I glanced at my watch. “You’ve got about twelve minutes left. Better start talkin’.”
“Brick’s dead.”
Brick was Reese’s father and the definition of evil. He’d been horribly abusive to Reese as a child, and his reasons were just as twisted as his actions. Brick would say Reese was the son of the devil any time Reese would disobey him, or do anything that angered him in the slightest. He would say it was proof his mother slept with other men, as Reese obviously wasn’t his son, and since she was a whore, he was the son of Satan, and therefore should be treated as such.
I’m pretty sure Reese had never told that story to anyone outside of me... he’d told me as much, and one thing I knew about Reese was that he wasn’t a liar. He was a lot of things, but liar wasn’t one.
“Wow,” I breathed out. “I’m sorry, Reese.”
“Don’t be sorry, Lex, he was a bastard.”
This was true. He was horrible. But, still, he was Reese’s father, so that had to be a bit of a mind bend. “Okay, so he’s gone,” I encouraged. “Why are you wasting your fifteen minutes telling me this?”
“Because it changes everything.”
“What does it change?”
“This.” He waved his hand between the two of us.
“I’m not following,” I said. And I really wasn’t. I had no idea what he was trying to tell me by osmosis and charades.
“Us.”
Us? I blinked. He couldn’t mean “us” as a couple. “Us” had gone up in a puff of exhaust when the sexy bastard had left me.
“Freckles?” he asked, leaning forward.
This time the nickname squeezed my heart until I thought it would pop. My eyes burned with a rush of unshed tears as a stupid little glimmer of hope popped into my idiotic brain. Us?
“Wha—” my voice cracked. I cleared my throat and tried again. “What exactly do you expect to happen between you and me?”
“We can start again.”
My mouth dropped open of its own accord and I stared at him wondering what planet he’d fallen from. Start again? The asshole had ripped my heart of out my chest and stomped all over it with his sexy-ass motorcycle boots. There was no starting again.
“Maybe not start again,” he clarified. “I know I can’t pretend the breakup and the past eight years didn’t happen, but maybe we can—”
I laughed. I couldn’t help it. The idea of me and Reese together again... I glanced at his hands. They were rough and calloused from working on his bike, just like I remembered. They used to roam my body, bringing me to levels of ecstasy I hadn’t experienced since. Just thinking about the pleasure those magical hands could bring me warmed my cheeks and set fire to other parts of my body. My laughter fell apart, dying deep in my throat.
“Are you okay?” Reese asked.
Stupid question. “No, I’m not okay,” I snapped and stood to my feet. “Nothing is okay. I was okay. I mean as okay as I could possibly be while tucked away in an abbey waiting to testify against someone who wants me dead, but I was surviving. Then you show up talking all this crap about starting again? How the hell am I supposed to process this?”
He stood and reached for me. I shied away, as if his touch would burn me. I wasn’t afraid of Reese, but I was terrified of what I’d do as soon as those magical hands touched me. Would I jump on him, wrap my legs around his waist and attack his neck? No. The bastard broke my heart. I should be attacking him with my fists, not my...
He smiled. “Freckles—”
Ohmigod why did he have to be so hot? More heat rushed to my cheeks. What the hell was with that smile? Could he read my thoughts?
“Don’t call me that. You lost that right when you—” I hiccupped.
My hiccups turned into frustrated tears and wracking sobs that I couldn’t seem to stop.
“Fuck, baby, don’t cry,” he said, and reached for me again.
I stood so quickly I almost tripped over the pew. “I’m fine,” I said, wiping away the moisture from my cheeks. “Don’t touch me.”
But my god, those hands. I wanted him to touch me.
After another sexy smile, Reese pulled me into his arms, holding me tight. He released my hair from its tie, running his fingers through my long, blonde tresses as I sobbed into his chest. He smelled like leather and soap with a hint of the cologne I’d bought him for his nineteenth birthday. His scent short-circuited my brain, and when he lifted my chin I stared at his perfect lips, wondering what it would be like to kiss them. Would he taste the same?
