by A Parker
I sighed. How real did I want to get with these women? They’d shown me support before, and they were rallying around me now, but I wasn’t sure where the line was.
Still, I needed to get the crushing weight off my chest. I needed others to know what was happening with me and Tex. We’d agreed to keep it from Jackson, but would the women have my back in this?
“I just won’t be able to forgive myself if something goes wrong,” I muttered. “I can’t have Jameson’s blood on my hands. I just can’t. It will… it will…” I trailed off and shook my head, unwilling to continue.
Sam wore an empathetic frown. “I’m sorry you’re in this position.”
“Thank you,” I said.
Suzie chewed the inside of her cheek. I could see a question dancing in her eyes, but it seemed like she wasn’t sure if she should ask it or not. Finally, she made a decision. “Has crashing at Tex’s place made you fall for him?”
“Suzie,” Sam scolded, using her friend’s full name for the first time in my presence.
Suzie shot her a menacing look. “Don’t call me Suzie.” Her sharp stare returned to me. “Isn’t that exactly what you said you didn’t want to happen? Are you crushing on Tex?”
Crushing? No. I’d gone a lot further than just crushing.
“I have feelings for him,” I admitted.
The women’s eyes widened.
I pinched the bridge of my nose and closed my eyes. “It doesn’t make any sense to me, either. It isn’t what I wanted. I wanted to finish this thing with Bates and have a clean break so I could go back to Austin. But everything got so messy so quickly and I don’t know where to go from here.”
“Would you stay here for him?” Samantha asked.
Her question hit me in the gut. “I don’t know.”
“But you’re tempted?” Suzie pressed.
I raked my fingers through my hair. “I don’t know. There’s so much more to him than I ever imagined. He makes me feel strong and steady, like I can take on the world. And maybe that’s not a good thing, you know? Maybe all that strength went to my head, and if it hadn’t, I never would have hunted Bates down and caused this mess to begin with. Tex makes me feel invincible. People do stupid shit when they feel invincible.”
“Damn,” Suzie breathed. “That’s a lot.”
Tell me about it. Try being in my head right now.
Sam rubbed at her knees like they were riddled with arthritis, but I recognized it as an anxious tell. Back when I was training to be a Ranger, I’d learned certain body language cues to recognize in interrogation rooms. Anxious knee rubbing with rigid fingers and white knuckles was one of them. It also sometimes signified dishonesty, which might imply that Sam was hiding something, or she was as nervous about Friday night as I was.
“How do you do it?” I blurted out.
The women stared blankly at me.
“Do what?” they asked in unison.
“Keep a brave face on when you’re in the same position as me. Hell, you’re in a worse position than me. I’m crushing on Tex. I don’t know what we are. There isn’t a commitment there. But you’ve been with your guys for how long? You’re in love with them. You’re building lives with them. And there’s a very real chance that everything could go wrong on Friday night and you might never see them again. And if that happens, how will you be able to ever look at me again?”
I hated how fast I was talking and how they were blurring in my vision as my eyes filled with tears. I hated the loss of control and the open wound of my burden as I bled guilt in front of them.
“You’ll never be able to forgive me and I won’t blame you. I… I might ruin everything. For all of you, not just for Tex.”
Sam got up and sat down beside me. She wrapped an arm around my shoulders in a nurturing way and I could smell her perfume. She smelled like the beach in summertime. “Carrie, take a breath. There you go. Another one.”
I breathed deeply—in through my nose, out through my mouth.
“Good.” Sam’s voice was a quiet hush in my ear. “Listen to me, Carrie. I understand you feel guilty. Believe me, I understand. Jackson almost died for me and the weight of that truth almost destroyed me. But he didn’t die, and I wasn’t destroyed. All of this,” she gestured around at the shop, “did not come to be by playing it safe. Jackson and the others aren’t normal men. They don’t play by the rules. Choosing to be with one of them like Suzie and I have done? It isn’t a decision to be made lightly. This will not be the last time we sit around anxiously chewing on our nails or talking about things that don’t matter to distract ourselves. Even if Bates is eliminated from the picture on Friday, there will always be something else in our way. This life isn’t easy, and if you can’t ever accept that, Tex will never be enough for you.”
I gazed into her eyes. Why was she saying this to me?
I wanted him to be enough. I needed him to be. Without Tex, where did that leave me?
Sam took my hands in hers. “I’m not trying to hurt you, Carrie. I’m trying to be real with you. If this fear you’re experiencing right now never goes away and you can never accept that you don’t have as much control as you want, then you and Tex? You’re a pipe dream. But, if you can suspend your fear and trust him fully and lean into him when you need to, then Reno might be home for you like it’s home for us.”
Suzie joined me on my other side. “She’s right. I grew up with them. I’ve been part of the club since, well, before it was even a club. No time is guaranteed here. We have to live in the present. We have to hold on to what is ours now. If you can do that, you can be his.”
Be his. A bit of panic ebbed away from me, pulled from my blood and my bones by their words. I surprised myself by smiling. “Even if I could do what you’re saying, Jackson would never accept me.”
Sam laughed. “Let me worry about Jackson. If you stand by Tex and your heart is true, Jackson will come around.”
