AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I vote we take this schmuck out and get him drunk,” Loki suggested, dark eyes dancing with curiosity. “Something tells me he's got secrets we need to commiserate over. We just need a babysitter for the girls, and we can go raise hell in Phoenix for a night.”
“Why are we going to Phoenix when we have all the booze we can drink right here?” Liam protested as though Loki had just dropkicked his baby through a plate glass window. The bar was evidently the love of his life, judging by his tone. “Connie can stay with Archie, Alicia, and Bodie in the house. They can have their own slumber party while we pick Thane's brains over here. If there's any problems, we're literally thirty seconds away.”
“Alicia's going away for a couple weeks.” Braun didn't look too happy about that. His face seemed to shroud itself in shadows as he spoke. “Bodie and I spoke to her today about going to the care facility until Connie…well, until she's ready to have Lisha back. If she is. The facility staff will be picking Alicia up and taking her there in a few days.”
“The hell they are!” Atticus exploded, stalking forward and slamming the heel of his hand into Braun's sternum. Hard enough, Thane noted with awe, to send the thick-set Dom stumbling back. “I fucking told you, Braun, you're not sending that poor girl to a facility. I'll take her. She's had enough upheaval without shipping her off to strangers.”
Okay, this had brawl potential. Thane assessed the situation, sighed. Braun had recovered and was getting in Atticus's face. Getting in between the two of them was suicide, but someone was going to have to risk life and limb to divert their attention from each other, if Braun wanted his social area leaving in one piece. Judging by the alarmed expression on Liam's face, he'd reached the same conclusion.
The Viking Master looked like he was about to start running around, gathering furniture out of the way. Thane couldn't blame him—if Braun and Atticus went at it, it would be akin to two bowling balls being fired out of a cannon at each other.
“We've discussed all the options available to us, Att. We've taken into account what Alicia wants, what Bodie wants. You don't have the time to care for Lisha, not with your line of work. Do you think I want this?” Braun erupted, jabbing his fingers into Atticus's chest. “Do you think I fucking asked for this? That I enjoy keeping my pregnant lover from her disabled sister? I want nothing more than for Bodie to have the kind of relationship with Alicia that she's always dreamed of.” Another jab, vicious this time. “I can't take care of them both. Alicia doesn't want to spend any time with Bodie, and that stresses her out. My priority has to be giving Bodie a fighting chance of carrying our baby to term.”
“I didn't say it wasn't.” Atticus smacked Braun's arm aside. “I'm saying Alicia doesn't have to leave.”
Thane mulled over his options. This was obviously a bone of contention between the two, and he didn't want to be the mongrel who slunk between two Alpha wolves to steal it. There were fifty-fifty odds—nope, make that eighty-twenty odds, he corrected, as Braun shoved Atticus back a step—that Thane would take a blow to the face if he stepped in. A blow from either one of those two would either knock him out or put him in a world of hurt, and his brain was begging him to not be a hero.
But when Braun took the first swing, it wasn't about being a hero. It became about stopping two damn good friends from beating each other bloody. With a yell, Thane lunged forward at the same time as Liam, both men determined to break it up before things got nasty.
“Stop it!” Connie screamed, loudly enough she halted Atticus's arm in mid-flight.
A sock slapped Braun across his sheepish face as she threw it at his head. She got Atticus as he turned to face her, her wadded-up panties bouncing harmlessly off his forehead. The rest of her clothes pelted them when she tossed the whole lot at the pair of them.
“You had the best person taking care of that girl,” she said quietly, her eyes glistening. “She had me. It wasn't perfect, and maybe I wasn't making enough progress to keep you happy, but I was getting there. You didn't trust me enough to get her there. Last night wasn't about worrying any of you. I wasn't thinking about you. For once, I was thinking about me. I took time for me. I got drunk for me. I was grieving for what you took from me, so don't you dare start fighting over her as though you had no other option.”
