“They give you a good life?”
She sniffled. “Yes.”
He tapped her temple gently. “Your parents loved you, too. Made you who you are. A strong woman.” Raking his fingers through her hair, he pulled away the strands that clung to her damp cheeks. “That’s all that fuckin’ matters, babe. Don’t let Pierce’s evil shit win by destroyin’ you. He’s a nobody now. He’ll no longer exist.”
She closed her eyes and didn’t say anything for the longest time. “Judge and jury.”
“What?”
Her blue eyes popped open. “You’re all judge and jury. Then you dispense your own justice.”
“When necessary. That bother you?”
“Was there any other choice if I wanted him to meet justice?”
“No. ‘Cause 5-0 ain’t gonna do shit. ‘Specially with no solid proof. Even that diary.”
She got quiet again for a moment, then turned troubled eyes to him. “If my mom would’ve come forward. Said something. Did something other than just scribbling it down in a diary... Diamond...”
“Maybe. Maybe not. Don’t know that. Don’t blame your mother. Sure she did her best.”
“I loved her, Dex.”
“Know it, babe.”
“It was so rough for her in the end. I felt so helpless.”
“But you were there for her. By her side. That’s all you could do.”
“Yes, but it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t.” A whole fresh batch of tears began to stream down her face.
He rolled to his back, wrapped his arms around her head, holding her close and pressing his lips to her temple.
Like Brooke had felt with her mother, he felt the same with her right now. Helpless. However, he could do the same thing he told her: be there for her, remain by her side until she was all cried out.
He nuzzled his nose into her blonde hair and inhaled the scent of her shampoo. It was hard to believe it was only this morning that they had woken up in this very bed and had some awesome sex. Things went all fucking downhill from there.
But it was over. Pierce was handled. The Warriors were handled.
And he hoped she’d eventually forgive him for stealing her DNA and her mother’s diary pages without her knowledge.
He also hoped she’d realize how much she belonged with him.
He held her for hours, even after her tears dried up. During that time, he refused to let her go, not even for a second.
Because letting her go wasn’t an option. But he needed her to feel the same way.
Brooke’s eyes blinked open and she turned her head toward the sound of her phone vibrating on the nightstand. She did a quick mental check.
She was still in her motel room, still completely dressed and still pinned against Dex.
His breathing was steady as it blew across her cheek. After carefully peeling herself out of his embrace, she grabbed her phone, but it had gone to voicemail before she could answer it.
Three missed calls. All unknown. She frowned. Who was calling her at...
The time displayed on her phone said 3:34 AM.
What the hell...
She couldn’t believe she slept through three calls. She turned and glanced down at Dex sleeping. No, she could. She had cried herself to sleep in his arms last night. And being in his arms, she had felt safe and... something else... Enough to sleep soundly.
Something else.
What did she feel for the man who had forced his way into her room? Hell, forced his way into her life.
The man who had the balls big enough to follow her home to Harrisburg. Follow her to her motel room after she’d told him to leave her alone. And not just once either.
He had balls big enough to allow her to let her be herself in the bedroom when it came to sex but never lost those balls afterward, outside the bedroom.
She wondered if he’d shown that secret side of himself to anyone besides her.
If he wasn’t a biker, didn’t live in Shadow Valley, didn’t have a connection with the DAMC, then he might have been perfect for her.
But he wasn’t.
So she needed to ignore that feeling... that something else.
At this point, she saw no reason to get entangled in something that would never last.
She pressed the voicemail icon on her cellphone and lifted it to her ear.
“Ms. Monroe,” the deep recorded voice said. “This is Trooper Jenkins, a fire marshal for the Pennsylvania State Police. I need you to call me back as soon as you can. Your house has been involved in an alleged arson and we want to make sure you’re safe. Please contact me on my cell as soon as you get this message at—”
The phone tumbled from Brooke’s fingers and landed on the bed. The deep voice in the message rattled off some numbers and some other stuff, but she didn’t know what. Her heart stopped as she stared at the phone that caused a glow in the room that suddenly seemed glaring.
