest of the summer to break in.
I should just leave most of the rest of the clothes behind, because the bags are heavy and they’ll just slow me down. But she went to so much trouble getting it all for me—she even got me a toothbrush and way more toiletries than I ever use—that I just can’t do it.
I regret that decision about a mile into my run towards the motel, at which point my feet are so bruised in the new boots that it feels like I’ve run a marathon and there’s no good way to hold the bags that’s also comfortable.
But I don’t dump them and I don’t stop running.
Her station wagon is still in the parking lot of the motel when I reach it. Four choppers are parked around it and I almost puke up the shitty tacos we had for dinner before I notice that the three men sitting on them are wearing Devil’s Nightmare MC colors and not Renegade Knights MC ones.
So, Scar got her the protection she needs. From me at this point, that’s what he’s thinking, but it’s still the right thing to do. I hide between one of the pillars on the low stone wall encircling the motel parking lot and a prickly bush of some sort that’s covered in small deep red flowers that somehow smell exactly like Harper.
I recognize all the guys once my initial wave of panic subsides, and I get a better look at them. It’s Edge and Ruin, along with Ash and I’m pretty sure that’s Grizzly she’s talking to in her room. Every so often she paces past the brightly lit window and he follows. Scar is clearly taking this very seriously if he sent Grizzly to keep her safe. He’s the old-timer who always headed the teams that watched over Harper while she was still in high school.
It was very hard sneaking away while he was in charge of making sure she was under surveillance at all times. We had to be pretty creative to do it. And get some help from guys like Ash who understood our need to be alone. As for Edge and Ruin, I used to call them my friends as well as brothers. But I wonder just how much that has changed for them now. Probably all the way.
These guys are here to protect Harper from me. And they know how to do their job well.
What I need is a way to follow them when they leave so she can continue her tour and stay out of sight as I do.
Or should I just go up to them and come clean? Tell them everything I know and work on getting their forgiveness and friendship back.
The door of Harper’s motel room bursts open, ripping right through the fantasy of reuniting with all of my brothers, dispelling it like the bullshit wishful thinking it is. No one leaves the Devils and then just comes back like nothing. For one thing. And that’s not even the only thing I did wrong.
Harper storms out of the room carrying a hastily packed traveling bag with several sleeves, pants legs and whatnot sticking out of the top. Her hair whips around like rising flame as she rounds on Grizzly who followed her to the door.
“I’m leaving tonight,” she tells him and I’m glad to hear that the croaky hoarseness in her voice is subsiding. It’s almost as melodic and clear as normal. "So if you must follow me, you can follow me. But I’m telling you, I’m in no danger from Jax. None at all.”
“Yes, Harper,” Grizzly tells her in his most patient voice.
On the whole, he is an extremely patient man, but I’ve seen him get angry and I never want to be on the receiving end of that again. “I understand you think he’s your friend—”
“He’s more than my friend, Grizzly,” she snaps, her voice cracking. “He loves me and I love him and he’s the last person who’d want to hurt me. Or any of you. Why can’t you just believe me?”
She still loves me? I don’t actually doubt it, not in my heart, but I kinda always do in all other ways. I’ve fucked up so bad with her so many times. But for the first time, no part of me wants to leave and hole up somewhere, hiding from my shame because of that.
I’m not good at facing my problems, let alone dealing with them. The way I see it, once you have a problem you’re already fucked and the only thing trying to fix shit leads to is even more grief.
But that never really applied to Harper. Not for long anyway.
So I’m pretty much all set to leave my hiding place, announce myself and make sure they all know what she said goes double for me. But before I can extricate myself from the thorny bush, she’s in her car and speeding out of the parking lot. Grizzly is yelling at the other three to follow her as he shuffles to his own bike. He does the same as soon as he reaches it.
That’s just my shit luck returning, I guess. Or not, depending on whether they have orders to kill me on sight.
