by Sara Cate
The tattoo goes pretty quickly, and I add a little creative design underneath, just because I don’t want to be done. I won’t say it, but I could keep going if he let me. As I wipe away the ink, I tease him. “I hope I spelled Colin right.”
He laughs and looks down. His smile tenses when he sees the finished design. Written in the least girly script I could manage is the name Lucy with a small blue flower under her name.
I bite my lip waiting for his reaction. “You like it?”
Finally, he blinks and clears his throat. Did I just make Ian Murphy emotional?
“I love it.”
I offer to help Murph close up the shop that night. Logan and Sierra wanted a date night, and with as much as they’ve been covering for Murph, he didn’t hesitate to say yes. Not to mention, the meeting with the attorneys is tomorrow; neither of us wants to be at the house tonight.
While I’m cleaning the countertop, he takes the garbage out back, and something across the street grabs my attention. There’s someone leaning up against a car, and I do a double take. He’s in black, so I almost don’t see him, but it’s in the way he’s watching me that makes me stop.
Hugo.
My breath hitches as he waves.
He jerks his head, motioning for me to come outside. I’m frozen until I hear Murph slam the back door. I can’t let him see Hugo. If he starts something with him...it could end very badly.
Without a word, I disappear out the front door and walk across the street. He gives me a cruel smile. My hands are shaking, and somehow I can’t believe he’s here while also surprised it took him this long.
I swallow, holding my arms tight across my body as I stop in front of him. I don’t speak. I have nothing to say to him, and I really want to see how he’s going to react. Will he kill me right here? Or does he want me back in his life to torture me for another two years?
“Hello, angel,” he whispers, and his voice turns my blood to ice.
“What are you doing here?”
“I looked for you for so long, and I finally found you. I thought you were dead, but you’ve come back to me.” He reaches forward and touches my hair, curling it behind my ear. I want to pull away, but I’m too afraid of provoking him.
With Hugo, it’s all about manipulation. He loves turning things around, painting himself as a victim, making me believe that everything was a mistake, and that he isn’t a monster.
“You need to leave,” I mutter through chattering teeth.
Turning around, I glance into the shop and see it’s still empty. I pray Murph is busy in his office, closing out the accounts for the day.
“I wanted you to come with me. I wanted to take you home, Savannah.”
A sob is stuck in my throat. I can’t go back. I won’t.
He strokes my hair. I want to vomit, and the urge to scream is overwhelming. But what would happen if Murph came out here? Hugo definitely has a gun, and Murph doesn’t. It would only take one shot—
Bile rises in my throat. I need to get him out of here. Now.
“I’ll go with you,” I say, shivering.
“Baby, it makes my heart sing to hear you say that.” He runs a hand along my arm, and it makes me jump. I imagine myself cracking his fingers in my bare hands, pulling them so far back they snap. But I don’t. “You know how happy I am to see you. I saw you at that party. I heard what that man said to you, and I want you to know I’m not mad. I’m not mad you let someone else touch what’s mine.”
Tears prick behind my eyes and my throat begins to sting. It dawns on me that I was never out of Hugo’s clutches, not really. He still has me exactly where he wants me.
“Know why I’m not mad, baby? Because I was talking with the people at that party, and I heard what you’ve done. Working for that rich lady. They think she left you something in her will. Baby, this would be great for our new start.” He presses his face against mine, and I can’t stop shivering.
“But—”
“I spoke with the old lady...uh, Ruby. Then, I shared some cake with that sweet little girl, Lucy. And I shook hands with her dad. Savannah, you’ve been such a good girl.”
Tears pool in my eyes, but I don’t move. I know this part very well. This is Hugo making his threat known. Putting it on me. He’s naming the people he knows mean a lot to me. He’s making it very clear that he holds the cards in this game, and if I don’t cooperate…and someone gets hurt, it will be my fault.
“Let me get my things,” I whisper.
“You can’t go before they read the will, Savannah.” His tone is harsh now. He’s scolding me, but his hands are still caressing my back, running his fingers through my hair, and I know he wants more, but I can’t move. What would I do if he tried to kiss me here? How would I stop him?
Easy. I wouldn’t. I can’t risk stirring up his temper.
“I’ll pick you up at the house tomorrow.” He leans in and runs his tongue along my cheek, and I can’t hold back the squeak as my body tenses. “Just after they read the will. Then, you and I will be together again with the fresh start we both need. I’m going to miss you, baby,” he whispers against my face.
I don’t move. His words don’t register. He’s letting me go. I can go back inside.
“Go inside, Savannah,” he barks at me. “And keep that pretty mouth of yours shut.”
He smacks my ass, and I flinch before turning and running inside.
I have to bite my cheek to keep from crying, and my throat aches, but as soon as I get in the shop, I lock the door behind me. Just as expected, Murph is sitting in his office, shutting down his laptop and filing away today’s receipts.
“Ready?” he asks as he looks up at me.
“Yeah,” I breathe.
He pauses for a moment as he stares at me, and I wonder if my face is still red from the tears I held back. I force a smile on my face, but I can tell he’s not buying it.