Dex sat up abruptly and, leaning over her, grabbed the phone. He hit the replay button and put it to his ear.
“Fuckin’ motherfuckers,” he barked as he pulled the phone away, and hit another button. After a few seconds, he said, “Yeah, it is. This is her phone. She’s safe. What’s goin’ on?” After a few more moments, he muttered, “Be there in about three hours.” A pause. “Shadow Valley. South of the ‘burgh.” Another pause. “Yeah. Right. Got you.” He disconnected the phone, threw it back onto the bed then gripped her face within his large, warm hands.
She could only blink at him. She couldn’t focus because her thoughts kept whirling around in her head like a cyclone. She couldn’t get them to stop no matter how hard she tried. “Dex,” she whispered.
“Yeah, babe. Get your shoes on, gather your shit, pack up your Beemer. Gotta drop off my sled at church, then takin’ your cage to Harrisburg. Got me?”
“But—”
“No fuckin’ buts. Get it done. Now. Gotta go.”
“But...”
He didn’t release her face, but shook her gently. “Listen. No buts. Get movin’.”
She felt herself nod, but it didn’t feel like herself. It was like someone else was nodding for her.
What the hell was happening?
She tried to concentrate on the man all up in her face. “What are we doing?”
“Headin’ back to Harrisburg. Gotta deal with this shit an’ the pigs. They need to talk to you.”
“My house...”
“Yeah, babe. Don’t know the extent. Gotta get rollin’ now. Got me?”
She nodded again, pushed out of the bed, automatically straightening the rumpled clothes on her body. She gathered her belongings without thinking, without feeling. Without anything. The only thing that kept her going was Dex’s firm commands.
Nothing remained of her inside. Nothing.
She was completely fucking empty.
Dex pulled her BMW over to the curb as close as the firefighters would allow. Which wasn’t close because they had their rigs blocking the street and along with a few parked pigmobiles.
Before they could even get out of the car, a cop approached them asking who they were. When he explained who Brooke was, he got a long eyeballing from the man in a black and grey uniform. Dex bit his insult back because he needed to keep his shit together and the Trooper that called Brooke needed to talk to her.
He also didn’t need to be arrested for disorderly conduct and let Brooke deal with this whole new shit show by herself.
The pig pointed toward another man in a suit that stood scribbling shit down in a notebook. The blond guy looked up, saw them approaching and met them halfway.
He held out his hand to Brooke as he introduced himself and then ignored Dex once he noticed the colors on Dex’s back.
What-fucking-ever.
Would it have been smart to leave his cut in Brooke’s cage? Probably. But fuck everybody who was judging him right now. He wasn’t hiding who he was. They could suck his fucking dick.
Dex turned his eyes from Brooke talking
to the Trooper to what remained of her home.
What remained was nothing but ashes, glowing embers, her stone fireplace and some random blackened skeletal remains of her house. Smoke still rose up as the firemen poked and prodded, looking for hot spots and hosing some areas down.
He took a few steps forward, drawn to the devastation and sick to his stomach at what the Warriors had done.
Because no one else had done this besides that scum sucking MC. That wasn’t even in question. It was because of this, he knew Brooke hadn’t been safe at home. This was why he insisted she come back with him to Shadow Valley. He knew that the Warriors would seek retribution for their president going missing.
And her house was his last known location.
As he moved forward as if in a trance, staring at what remained, a fireman reached out and grabbed his arm. He looked up and the man jerked his chin back to where Brooke and the Trooper talked. “Your woman just collapsed.”
Dex spun and saw the Trooper squatting down next to Brooke who had fallen to her knees, her head in her hands, her body curled over itself.
“What the fuck?” he yelled, rushing back to her. He pushed the Trooper out of the way, dropped to his knees, and grabbed Brooke, pulling her into his arms. “What the fuck happened?” he asked the cop standing over them.
“More bad news,” he murmured, concern in his dark eyes as he stared at Brooke.
“What?” What else could there be? How much more could this woman take?