And when he leaves me again, will it destroy me this time?
That single rational thought hit me like a bucket of ice, making me push Reese away. I dropped my hands to my sides, smoothing out my habit as I tried not to notice the hungry look on his face. It appeared as though Reese was having as much trouble controlling his emotions as I was.
“You’re right,” he said, his voice deep and husky. “We can’t restart when I never stopped.”
“Never stopped what?” I asked.
“Missing you. Watching out for you. Loving you.”
I shook my head.
No. That was too much. I couldn’t process... couldn’t think. I shook my head and made a mad dash for the Abbey without looking back. Once I’d closed myself into my room, I dug for the burner I had hidden behind the air vent and called Paisley. If anyone could talk me down off this ledge, it was her.
* * *
Reese
I let Alexa escape. I wasn’t surprised she’d hightailed it away from me... I’d even expected it, but I’d been hopeful she might make things easy on me a little. Obviously, that hope had been misplaced. Admittedly, I was kind of glad. If she made it easy on me, she wasn’t the woman I fell in love with all those years ago.
Damn, I fucked it up. All of it. But I didn’t think I’d change anything. My sperm donor was a piece of shit and, if he’d known I had real feelings for Alexa, Brick would have killed her... or worse.
If I’d told Alexa the extent of all this back then, she would have gone to bat for us and probably started a war between the Spiders and the Mob. At the time, I couldn’t take that chance. I may have only been nineteen, but I knew what I wanted and Alexa was everything to me. The thought of her being hurt was too much for me to fathom. I’d made the only choice I could and let her go, but I’d spent the past eight years pining for her in my own way... no one but Ryder knew anything about her... not even our crew. I had made sure of that.
Dragging my hands down my face, I left the church and headed to Ryder’s. Knock me over with a feather, but I was in the mood for some of Sadie’s positivity. At the very least, Ryder’d have beer.
Pulling up to the house, I wondered if I should have texted before just showing up, but as I put the truck in reverse, the front door opened and Ryder gave me a chin lift. I parked again and climbed out.
“Sadie saw you pull up on the security cameras,” Ryder said.
I nodded.
“Beer?”
“Yeah, brother, that’d be good,” I said, and followed Ryder inside.
I walked into the kitchen and found Sadie pulling two beers out of the fridge. Dark hair, blue eyes, she looked a bit like Mila Kunis. Damn she was a knockout. It was hard to imagine, looking at her now, she used to be a nun. Ryder’d helped her out and he’d been a goner ever since. Lucky for him, Sadie’s aunt (the current Reverend Mother of the abbey) didn’t really think she was very good nun material and released her back into the world. Ryder didn’t waste any time making her his.
After setting the bottles on the island, she made her way to me and pulled me in for a surprisingly strong hug. She was a little thing, but she was a great hugger.
“Hey, babe,” I said.
“Hi,” she breathed out. “How did it go?”
“How’d what go?”
She glanced at her husband, then back at me. “Was I not supposed to know?”
Ryder chuckled. “You weren’t supposed to tell him you knew.”
I filled them in on the events of the evening and Sadie’s face grew sadder with every word. “She must have been so frightened,” she breathed out.
I shoved down my irritation. “I never threatened her, Sadie. Why would she be afraid of me?”
“Not of you, silly goose,” she said as she waved her hand dismissively. “Of thinking she was going to be thrown into jail. My word, could you imagine? Her brother’s taken away to God knows where, and she’s thinking she’s going to get thrown into a stinky cell with strangers. After everything she’s been through...”
I closed my eyes for a second. I hadn’t even thought about Lex being scared... she was the strongest person I knew. Fuck! I’d gone in with my own agenda and didn’t once consider she might be freaked. “Damn it,” I rasped. I was an ass.
“Okay, baby,” Ryder said, giving Sadie a squeeze. “Maybe lay off the guilt trip, huh?”
“Is that what I was doing?” she asked, all innocent and shit.
I took another swig of beer.
