by Ivy Black
“I… no.” Everything that had happened was a result of the fact that I lied to Tess and Nick, a lie that was necessary because of the money I stole—the money I stole so that I could take care of Caid. “Well, maybe a little.”
He growled on the other end. “Listen. There’s no more of that happening. I’m getting better by the day, so when I get back to the states, I’m helping you fix it. You were always crazy about Tess. You should be with her and be happy.”
I remembered how quick Tess was to work Caid into her plans for our future. They barely even knew each other, and they were considering one another. If only I could have it all. “It’s not really that easy anymore. Things got really complicated, and I bought a ticket to Munich earlier today.”
“Seriously? You’re coming here? Are you sure?”
“Yeah. We don’t have to stay in Munich, but it’s like you said, things are bad here. We’ll be safer on your side of the pond.”
“So, bring Tess with you,” Caid said. “Munich’s housing rules are really lax, and I’m sure we’d be able to get a place that we’d all be comfortable in. I’ll give you two lots of private time, I promise.”
For as sad as I was, a smile rose to my face. “I miss you.”
“Gross. Don’t be sentimental.”
“Brat.”
“Look, whatever you did wrong, just apologize. Lay out all your feelings one last time and let her make the final call. If she rejects you again, then yeah, just come to Munich, and we’ll drown your sorrows in some good old-fashioned German beer.
“After the week I’ve had, that sounds good.”
“Fine, but only if you make a valid attempt first.”
I set the picture down and put my phone on speaker so that I could still hear as I navigated to my email to look at the confirmation for the tickets to Munich I’d purchased—one each for Tess and myself, and a companion ticket for Lockjaw. After leaving Hoppa’s, making a run for it felt like the best option, so I purchased the tickets right away. My plan was to come clean to Tess and ask her to come with me that night, but she beat me to the punch.
“I’ll try,” I said. “I don’t think she’s gonna go for it.”
“For once, fight for yourself. You don’t have to fight for me anymore,” Caid replied.
A grin crossed my face. “Yeah. Thanks.”
“No problem. This is my new cell number, so call me when you land.”
“I will.” I gently tucked the picture back into my bag, excited for an opportunity soon to take a newer one. “Bye.”
“Bye.”
The line went dead, and I just sat looking at the Munich tickets on the screen. Tess’ name on her ticket was enough to make my stomach burn. I’d gotten so excited, imagining starting a life with her. My mind was already traveling to things I’d never considered before—marriage, kids, a real and true life, and sharing myself with someone else in a way that I never had before.
Caid had been sick for our entire lives, so I never once thought that I’d have the opportunity to have something that wasn’t taking care of him. Then, even when I did start to dream of it, it was always just that, dreaming. I knew my lot in life, and Tess always felt like a just-for-now luxury. She felt like something I could have for just a little while until I had to hang up any chance of happiness forever. Whether my life was ending with me running off to Munich to spend the rest of my days caring for Caid or dying with Luther’s gun down my throat, I refused to let myself think that it could be anything other than just what I had to do to get by.
Somewhere along the way, I forgot my cynicism. It was almost as if I’d taken on some of Tess’ impulsive, fiery nature and decided that I would just let the cards fall where they may. I lost myself, but at the same time, I found myself. The happiness I’d long since written off was, all of a sudden, in the palm of my hand. Days spent with Tess, evenings drinking at the Taphouse, early mornings working on my bike with Lockjaw curled up nearby—it was real, and it was happy, and it was mine.
I didn’t want to give that up.
Quickly, I slid my phone into my pocket and grabbed my bike and room keys. A cabinet in the chipping wooden entertainment center was a perfect place to stash my bag, so I opened the cabinet and shoved my bag in, then left the room, locking the door behind me.
Forgetting the advice that I’d given, I took the right staircase down and nearly killed myself as I hopped over the broken slabs of stairs, but I was too anxious to care. My bike sent birds and other critters scattering as I started it up and sped out onto the street and back onto the highway toward Hoppa.
