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I held up my hand and stared at the scar on my palm. The wound had been deep and long and courtesy of Barrett. A reminder to not run away. I was thirteen and it was my first attempt. I got as far as a bus station before a patrol car picked me up and took me home. Money was exchanged and nothing further came of the incident.
As punishment for running away, my parents sent me to my room without dinner and grounded me for two weeks.
Barrett’s punishment was far worse.
That night he slipped into my room, armed with a hunting knife.
“Scream and it will be the last noise you ever make.”
With his hand over my mouth and the other pressing the blade against my throat, I believed him.
Barrett sliced his palm with a hunting knife and then held me down and cut mine.
Mashing our palms together, he declared we were bound by blood. “My blood is in you and yours is in me. You are mine and I am yours.”
“I’m not yours. I will never be yours.”
His eyes narrowed as he squeezed our hands tighter and leaned in. “The sooner you accept it, Sister, the less it will hurt.”
I shivered and closed my palm, shutting the memory back in its box.
Turning off the shower, I dressed quickly and wrapped my hair in the towel before stepping out into the hallway to the inviting aroma of freshly brewed coffee. Chance stood in the kitchen, his broad back to me as he talked on his phone.
“You can confirm you have eyes on him? And he is definitely in California?”
I paused to listen.
Was he talking to someone in California about Barrett?
I stared at the wide shoulders and the T-shirt straining over the muscular body. His arms were huge and the phone looked tiny in his large hand.
“Good, if that son of a bitch leaves town, you let me know right away. I want to be ready for him if he dares come here.”
He was definitely talking about Barrett.
“What am I going to do to him if he does?” I noticed his fingers grip the phone tighter. “I’m going to break every bone in his goddamn body if he steps into this town.”
CHANCE
I hung up the phone and stood in the kitchen with a cup of coffee in my hand, staring out at the river. I refused to think about her taking a shower.
No. Fucking. Way.
My mind wasn’t going to go there.
There being her taking off her clothes and stepping naked into the shower only a few feet away from where I was standing.
But fuck. I’m a guy. And when the girl of your dreams is taking a shower in the very next room, you go there. Not literally there. But you think about what is happening on the other side of the six inches of timber and drywall separating you.
Even if you can’t touch her. Even if you swore off women because the wiring in your brain had short-circuited and touching another woman wasn’t an option until you worked through the chaos in your head.
I drained my coffee and cursed the throb residing in my belly. I didn’t need this. Or want it. But damn if my body had different ideas.
Like I said… I’m. A. Guy.
Needing the distraction, I started to put away the groceries. Before we left the clubhouse, I’d grabbed a few supplies. Coffee. Creamer. Bread. Some of Red’s corned beef. Mayo. Until I worked out what the fuck was going on, I couldn’t gauge how long we would be staying at the cabin, so I’d grabbed a lot of random shit.
Bull told me to take some time off. Things were quiet for the club. He had it working like a well-oiled machine. Since the reopening of the cannabis fields and the supply alliance we had with the Knights, things were running smoothly between the two clubs. It had widened the channels of communications between us, making us allies and not rivals.
So while it was quiet, I was free to have some downtime.
To be honest, it was kind of perfect. I had neglected the fisherman’s cottage over the last few weeks, and staying out here now gave me the opportunity to refocus some of my energy on the restoration.
I looked across the river to the old building. In three months I had cleared away all of the overgrowth and kudzu growing wild through the rotted wooden floorboards and broken brickwork. I had fixed the holes in the roof, but I still needed to re-shingle it. Thankfully the foundation was still solid, but the frame rot had taken me weeks to repair.
There was still a lot to do and taking some time away from the club meant I could focus on it.
The creak of floorboards told me she was behind me. I turned around and holy mother of God! Cassidy stood across the kitchen counter from me, damp from the shower, her hair wrapped in a towel, her Alice Cooper T-shirt doing very little to hide her very hard, perky nipples.
