by Sophia Gray
“You do,” he said, but he lowered his head, no longer looking at her. At least he put his gun away—that made me breathe easier, although I still didn’t have a good feeling about things.
“You know my whole story.” Sage sniffled some.
“I do.” Trenton nodded. He reached toward her, but then he lowered his hand. Good. He better not touch her.
Because Sage slid me a glance. She was back to acting again, I could tell, but if he touched her, that spell she was weaving might crumble. How in the world had she gotten so strong?
“So how could you have done this?” Sage asked quietly. “How could you have turned to drugs when you know my mom did that? She picked drugs over me, Trenton.” Her voice was low, but intense.
“I didn’t—”
“You did. You’re using again. Damn it, Trenton! You said the last time would be the last, and I believed you!”
What the hell? Sage knew he’d used drugs recently? Why hadn’t she told me? Why hadn’t I been a better mom that she would come to me with that kind of info?
“I was clean for—”
“What, five months? Trenton, we’ve been together how long? Why—”
“You’ve never done drugs,” he said, snarling. “You don’t know what it’s like.”
“And I don’t want to know! I’ve never wanted to know! Drugs ruined my mom’s life. She’s in jail because of it, and I’m glad!”
“Is that what you want for me? Is it? Huh?” He stalked toward her.
Sage didn’t back down. “I think you need help.”
“Help?” He moved so quickly Sage didn’t have time to react—he backhanded her.
She gasped, and her hand went to her cheek.
“Don’t you dare hit her!” I yelped.
The gun came back out, and, eyes wild, he stared me down. “Don’t you dare tell me what to do!”
“Trenton!” Sage shrieked. She didn’t back away yet, and she visibly tried to gather her bearings. “Sometimes…Sometimes you have to let someone g-go…”
He said nothing, his gaze shifting back and forth between us, the gun somewhat gestured in my direction.
Better me than Sage.
“Sometimes you have to let someone go when you love them,” she said, her voice trembling.
“That’s bullshit,” Trenton said. “You never loved me, did you?”
“Of course I did!” Tears streamed down Sage’s face, but silently. She wasn’t sobbing.
“You never cared about me. You’re all the same. No one…” Trenton shook his head, crossed over to me, and pressed the gun to the middle of my forehead.
“Do it,” I taunted him. “Do it and you’ll never be with Sage again.”
He pressed harder, and I did my best not to wince. Hell, did that hurt! “I’ll do it. I’ll off you. Off her. Off myself. We can be together,” he breathed. “You and me, baby. Together forever.”
“In life, Trenton,” Sage said, sounding the scariest she had yet. “In life, Trenton, not death!”
“What kind of life will we have, Sage? Tell me that. I’ve fucked it up. I’ve fucked it all up. I know that.” His hand was shaking, but the gun was always facing me. “We can’t have a life together.”
“You…You don’t know that…” Sage dashed forward and yanked on his arm.
“If Grant comes with the money,” I said.
“I don’t think he will.”
“Why not? You’re a part of Devil’s Horns, right? You’re a part of his family. He would never hurt—”
“He cares about you,” Trenton interrupted me. “You’re his family now. And I crossed the line. I know I did, and I did it anyway. I’m screwed. Either Grant will come for me or the drug lord will, and I’m gonna end up dead either way. I’m a dead man.”
He turned toward Sage, but I could still see his face. There was love there and fear—so much fear.
“We don’t all have to die,” Sage whispered.
Just like that, the love in his eyes died.
Desperation rolled over me, and my stomach was so twisted and knotted that I thought I was going to throw up. “Grant doesn’t think of me as family,” I argued. “We fucked a few times, yeah, but that’s it. We’re nothing serious.”
Trenton wasn’t even looking at me. “You would rather live without me than with me.”
“Because of the stunts you pulled lately, well, yeah! I know people make mistakes, Trenton, but this…” Sage started to sniff. Back to the angry crying. “This is bullshit, Trenton! Let me and my mom go!”
“I can’t. I can’t. You…Sage, I know I screwed up—”
“Shut it, Trenton. This isn’t something you can fix with words or money or sex. We’re…”
“Don’t you dare say it,” he growled.
“We’re done!” she shouted.
Trenton lunged toward Sage. She darted to the left, but he grabbed ahold of her hair and yanked her backward. Fuck. He still had the gun!
I jerked and twisted and jerked some more, and my chair moved slightly toward them. Sage was clawing at Trenton’s face and arms, and he yelped and threw her away from him and onto the floor. He didn’t point the gun at her, though. It was pointed back to me.
Sage’s eyes went wide. “You wouldn’t dare!”