I can brush it off as last night jitters. Things are about to change no matter what, and we made a deal. Once the will is read, we return to our normal lives.
As we pull out on his bike, I notice Hugo’s car still sitting there, parked in front of the shop. Murph pauses when he sees it, and I lean forward to see his expression. He has a tight-brow scowl on his face, but I just brush his arms with my hands and whisper, “Let’s go home.”
After a moment, he listens and turns in the opposite direction.
I just need to keep it together for one more night.
That fucking car again. Is he following me? Following Savannah?
The house is quiet when we get back. It’s well past midnight, and Savannah is pulling me to bed directly from the garage. I have a very bad feeling in my gut and seeing that car didn’t help it. But just as I start to ask her about it...she’s unbuckling my belt.
It’s our last night.
The last night before everything changes. Like she said, I’ll move back into my house. She’ll start her new life, look for a new job, maybe even leave Wickett.
But I want her to stay. I want her to stay so bad, but something stops me from speaking up.
It’s suspicion, and I hate myself for thinking it. This whole time I’ve been saying I couldn’t trust her, but now that I want to...it seems even harder to do.
She slips off her panties in the dark and curls up to my body. I kiss a trail down her neck to her breasts and try to hush all of the thoughts screaming in my head. When I push inside her, I hold her tight, hoping in some way it will tell her how much I want her to stay.
Stay on Wickett. Stay at the house. Hell, stay at my house. I don’t care. Tomorrow could reveal a lot, and I admit I don’t expect much out of the meeting. I expect to inherit ownership of Wicked Ink, maybe a few stocks, but that’s it. It’s all I need to carry on with my life as normal.
But Savannah...she could get a lot. Or nothing.
“Harder,” she whispers against my neck. My head’s a fucking mess. I should be right here in this moment, but I’m a hundred miles awa
y.
I take her mouth and kiss her as I squeeze her entire body against mine. It’s not harder, but I’m deeper, as deep as I can be because it’s the only place I want to be.
She whimpers, but it sounds too much like a sob. Pulling away, I glance down at her to see a tear trail down to her hairline.
I stop moving.
I take her face in my hands and gaze into her eyes, searching every feature of her face for a sign of what she’s feeling. Then, the words just fall out of my mouth.
“I want you to stay.”
Her chest stops moving as she gasps. “What?”
“Whatever happens tomorrow. Just stay here, and we can work it out.”
She’s staring at me, her lips parted and her eyes wide. I’ve taken her by surprise.
Fuck, I’m still inside her.
Then, her face contorts in pain as she falls back onto the pillow, looking off into the distance. “I can’t stay, Murph.”
“What?”
Climbing off of her, I can’t believe what I’m hearing. It literally pains me to leave her body, like it’s the last time. “Why can’t you stay? Ruby will rent the room to you. You know she’s getting the house. Or you can stay at my place. I don’t care.” I’m rambling.
“Murph, I can’t stay. It’s complicated.”
“It’s complicated?”
She sits up and covers her naked body with the sheets. Her face is wet with tears.
I’m somewhere between shocked and enraged. No, desperate and scared. “You wanted me to open up. I told you what I want, and this is what you say? What the fuck changed?”
“Nothing. I just can’t do this with you, okay? I can’t be in this relationship. You open up today, but what about tomorrow.”
“Look me in the fucking eyes, Savannah.”
She shakes her head, biting her lip. “I told you. It was just about the sex. It’s over now, Murph. Just let it go.”
Her voice is strangled, like she’s about to start bawling. She jumps off the bed, grabbing her clothes off the floor and rushing toward the door.
“Wait,” I call, grabbing her arm and pulling her back to my body. She’s staring up at me, her lip trembling, waiting to hear me say something.
Say something, asshole.
But I don’t. The words get stuck. Those three little words that seem harmless enough, but I know that if I say them out loud and she leaves, I’ll never recover. Never.
Finally, she pulls away and leaves me, standing naked in my silent room.
My body is numb. I could be dead with how slow I’m moving.
The rest of last night was spent soaking my pillow, wanting to crawl back into his bed. I could almost hear him telling me he loved me. If he had said it, I would have promised to stay. I would find a way.
But he didn’t.
Which is a good thing. If I stay here, then I’m bringing the trouble to him, to this house, to this family. And I can’t. I know what Hugo is capable of. I’ve seen what he does when he doesn’t get what he wants.
Still, pushing Murph away murdered me.
Now I just need to get through this day.
No one is very lively as we all gather in the living room, ready for the lawyer to arrive. There is no sign of Murph as we wait. I can’t stop fidgeting, and I refuse to sit, so I pace.
I only have a few short hours left in this house, and it hurts to look around. This home has started to feel like my own, which is a stupid and unfair thought to have. It was never mine. Hazel wanted it that way, but she didn’t get what she wanted. She tried to bring two brothers together but somehow drove them apart instead. She thought she could push me into Murph’s arms, but she had no idea just how much of a disaster that would turn out to be.
I considered telling him, warning him ahead of time about the shop, but I decided not to. If I tell him now, it will only drag the whole thing out. If he doesn’t know, then he’ll hate me when he hears it. He’ll blame me and it will be that much easier to leave.