“This fire is being deemed an arson at this point. But I just found out another arson took place. Though, not in my area.”
“Yeah and?”
“Whoever hit her house, hit her business, too. This was personal. Not random.”
No fucking shit. But he wasn’t saying that.
The Trooper met Dex’s gaze, his eyes hard. “Do you know who could’ve done this?”
Dex’s nostrils flared but he kept his face hard, unreadable. “Nope.”
Trooper Jenkins’ mouth flattened out. “Right.” His spine snapped straight and he faced Dex head-on. “Dealt with people like you before. Like I said, it’s definitely not random. Someone’s targeting her.” He tilted his head. “Or you.” He tapped his pen against his notebook as he jerked his chin toward the patches on the front of his cut. “Or your club.”
Dex stood, pulling Brooke up with him, pressing her face into his chest and holding her tight. “Don’t know who that’d be.”
The Trooper nodded, not hiding the fact that he didn’t believe Dex. “Right.” With a sigh, he pulled a couple business cards from his pocket and held them out to Dex. “If, for some reason, you suspect anyone who might have done it, here’s my card. Hang onto one. Give the other to her insurance company.”
Dex said nothing but pulled the cards from his fingers and tucked them into his back pocket.
Jenkins stared at Brooke for a moment then said, “Sorry this happened to her. No one deserves this. Maybe she needs to pick different people to associate with.”
Dex ignored his dig and dropped his attention to Brooke as the Trooper strode away. “Babe,” he whispered, stroking her hair.
“It’s all gone.” Her words were smothered into his shirt.
“Yeah.”
“Everything I’ve known. Everything I built. Everything that was... me. I have nothing left.”
“Not true, babe.”
She pulled away slightly and looked up at him, her blue eyes wide. “What? What do I have left? They took everything from me. Everything, Dex.”
“Babe, got me. Got all of us.”
Her mouth dropped open. “Us? You mean your club? The very thing that caused my life to spiral into the depths of hell?”
Dex locked his jaw from saying something he would regret later. He needed to keep his head on straight. He didn’t need to make this any worse for her. Because, yeah, he got what she meant. He understood why she’d blame the club.
Pierce created her and, because of that, was the catalyst of all the shit that resulted from that moment. The man had been an Angel, had been embedded deeply into the DAMC for longer than either of them had been born. He’d been the club’s president for a decade.
So, yeah, he got it. He could understand why she wanted nothing to do with the DAMC.
But that didn’t mean he’d accept that.
“I have nowhere to live,” she said softly, the deep sadness in her words like a twisted knife in his chest. “My business is gone.”
“Know you’re probably gonna hate what I’m about to say to you, but... gotta take this as a new beginnin’. A fresh start.”
“I can’t just walk away from my business, my clients. Hell, even my employees.”
“You’ll figure it out. Got insurance, right?”
She nodded, staring toward what remained of her former house as the smoke rose up into the early morning sky.
“The Trooper said that a Molotov cocktail was used to firebomb my offices and showroom.” She released a bitter laugh. “A fucking Molotov cocktail! What the hell?”
Dex mumbled, “Like they tried to do with Sophie’s bakery.”
She turned surprised eyes to him. “They burned her bakery down?”
He shook his head. “No. Tried. Sophie was livin’ above the bakery. She was lucky that attempt failed.”
“But what did she do to them?”
“Fuckin’ nothin’. Besides being involved with Z.”
“So, if I hadn’t been involved with their president’s disappearance, if I hadn’t been Pierce’s daughter and if, for some reason, I’d just been with you, this still might have happened to me?”
If, for some reason, I’d just been with you.
That sentence drove home what he knew. That certain circumstances had brought them together. If seeking the truth hadn’t brought Brooke to Shadow Valley, they never would’ve crossed paths, and even if they had, other than for a reason they had, she never would have looked twice at him. Not once, probably, either.
“Just being with you could’ve brought on their wrath?” she asked when he didn’t answer.