“Wouldn’t I?” His eyes were wild. “I have nothing to live for if I don’t have you. There’s no going back now.”
“There…” Tears streamed down her face, and I could barely make out what she was saying. “There won’t be if you kill my mom. If you ever want a chance for us…If I ever meant anything to you…”
Trenton’s hand began to shake. “I can’t handle this,” he muttered. Sweat appeared on his forehead, and he was shivering. “Sage…” He had pinned all of his hopes and dreams and happiness on her, but she hadn’t been enough for him. He was too damaged. No girl would’ve been enough. That was the thing. One person can’t equal your happiness. You had to create happiness within yourself and without, too. You needed someone to balance you out, someone who challenged you, someone who opened your eyes to new horizons. You needed someone who made you a better person.
Trenton sure as hell didn’t do that for Sage considering how many fights she and I would get into after she spent some time with him. Trenton had no respect for authority, not after the stunts his parents pulled. Grant had tried to straighten him out, and Sage had done some, obviously. I never would’ve thought Trenton would have talked to me like he did earlier. Then again, those other sides of him, like when he hit me with the gun, that was the asshole who needed to get the hell out of our lives pronto.
These thoughts flew through my head in seconds. Sage lunged forward toward Trenton.
Trenton jerked away.
I tried to move my chair more, but it was caught.
The gun when off.
Sage screamed.
I did, too.
Chapter 21
Grant
The miles trickled by, far slower than I would’ve liked. Why couldn’t we be there already? While I hoped Trenton wasn’t doing anything stupid, I was growing sick with worry.
Damn traffic. There was an accident, and we were at a crawl. It had been more than four hours now since Trenton had called, and I couldn’t handle it. We had to get the fuck out of this fucking traffic, and we had to do it the fuck right now.
“Drive along the shoulder.”
“There’s a cop not far back,” Bob protested.
“So?”
“We can’t afford to be pulled over.”
“So don’t pull over.”
Bob glanced over at me, raised his eyebrows, and gave me a hell of a devilish grin. He would have to find a way to merge over to reach the shoulder, but it would be worth it.
While he worked on that, I checked my gun over. Everything appeared in working order. The fuck was Trenton thinking, pulling this shit. Obviously the punk wasn’t thinking.
A part of me absolutely hated that we were doing this—that we wer
e readying to take up arms against one of our own. But, honestly, a lot of the guys had always viewed Trenton as more of a comrade than as a full-fledged member. Some of that was because of his age, but some of it was also because of the stunts he pulled. Trenton had always been a little immature, and he didn’t understand that you couldn’t just take, take, take. Everything should be give and take, and the ones who abused others were not tolerated for long, not in my world.
Victoria was a taker, too, but there was a difference. She took and built on it and made something of herself. She didn’t step on others to do it. Her restaurant was a testament to what a working woman could accomplish.
And in the bedroom—there she was give and take. Damn, could she give and take. The things we did to each other was amazing, and the things I wanted to do to her yet…
But more than just sex, I wanted to take Victoria away from all of this hell. Sweep her off her feet. Maybe go on a long vacation. A cruise somewhere. Just the two of us. Hell if she wanted to bring Sage along, too, that would be fine with me.
And then once we came back, then what? I wanted to go to her restaurant. I wanted to talk with her all hours of the night. I wanted to spend time with her horizontal. I wanted it all.
And I wanted it now.
I had never been this obsessed with a woman before, and in such a short amount of time, too. Would we have staying power as a couple? I didn’t know. I sure as hell hoped we did, but only time would tell.
And if we didn’t get the fuck to that motel soon, there might not be enough time for us to find out.
“Damn it, Bob! Do you need me to—”
“Sit back,” Bob snapped. “If I can’t see, I sure as hell can’t merge. Come on, asshole.”
I glowered at him. “Who you callin’ an asshole?”
Bob honked and then jerked the wheel. “That dipshit I just cut in front of.” He glanced in his rearview mirror. “You really want me to?”
“Yes!” I growled.
He nodded. “Looks like the cop’s pointed the other way. Hold on. We’re gonna fly!”
The tires squealed, and we peeled out, flying down the thin shoulder. A few cars honked, and I saw a lot of mouths flapping and middle fingers flashing, but I didn’t care.
We took the next exit, and we had to figure out a new route, but at least we were moving again. And even better, that cop didn’t tail us. We were in the clear!
But who knew if our luck would hold.
Especially since the other van hadn’t gotten over when we had.
“Bob, pull over,” I dictated. We would wait for a few minutes, and if the other van didn’t appear by then, we would just continue on without them. I wasn’t gonna wait forever.
Serious honking sounded behind us. The van flew up, and Bob gunned it, and we were back to caravanning it. Good. Although I didn’t want it to come down to a shootout, I felt much better having both numbers of men and guns on my side.