“He’s a jackass,” Suzie said, “but I’m sure he wants to believe you’re with us, not against us.”
And if Tex died? If the plan went terribly wrong and I was left standing there with Tex’s corpse and no hope in Hell to forgive myself? What then?
Would Jackson still see the good in me, or would he put me out of my own misery? Perhaps he’d leave me to Bates.
I shuddered at the thought.
Sam rubbed my back before getting to her feet. “I’m going to refill my water. Can I get you two something while I’m inside?”
I shook my head and didn’t hear what Suzie said. My thoughts were too dark and stormy to think about putting anything in my stomach.
Chapter 25
Jameson
Carrie had her eyes closed as she sat in the passenger seat of the Chevelle and I drove us home. Her window was cracked open a couple inches, letting cool evening air flow through the car. An old country song played on the radio, too quietly to hear the words, and I waited for her to say something or open her eyes.
I’d just finished recounting the details of the plan to her. The guys and I had decided on the bare bones of the plan and come to terms with the fact that we couldn’t pin down every little detail. A lot of it, if not most of it, would be left up to chance. We couldn’t control how Bates would respond, and the ball would be in his court and Carrie and Brody’s.
Me? Well, I’d be temporarily out of commission to put it lightly.
“Say something,” I said when the silence felt too heavy.
Carrie still didn’t open her eyes. “I think I’m going to throw up.”
That wasn’t what I wanted to hear. I sighed. “I know this hasn’t been easy, but we just have to hold it together a little longer.”
Her eyes fluttered open and she clutched at her stomach. “No, seriously. I think I’m going to throw up.”
“Oh, like right now?”
She clawed at the doorhandle as I pulled off to the side of the road and hit the brakes.
“Yes, as in right now,” she grumbled befor
e she gagged. She kept it down until I managed to get the car to a stop. A soon as we were pulled over to the gravel on the side of the road, she swung the door open, lurched outside, staggered three steps away from the car, bent at the waist, and let it out.
I grimaced and got out from behind the wheel. “Shit. I don’t have any water or anything. What can I do?”
She held up a hand but stayed doubled over, breathing. “Don’t come any closer. Just give me a minute.”
I hovered near the back bumper of the car.
Carrie gave me a side-eyed look I couldn’t read and dragged the back of her hand across her mouth. “This plan is batshit.”
“Well… yeah,” I said simply.
“It’s never going to work.”
Were we really going to go through all this again? I didn’t have the heart to tell her to shut up about the whole thing and let me handle this, but I also didn’t want to indulge the wishy-washy bullshit that her actions had led to. We were in this now. There was no turning back. I’d made my peace with that and I was the one with the most on the line.
Why couldn’t she?
“A crazy plan is required to take down a crazy man,” I said. “The club will have my back. Yours too. You can do this. You’ll make the call to Bates tomorrow night. You’ll tell him you killed me in my sleep, and we’ll stage a photo. Easy.”
She scoffed. “Easy, my ass.”
I kept going like she hadn’t said anything. “Bates will come see my body or send someone, or you’ll have to bring me to him. Brody will be there with you every step of the way. You’re not in it alone. Then the most important part of the plan comes into play once Bates has confirmed I’m dead.”
“I know, I know,” she hissed, straightening up. “I have to make sure your body doesn’t leave the apartment.”
“Precisely.”
“I’ll say whatever it takes, but I have to convince him to let me keep your body so I can use it to lure Jackson and the others to the landfill.” She took a step toward the car but paused, looking for a moment like she might be sick again. We both stood silently while she collected her composure and looked up at me from beneath her furrowed brow. “It’s not that I don’t understand the plan, Tex. Because believe me, I get all the moving pieces and mechanics of what I have to do. But I don’t for a second think it’s going to work on the likes of Bates.”
“And why not?”
“Like I said. It’s a batshit plan.”
“To catch a batshit guy.”
“You watch too many movies if you seriously think this is the solution to the Bates problem.”
I moved toward her. Carrie let me put my hands on her shoulders, and I bent down a little to be level with her gaze. “Carrie, I know you feel responsible for all of this, but the weight of that responsibility is no longer on your shoulders. All of us have weighed our options. We could have walked away and made a different choice, but we’re choosing to go ahead with this, and it has nothing to do with you. Do you believe me?”
“No.” Carrie shook her head vehemently. “No, I don’t believe you for a second.”
How could I make her understand?
I put two fingertips to my temple. “Fucking woman. You’re more stubborn than I am.”
“That’s rich.”
“It’s a fact.”
“Look, I have every right to be terrified. If you die, that’s it for you. None of this will be your problem anymore. But me? I’m going to be stuck in it. I have to keep living it. I have to wake up every day after and remember that my actions led to your death.”
I grabbed her again and shook her. “Carrie, for fuck’s sakes, how do you not see how irrational this is?”
“I’m the one being irrational?” she asked almost hysterically as she tried to break free of me.
I held fast. “Yes, you are. Answer me this. If the plan works and everything goes exactly as we want it to and we bring Bates and Caroline down and not one of us is harmed, do you take all the credit?”