One hell of a speech. Naked and furious, Connie made a picture Thane would remember for a long time. But as she whirled away from the Masters and stalked toward the walkway, he saw the real image beneath the façade, and realized that would stay with him a lot fucking longer.
The woman was bleeding from a dozen wounds no one could see.
“If you'll excuse me,” he murmured absently, already on the move. She was on a mission to get away—by the time he limped into the walkway, he heard a door slam shut. Playroom was his guess. He took his time getting there, preparing himself for whatever he might find when he went in after her.
Would she still be masking her pain with fury? Or would she finally let some of the deeply buried trauma rise to the surface to breathe? Christ, for all he knew, she could be in there trashing the joint in apoplectic rage. As he waited outside the door, he couldn't hear anything but silence. Hmm, not likely. Trashing usually resulted in a lot of noise.
Unnerved by the quiet, Thane pushed the door open and strolled in, thinking he was ready for anything. Tears, tantrums, even an empty room. What he found was an unexpected turn of events. He closed the door quietly, then toed off his boots. Padding over to her in his socks, he set his hand on her shoulder. “Want to talk about it, sugar?”
“No.”One word. One broken word that told him everything.
Okay then, he was equipped to deal with this. Walking around her in a slow circle, he critiqued her position. Of her own volition, she was waiting for him in the nadu pose. Kneeling, thighs spread wide with her hands resting palms up. Her head was down, chin touching her chest. Hiding her face from him with her hair.
There was little to correct, but Thane made a point of doing so, just to keep her attention on him. Using his foot to tap her knees further apart, he crouched down and hooked his fingers under her chin. “Spine straight, head up. Push your shoulders back.”
“Sorry, Sir,” she mumbled, adjusting her body how he wanted.
“Eyes on me, sugar.” Gripping her chin more firmly, he brushed the hair away from her face. “On a scale of one to ten, how badly are you hurting right now?”
A punishment for lying wasn't what he wanted to give her, but he had one in mind she wouldn't like. Convinced she was going to give him a bullshit answer, he skewered her with a long, warning glare. He hated that her lip quivered, gave a passing thought to storming back out into the club proper and decking Braun for making her eyes swim with tears.
She sucked in a shuddering breath. “Anything less than ten would be a lie, Sir.”
Thane nodded, then leaned forward and brushed his lips over hers. “Thank you for not lying to me, Connie. I don't want to have to punish you tonight.” It was bad enough he had to dole one out for her behavior the night before, but given the vehemence of her speech to the Masters, he had to wonder if reprimanding her was the right choice. “I'll make you feel better, sugar. On the bed, on your back. Legs spread and knees up.”
“They want you to castigate me, Sir. If I were in their shoes, so would I.” Gray eyes were dull and miserable, the spark gone. “You're thinking about not doing it. Because of the circumstances.” She sighed heavily, dropping her gaze. “I deserve it. What I did was selfish, no matter how I spin it around in my head. Someone could have been hurt trying to find me. You could have been hurt.” When her eyes lifted to his again, they were wet and apologetic. “I wouldn't have been able to forgive myself.”
He fell to one knee, running his hand through her hair, then fisting it hard and yanking her head back sharply. Anger surged through him as he remembered the steep drops along the path. The sheer height of the rock formations and what could have happened if she'd gone higher up, intoxicated and pissed out of her wits. It didn't bear thinking about. “Do you think I gave a fuck about myself, Connie? Do you think they did?” He jerked his chin in the direction of the bar. “You were the only thing on our minds. You, because you were hurting enough to take off without a fucking word to anyone into the middle of fucking nowhere.”
She flinched, absorbing the brunt of his fury. “I know. I'm sorry.”
“Get on the bed. Tonight, we're popping the cork on that bottle of emotion before it kills you.” Releasing her, he pushed to his feet and headed straight for the cupboards on the righthand side of the room. He'd snuck in here a few times over the past week, familiarizing himself with where everything was kept. Rummaging around during a scene broke the momentum, and he liked his scenes to run smoothly.