Especially because… oh, fuck…what if we weren’t the first ones to reach Trenton? Yeah, I had talked to that stupid, pompous drug lord, and threatened him even, but what if he decided he didn’t want to wait to collect his money? If I could track down Trenton, and especially since my main lead had been from regulars at the fucker’s bar, then he could track down Trenton, too, and once you had the town, it wouldn’t be that hard to figure out where exactly Trenton was staying…
Trenton really was a dipshit. Maybe I had failed him, but at some point, he had to be held accountable for his actions, and his actions had led him to this point, where his own friends, his own family, had turned against him.
He had no one.
And when he realized he was truly alone—because I had to believe Sage saw the light by now, I mean, come on, Trenton was holding her mother for ransom!—he’d be incredibly desperate.
Caged animals tended to attack, even if they knew they couldn’t win.
And there was no way in hell Trenton was gonna win.
“How much farther?” I all but growled.
“Ten minutes, give or take.”
“Make it five,” I ordered.
Bob flashed me a quick grin and floored it. I checked my side mirror. The other van was keeping close to our tail. Good. Power in numbers. Power in gunfire.
But I sure hoped and prayed that we wouldn’t have to fire a single shot. What if one of us missed and hit Victoria or Sage? And, despite everything, I didn’t want to shoot Trenton either. Messed up kid might not be able to turn his life around. I’d tried. Maybe jail could straight him out. Or maybe he just needed a final out. I didn’t want to be the one to end his life, but if it came down to him or one of the women, it killed me to say it, but I would pick the women.
Never ever did I think I would ever think such a thing. My men were my family, and I would bend over backward for them. I would give them the shirt off my back, given the housing, pay their rent if they were between jobs…anything and everything. What was mine was theirs.
For so many years, I had taken that adage “bros before hoes” to heart. Maybe that was why I had so many one-night stands and short relationships. Maybe I hadn’t met the right woman yet. I mean, I cared for Victoria despite us not knowing her for a long time. I could easily see myself falling in love with her. I desperately wanted to give us a chance at something huge. We might work, we might not, but I wanted that chance. Trenton would not take that away from us.
And I had a feeling Victoria wouldn’t turn into one of those clingy women who would want me to ditch the Devil’s Horns. That would be the only deal breaker for me. I would not turn my back on my men, on my family.
One might argue that that was exactly what I was doing with Trenton, but that wasn’t the case. If anything, he had turned his back on us. He’d chosen drugs over us. He’d chosen to not ask for help.
My stomach twisted. I should’ve realized he needed help, though. How had I missed the signs? There had been one other time that I’d noticed that he seemed to be slipping into bad habits. He’d just lost his part time job, and he might’ve been on a break from Sage or another girl at the time. I’d caught him lying, and he hadn’t been at events he’d said he would go to, and I’d pulled him aside and asked him if he needed anything.
“Nothing,” he had said without looking at me.
“Nothing, huh?” I poured some whiskey from my personal stash and handed it to him. This had been a few months after he turned twenty-one. In two months, he’d be twenty-three.
He’d stared at it and then gulped it down, draining all of the amber liquid.
I had shaken my head. “Whiskey is meant to be savored.”
He’d eyed the bottle, and I poured him more but then held the glass away.
“Can you handle this?” I had asked him.
“Yeah.”
I lowered the glass onto the table but didn’t slid it over to him. “Can you handle whatever it is that makes you want to drink?”
Trenton drummed his fingers onto the table. Then he reached over and clutched the glass, taking it out of my hands, but he didn’t drink it. “I don’t know,” he admitted.
“You know you can always come to me, right?”
“I hate living with Steven. He snores. He never cleans up after himself and makes me wash his dishes. His taste in music is terrible—”
“What’s wrong with ‘80s music?” I demanded with a smile.
Turned rolled his eyes.
“If you want to move in with me,” I started to offer.
He shook his head. “I don’t wanna live with you or one of the other Devil’s Horns guys.”
“So find your own place,” I suggested.
“I need a job first,” he muttered.
So I had helped him with résumés and helped him go job hunting, and he found a new job, and he started to laugh and smile more. He had seemed happy. He seemed to be doing well. Or maybe I just hadn’t seen the signs, or he got better at hiding them. Maybe he hadn’t started using and only sold the drugs. Tha
t would’ve made it easier for me to be duped. Considering how much he’d hated his father for using drugs and his attempts to stay clean, I never would’ve thought Trenton would be the kind to sell drugs, to get others hooked on it.
I was disappointed, but who was I more disappointed in—him or me? I wasn’t sure.