“If you love this woman as much as Ryder thinks you do,” Sadie continued, “you might want to think about an apology in a big way. Like, finding out where her brother is and figuring out a way to get him safe. Show her how you feel... words don’t really hold a lot of weight it sounds like.”
“Sadie,” Ryder warned.
“No, she’s right,” I ground out. “But you ever repeat that, I’ll deny I ever said it.”
Sadie gave me a gentle smile. “You’ll figure it out, buddy. You might have to use actual words instead of grunts, but I still think you’ll figure it out.”
I bit back a chuckle and grunted instead.
Sadie giggled and kissed Ryder. “I’m going to curl up in our bedroom and read so you guys can talk.”
“Okay, baby,” he said, and kissed her again.
“Any idea where Sergei is?” Ryder asked once Sadie left them.
I shook my head. “Got a call in to Cam to find out.”
“Good.”
“Lex is pissed I’m her new handler.”
“You expected that.”
“Yeah,” I said, letting out a long breath. “Wasn’t expecting so much hate, though.”
“She didn’t move on.”
“Nope.” I took another swig of beer.
“Neither did you.”
“Nope.”
“Thought for sure after eight years, you’d be less whipped,” Ryder retorted.
“Fuck you.” I tipped my beer toward him. “Like you’re one to talk.”
Ryder laughed. “True.”
My phone buzzed and I pulled it out of my pocket. “It’s Cam.”
Ryder nodded and leaned against the island.
“Hey, man,” I said.
“Hey,” Cameron said. “Got a lock on Sergei. They didn’t book him. He’s a C.I.”
“No shit?”
“Yeah. Don’t wanna go much further because I don’t want to alert whoever he’s informing against that I’m digging.”
“Got it. I’ll have the Dogs dig. Won’t look weird if they do it.”
The Dogs of Fire Motorcycle Club was a local club who’d taken Ryder, me, and the rest of the guys into their fold. They’d been experiencing their own issues with the Rockford Spiders and me and Ryder had been helping them deal with them with inside information.
“Good plan,” Cameron said. “I’ll text you what I have.”
“Thanks, Cam.”
“No problem.”
He hung up and I was glad Ryder didn’t ask for details. I’d send what Cam sent over to Hawk, the Road Captain of the Dogs and see what he could find out. Until then, I needed to figure out a way to apologize to Alexa... in a big way.
I kept my visit short and headed home less than an hour later, letting myself into the home I’d gutted and redone with Alexa in mind. We’d probably never live here, but I’d thought of her while I was building sweat equity.
To be honest, I thought about her even when I wasn’t working. She was never far from my heart and mind.
As I threw a frozen burrito into the microwave and grabbed a beer from the fridge, memories flooded my head and I took a minute to sit with them for a bit.
* * *
One year ago...
Alexa walked out of her office building and smiled at one of her co-workers... an older woman who appeared to be nearing retirement age. Today it was a woman, yesterday it had been some asshole whose eyes wandered too close to her tits. I watched her from across the street... had been watching her for over a week now... and as stalkerish as it might have been, now that I’d found her, I wasn’t about to let her out of my sight.
She’d done it. Become a lawyer. She’d been working for Miller, Williams, and Wall for the past two years while she went through school and had just passed the Bar. I couldn’t have been more proud of her, but her success drove home the fact that she’d moved on without me and that fuckin’ killed me.
She’d been taken a week later...
Right in the middle of Ryder’s sister’s abduction, Lex had also disappeared. I hadn’t known that at the time, as I was tasked with making sure Sadie was safe while Ryder worked with Cameron to get Scottie back. I didn’t mind...I liked Sadie, and figured Lex was safe for the moment, but what I should have done was put one of our guys on Alexa watch.
Once Scottie was found (all the way in fuckin’ Savannah, Georgia), Ryder had filled me in on everything that had gone down at the flophouse, but he’d omitted the fact that Alexa and Paisley had been held along with his sister. I didn’t get that information until long after Alexa had been sequestered in the abbey.