She blinked up at me. “What are you talking about? Let me go. I don’t want to play hypothetical games with you right now.”
“Answer the fucking question, Carrie. Would you get all the credit? Would our success be solely because of you and your actions?”
She searched my eyes with hers. They were a darker blue under the night sky, and they reflected the stars. “No.”
“And why not?”
“I don’t know.” She shoved my hands away and stepped back. “Because it would be a team effort?”
“Exactly. Failure would be a team effort, too.”
Her posture stiffened.
“I know you want to believe that everything is on your shoulders,” I said more softly now, “but it just isn’t true. We get to make our own choices, Carrie. Just because we’re running through a door you opened does not mean that whatever happens to us on the other side of it is your doing. If I die, it will because of my own choices, not yours. You’re not responsible for my life. This is a decision I would make a hundred times over if it meant getting a shot at saving my friends—no, my family—from the hellfire Bates will continue to rain down on them if he’s allowed to continue operating in Reno unchecked. It’s just that simple for me. I need you to let this go.”
“What if I can’t?” she whispered.
“Try.”
Chapter 26
Carrie
I hovered around Tex like a lost puppy dog the whole evening after going to Grant’s and for the entirety of the next day. If it bothered him, he didn’t say a word about it. When he got up from the sofa on Wednesday night where we were watching a movie—his rather desperate attempt to distract me from my dark thoughts—I looked up at him and blurted out that he couldn’t leave. He’d smiled almost fondly at me, which seemed strange at the time because there was no way my clingy behavior wasn’t annoying. He’d cupped my cheek and told me he was just going down the hall to the bathroom, which he did.
In his absence, I tried to focus on the movie, but my eyes glazed over, and a different movie scene played over and over again in my mind.
Tex lying on a cold tile floor, bleeding out.
Tex with white skin and blue lips.
Brody screaming at me that we hadn’t done enough.
Jackson falling to his knees when he’d found out what happened.
The others calling me a monster.
When he returned, he went to the pit and lit a cigarette. I joined him out there, standing barefoot on the paving stones, and watched the ember of his cigarette blaze in his eyes.
“Can I have one?” I asked.
“You smoke?”
“I used to when I was in my early twenties and went dancing every weekend.” It had been an easy way to impress drunk boys puffing on primetimes in the back lanes of the city. I came to enjoy them, and for a brief two-year stint before I joined the Ranger Academy, I’d have a cigarette every now and then when I was stressed.
Tex handed me one and lit it for me.
I took a couple puffs, coughed like a dying pirate, and puffed again.
He smirked. “You’re not very good at that.”
“I’m out of practice,” I croaked.
Tex leaned back against the corner of the doorframe with one hand in the pocket of his jeans while he flicked ash and smoked. He repeated the languid movements, all muscle memory, and if I hadn’t been so queasy with fear, I might have jumped his bones right then and there.
No man had ever consumed me the way he did, though consumed felt like a mild word to describe it.
Possessed seem a tad more accurate.
He’d infiltrated every crevice of my being. Every vein, every skin cell, every hair follicle, every eyelash, all of it. He was the last thing I thought of as I drifted off to sleep and the first thing I thought of when I woke up. It never used to be that way for me. I was an independent, self-sufficient woman, and I never pictured myself as someone who would have so much riding on a guy.
But I did.
Maybe I only felt this way because I felt responsible for his life. Maybe if all this ended well, this obsession would become less intense and I’d be able to leave him behind and go home.
Home.
It seemed so far away now. So out of reach.
How would I ever go back there after this?
I flinched as the end of my cigarette scalded the tips of my fingers. The filter fell to the ground and went out. Tex caught my burnt hand and put my two fingertips in his mouth.
I froze like a deer in the headlights. His tongue was warm but not unpleasantly so. He sucked gently before pulling my fingers from his lips and gently blowing on them. My cheeks burned hotter than my fingers did.
“Are you okay?” he asked. “Rookie move, Hart. Rookie move.”
Oh God, I thought as I gazed up at him, my wrist still clasped between his fingers, I think I love you.
“Hart?”
I pulled my wrist free. “I’m okay.”
He chuckled. “Good. Maybe you should steer clear of this shit? Leave it to the professionals.”
I wanted to return his joke and play along. Under other circumstances, I’d have been able to. But not right then. My heart hammered wildly in my chest, as if she had a mind of her own and was trying to tell me how she felt about this man.
Save him.
Save him.
Save him.
But my mind knew the truth of things, and it was simple—this was not my choice anymore. It was his. I’d said my piece. I’d begged him to change his mind. I’d pleaded and cried and screamed at him not to do this, and none of it had worked. There would be no deterring him from his task.
And if there was, would I feel the same way about him that I did? If he wasn’t so selfless, so brave, so damn reckless, would I want him as badly? Selfishly, I wanted to believe that I would.
Tex put out his cigarette and tipped his head inside. “It’s late. We should try to get some rest.”
I knew sleep wouldn’t come, but I went through the motions of getting ready for bed anyway. We stood side by side in his bathroom brushing our teeth. It seemed a terribly mundane thing to do together. I splashed water on my face and he told me he’d meet me in the bedroom.