When he finally walks into the room, his eyes lift to find mine, and he looks as sleepless and miserable as I do. Staring at him, I see the last month—everything from the first day at the tattoo shop to the night I told him everything. And all the words I’ve been wanting to say are just resting on my lips, waiting to be spoken, knowing that as soon as this will business is done, Hugo will be waiting for me.
I can barely breathe through the pressure in my chest. Everything becomes numb as I wipe the tears from my face and bite my lip.
The room is dead silent as we all gather around the table. The lawyer looks older than Hazel was, and when he starts talking, it sounds like it’s being said in a different language.
He starts with Ryder. She left him her stocks and bonds for Lucy and several of her properties for him to manage.
We all watch Ruby’s face crumble into pieces as the lawyer tells her that the house is hers, that it always was.
Then, he looks at me and I stop breathing. I watch his lips move without hearing the words, and I know everyone’s eyes are on me, especially Murph’s.
“The business and property deed for 915 Broadway Blvd, Wicked Ink, shall be bequeathed to Ms. Savannah Young as sole owner, manager, and holder of this deed.”
He doesn’t take his eyes off of my face. His business belongs to me. The lawyer hands me a letter, but I’ve already read it.
I wait for the explosion, the fight, the confusion—but there is none. He just stares at me, and I want to reach for him, but I’m too broken to move.
The rest of the room reacts when Murph doesn’t. Ryder’s expression is confusion, and Ruby’s in shock, but they’re all watching me, waiting for me to do something.
And all I do is turn to look at him.
For a few long moments, everything is frozen. No one expected her to leave his business to me, but then again, people see me as nothing more than his one-night stand. Or one-month stand apparently.
Finally, he gets up and walks out of the room, and this time, I don’t follow him.
I miss winter. The hot summer breeze isn’t nearly as refreshing or calming as the colder months on the island. When it gets above 85 out here, rides on the bike just don’t have the same effect. My long ride around Wicked does nothing to calm my nerves.
Maybe I’ll get out of town for a bit. Maybe forever.
This could be a fresh start. What’s keeping me here now? No shop. No family. I have the guys, but Logan is about to move on with Sierra and who knows what’s in the future for them. Marriage, kids? How long will this stupid motorcycle club idea last then? Nobody wants to be hanging around old guys when they have a beautiful girl to go home to.
The thought makes my chest ache again.
Picturing Savannah on my couch, curled up and comfortable does that to me. This vision of her in my home and the idea that it could be ours—nope. Fuck that. After how I’ve treated her this month...why on earth would she stay? I basically just told her in the nicest way I could to fuck off. Get your money and go.
I should have handed her the keys to my house too. Then I’d be the one running out of town, and hey, the open road is just ahead. I could take it. I could just keep riding, but the thought of anywhere else makes me irritable. I’ve been outside of Wickett. It’s a big world. People are assholes. At least here, people already know I’m a miserable dick and stay away.
Now if Savannah knows what’s good for her, she’ll take that property and unload it on those bloodsuckers who were willing to pay twice what it’s worth just to complete their little shopping plaza.
I hope she does. I don’t even care about my shop anymore. The idea of going back to work makes me sick. I wanted to go back to the way things were before but I should know better. There’s no going back now.
I saw this coming. I really did.
And it’s clear she knew. She fucking knew the whole time.
It all makes perfect sense now. She could climb into my bed, keep her feelings at bay, knowing the whole
time my future was her ticket out of town.
This is the kind of shit Hazel does. She tries to mastermind everything without letting anyone in on it. She thinks—thought—she knew best. Why couldn’t she just let me be? I was alone—depressed and grumpy, sure—but I was fine. That’s what I was used to.
But no, she had to go out and find my biological fucking brother. How long did it take her to find him, I wonder. Did she just Google my dad or does she have some expensive private investigators track him down? Other than the pictures of my old man, I have no memory of his face. The few things he did show up for when I was kid were not memorable enough to store away in my brain, and I couldn’t pick the fucker out of a lineup today.
Not that him being in a lineup would be surprising. Asshole is still doing forty-to-life for shooting someone in a bar, drunk off his ass. The only reason I know that is because my biological mother—technical title, not a term of endearment—told me about it in one of her rare parental visits that she actually showed up to.
Ryder knew his face from memory. Curiosity has been gnawing at me since that night, and I’ll admit I want to know what it was like for my dear little brother. If he recognized his face in that picture, does that mean he was around? Did he have an actual family instead of getting put in foster homes here and there, getting kicked out for being disagreeable, prone to violence, with a history of running away?
The breeze kicks up around me too fast when I notice the blue and red lights behind me. Fuck. I didn’t even realize I was going nearly 75 in a 55. When I pull off to the side of the road, I also realize I didn’t bring a goddamn thing with me. No phone. No wallet. I’m fucked.
I kill the motor and hear a familiar voice yelling.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?”
At least something has gone right today. Rafe walks up behind me. He’s got his usual black pants, black T-shirt combo, and I’m so fucking thankful to see him.
“Ruby called me,” he barks as he steps up beside me. “Said you ran off hours ago and no one could reach you.”