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Cade’s tone, his entire demeanor, betrayed something.
I flinched. Could he know?
No. He’s Cade just being Cade.
I couldn’t rip my eyes away from Luke’s glacial stare, every inch of hatred spearing me in the heart with its intensity.
Though it didn’t stay on Cade for long. He didn’t seem interested in a macho-man stare-off. Instead, every inch of the glacier melted, hate disappearing, leaving something much more complicated in its wake as his eyes once more focused on me.
“I’m right where I need to be, Fletcher.”
I blinked. Uncomfortable silence bathed the room as everyone watched Luke’s blatant statement of something he’d made his business to keep secret.
He didn’t even seem like he noticed or cared about what he’d exposed with those words as his eyes catalogued my entire body, zeroing in on even the smallest of scratches and my charred clothing.
“Are you okay?” he little more than whispered.
My heart began to beat all the way in my throat, making me unable to form words. The only thing I could do was nod weakly.
His soft gaze didn’t stay on me for a second longer, he finally commenced the macho-man stare-off Cade had been hanging out for. “I see the story of you going legit was a total pack of lies,” Luke hissed, unbridled anger poisoning his voice.
I didn’t know why I expected anything more, that just because he gave me a handful of words and a lingering gaze, that would repair decades of hatred. I shouldn’t have expected it. I should’ve known better. It didn’t mean it didn’t hurt any less.
“What did you do now to put your own flesh and blood in danger? That’s low, even for you.”
The air shimmered with masculine fury as my eyes brimmed with tears I would never let fall. My mask was in place.
“Careful, Deputy,” my brother murmured. “You’re getting very fuckin’ close to sayin’ somethin’ you might regret.”
Luke’s hand subconsciously went to his belt. “You threatening me?”
“Yeah,” Cade replied immediately. “If you keep talkin’ shit ’bout my family, my club, lookin’ at my sister in a way that isn’t professional, you bet your ass I am.”
I flinched. Cade had seen it.
The entire club was focused on the exchange. I wondered if there was a possibility for me to slink away while the testosterone clouded the air.
Luke’s gaze focused on me.
No such luck, then. “She’s comin’ with me.”
The response to Luke’s declaration was instantaneous. Brock and Dwayne stepped forward, blocking Luke’s path to me with a wall of muscle. Showing that the bars to my cage were not iron, but men who benched a lot of it.
“No she’s fuckin’ not,” Cade said evenly.
Luke didn’t back down. “She needs a hospital. So does Bex.”
I sucked in a breath. Luke was really going for gold today. I prayed my family was serious about the ‘legit’ thing. Then maybe they wouldn’t murder the man I loved.
It could’ve gone bad. I tasted it in the air. Luke was using his state-given authority to try and take women who the club considered their God-given women. It may have been archaic—actually, it definitely fucking was—but it was the way. The men spoke and acted for the women.
Or until they fell in love with the right ones who were attached to their voices and unafraid to use them.
“I don’t do hospitals, Captain America. They mess with my complexion,” Bex said easily, as if she wasn’t choking on male fury. “Plus, the nurses here are way hotter.” She grinned wickedly in Lucky’s direction, who, uncharacteristically, wasn’t grinning. Much of his relationship with Bex took away his easygoing nature and infectious laugh. But sometimes in the midst of the worst horror imaginable, if you came out on the other side with the right person, that horror was better than any empty happiness before it.
Luke’s eyes went everywhere at once, his professional mask returning as he understood what was—or more aptly, wasn’t—going to happen. “None of you go anywhere,” he ordered. “I’m gonna want statements from fuckin’ all of you.”
He gave me one hard glance before he turned on his heel and left, taking one of the small and few remaining pieces of my heart along with him.
I froze in place, watching his uniform retreat out the door.
Freezing didn’t do well in the face of fury. Especially my brother’s fury. He gripped my shoulders and dragged me away while conversation somehow returned to normal.
As normal as it could get after an explosion.
“What the fuck was that, Rosie?” Cade demanded in a harsh whisper.
“What was what?”
The pads of his fingers dug into my shoulders, betraying his frustration. “Playing the innocent act stopped working when you came out of the fucking womb,” he hissed. “What have you got going on with Crawford?”
I flinched. “Nothing.”
He glared at me, searching for both the truth and lie in my eyes. There was a little of both.