“Can’t answer that, babe. Don’t know. Don’t know what goes on in their fucked up minds. Can’t say that you bein’ with me wouldn’t have drawn their attention. They kidnapped Kiki, an’ only because she was seein’ Hawk. Was at his place at the wrong time. She wasn’t DAMC, but they didn’t know that. You bein’ with me could be a risk.” He scrubbed a hand over his stubbled chin. “Don’t wanna tell you that so you’re scared to be with me, but gotta be honest with you. This shit’s been goin’ on forever. Don’t know if it’ll ever end.” He shook his head and stared at his boots. “Just don’t know, Brooke.”
“But I’m not with you,” she whispered. “We were just thrown together... We...” She took a deep breath. “I’m here. You’re there.”
“You got nothin’ here anymore.”
“My employees...”
“They’ll find their own way.”
“A business.”
“You can rebuild. Don’t hafta be here.”
“What are you saying?”
“Don’t need to say it out loud, babe. You know what I’m sayin’.”
Her brows furrowed as she stared at him. “No. I need to hear it. I need you to spell out what you want. Because I’m not sure that what you want is the same thing I want.”
He grabbed her hand and began to tug her toward the burned-out remains of her house. One of the firemen yelled as he yanked her close. Close enough to feel the heat of the smoldering ashes.
He dug into his cut, into that slit cut inside his vest, and pulled out the pages from her mother’s diary, holding them out to her. She stared at them blankly, her brows still furrowed.
“That shit’s the past.” Swinging his arm out over the devastation before them, he continued, “This house is the past. Your business is the past. This has given you a chance to start fresh. Take those pages, babe. Burn them. Cleanse yourself of that poison. Yeah?”
<
br /> She turned blue eyes up from her mother’s handwritten words to him. “And you think you’re my future.”
“Yeah, babe, I do. Know it’s gonna be a difficult road to get back on your feet. Know it. Gonna be there every second for you, gonna be there to help you every step of the fuckin’ way. Help you as much as I can. Don’t know shit about decoratin’ or anything, but whatever you need, whatever I can help you with, I’ll do it. An’ not just me. The whole fuckin’ club, my family. Your family. We’ll be there for you. Babe, you are now DAMC.”
“Because you think I belong to you.” It wasn’t a question, but a soft statement.
One that she was going to deny. Tell him that she didn’t, she never would. She was a strong, independent woman and she didn’t need anybody. Dex. The DAMC. Her sister. Nobody.
She was gearing up to tell him to go fuck off. To laugh in his face because she didn’t need a man like him in her life. He was so not her caliber and for him to think so would be laughable.
That was what she was about to say to him and, when she did, it was going to fucking kill him. So he needed to convince her otherwise, before she shut him out. Before she closed herself off to the possibility of a future with him. A future back in Shadow Valley. Not a future where they lived hours apart, where he could be easily forgotten as she went about building a new life. Without him.
He dropped to his knees. Right there on the wet ground, in the mud created from dirt and ash and water from the fire hoses. Right there at her feet. He grabbed both of her hands and pressed his forehead to them for a moment, gathering his breath, gathering his courage to fight any disappointment she’d rain on him.
When he finally looked up, met her eyes, which were shiny, shocked, even scared, he began, not caring who watched them, not caring who heard. “Babe, beggin’ you. Just give me a chance. Give us a chance. Know we’re not from the same world. Hell, from the same universe. But it works. I promise, it works. Look at Kiki an’ Hawk. Hell, he was fuckin’ in county jail an’ she was his lawyer. Can’t get any more different than that. Look at Z, the prez of a MC who did ten years in prison an’ Sophie, a sweet baker who probably never had a parkin’ ticket. Look at Axel, a fuckin’ cop, an’ Bella, a born biker chick. An’ then there’s Emma. A kindergarten teacher.” He shook his head and snorted. “Dawg was runnin’ a strip club when a kindergarten teacher walked the fuck into his life. Can’t get much more different than that. An’ it works for ‘em, swear it. Those men would die for ‘em. Every single one of ‘em. An’ babe...”
Down & Dirty: Dex (Dirty Angels MC Book 8) Page 20