I had been frantic, not knowing where she was, who she was with, if she was safe. Ryder had finally told me the full story, and assured me she was safe, but refused to tell me exactly where she was. After a near fist fight with my closest friend, he’d given me Cameron’s information who had reluctantly agreed to let me assist with Alexa watch.
It was in his best interest to do so, considering I had some serious computer skills and had a good relationship with Booker who could hack anyone, so if Cameron wanted me to stay out of the way, he needed to give me something to keep my woman safe.
My heart and soul felt like she was still my woman and since there was no evidence of another man in her life, I was gonna figure out a way to get her back.
Little did I know it would take close to a year of watching and waiting...
The ding of the microwave brought me back to the present and I grabbed the food and beer and headed to my desk to do some work. I’d give Alexa some space, but not much, and I’d make it up to her... even if it killed me.
Alexa
TWO DAYS LATER, after yet another sleepless night, I dragged myself into the abbey’s kitchen and poured my third cup of coffee of the morning.
“Alexa?”
I turned to find Sadie walking in and my stomach churned. “Hi, Sadie. You here to see your aunt?”
She smiled. “No.”
“Everything okay?”
“You tell me,” she said, and sat at the long banquet table.
“I’m not following.”
“Reese—”
“No.” I shook my head. “Sorry, Sadie, I don’t mean to be rude, but that subject is off limits.”
“I don’t want to pry,” she said. “Consider the subject dropped.”
I relaxed. “Thanks.”
“Gosh, he was distraught the other night... so worried he’d scared you.” She flicked away non-existent lint off her jeans. One thing about Sadie was, she might not be a nun anymore, but she was always dressed immaculately.
I rolled my eyes, but didn’t comment.
“Poor man. I was sure I saw a tear in his eye.”
“Ohmigod, Reese Alden does not cry,” I snapped.
“Maybe not, but he was pretty upset.”
“You’ve got that Catholic guilt thing down, don’t ya?”
I accused.
She rose to her feet and faced me. “Look, I’m really not trying to pry. But if you ever need to talk to someone, I’m a really good listener. And Reese is a good man... which I’m sure you know. He doesn’t always say the right thing, and tends to grunt instead of using real words, but I’ve never seen him the way he was the other night, so you must mean something to him.” She sighed. “I’m sorry. I’m prying. I’ll stop.”
“Thanks, Sadie. I appre—”
“After I say just one more thing,” she interrupted.
I squeezed my eyes shut and sipped my coffee while I tried to keep my cool.
“He feels horrible—”
“No. I’m shutting this conversation down, Sadie.” I pushed away from the counter. “Please. You have no idea what went on with me and Reese and without my best friend to talk to, I just want to forget about all of it. No offense, but Paisley’s the only one I want to talk to. Any chance of getting her here?”
Sadie bit her lip and shook her head. “I’m sorry, Alexa.”
“I’m working with the kindergarteners today, so I should really get going. Take care, Sadie.” I walked out of the kitchen without a backward glance. I had thirty minutes before I started my shift reading to the kids, so I escaped to my bedroom, and gave myself five minutes to melt down.
I couldn’t keep doing this. I needed to find out how to separate myself from Reese once and for all. If I didn’t, I’d break again, and I didn’t think I could put myself back together this time around.
* * *
Reese
I walked out my front door to find Alexa’s best friend, Paisley, screeching her silver Mercedes to a halt in front of me. She climbed out of her car, marched up to me, and shoved me... hard.
“What the fuck, Paisley?” I snapped.
“Stop it!” she demanded.
“Stop what?” The last time I’d seen Paisley was the day before I’d broken up with Alexa, so the fact she knew where I lived unsettled me somewhat... but she’d always been good at finding shit.
“Ohmigod, Reese, sometimes I want to shoot you.” She jabbed a finger at me. “And you know what? I own a gun now, so watch your back!”
Paisley had turned her love of subterfuge into a career and now worked for the Vancouver Police Department as a detective, but not one on the street... she “found” people who typically didn’t want to be found, from behind a desk.
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