Caid was right.
I would lay everything out in front of Tess, the truth, and pray that she would see the truth in my words and give me one last chance to seize the happiness I suddenly wanted so badly.
Chapter Twenty
Tess
My fingers skated back and forth across Lockjaw’s fur in a rhythmic pattern. He was lying on the bathroom floor next to the bathroom, which was barely illuminated by the lights of the candles I’d lit and scattered around before running a piping-hot bubble bath and climbing in. My head was pounding, a feeling that was only paralleled by the continuous cracking in my heart. Every time it panged in my chest, I rubbed the spot as though it were merely an itch I could scratch away.
Colin had only been with me for about a month’s time, but my place already reminded me of him. I never wanted to be one of those people who had to replace everything they owned and move to an entirely different place after a breakup, but that might be in order. My bathroom smelled of the body wash that he’d purchased not long after he arrived, the body wash that he’s used every day, twice a day. A couple of men’s razors were balanced on the edge of the tub and sink, and there was a black towel hanging next to my purple one on the rack against the wall.
All of his clothes were still in the guest bedroom, and the spare pair of boots he’d worn was still askew by the front door. When he left, I tried sitting on the couch, but having sat there almost exclusively with Colin at my side for the past month sent a flurry of painful twists through my stomach.
Even my bed smelled like him, so when I face planted on it to cry my eyes out after I tried and failed to do so on the couch, the pain just got worse. Even Lockjaw seemed to have the wind knocked from his sails, and eventually, the only thing I could think to do was pour myself the largest glass of wine, climb into a bath so hot that it was all I could think about, and pet my poor dog until he went to sleep and could stop worrying about never seeing his first master again.
Again.
It turns out, Lockjaw and I had even more in common than I realized. We both had bad tempers, we were both meat-eaters, and we’d both had to say goodbye to Colin more times than we wanted to. Just like Colin’s mom had taken him from me when he was a kid, I took Lockjaw from Colin in the same way. At least we could bond over this heartache, or so I hoped, anyway.
With the bathwater getting tepid, there was no reason to stay in it, so I used my foot to kick out the stopper, and the hiss of the draining water stirred Lockjaw. I climbed out of the tub and reached out for my purple towel, and at the last second, I grabbed Colin’s. I wrapped it around myself and took a deep breath, letting his comforting smell wrap around me. Was it stupid? Yes, but I did it anyway.
Tucking the towel around me and putting my hair up in a bun on top of my head, I motioned Lockjaw out of the bathroom, and he padded out with me right behind him. Food was probably a good idea, though all I felt like doing in the wake of Colin’s revelation was to just go to bed and try to forget that any of it ever happened. My plan was to call it a summer fling and pretend that I didn’t let a huge blind spot land me madly, head over heels in love with a man whose real story I didn’t even know. I would probably never find someone who made me feel the way he did. I could only survive knowing that I had to go back to my fear-ridden life where Taylor controlled my every action if I lied to myself and said that Colin was nothing more than a way to pass the
time.
A great way to pass the time.
I turned to the left out of the bathroom and made my way down the hall toward my bedroom. Lockjaw’s claws clacked against the wood floors as we moved, and I was just about to climb into bed when I heard a knock at the door.
“Well, now, who do we think that could be, boy?” I said aloud to Lockjaw.
My go-to gun was with the rest of my stuff on the kitchen counter, so I grabbed my back up from the top drawer of my nightstand and crept my way down the hallway toward the door. The second I lifted my gun to hold it out as I reached for the door handle, Lockjaw started letting out a low, warning growl for whatever poor soul was on the other side.
“Who is it?” I called out.
“Tess.”
My heart dropped into my stomach as Colin’s voice broke across the threshold. Lockjaw stopped growling in an instant and started to whine as he scratched against the frame of the door. With my gun still pointed, I grabbed the door handle and twisted it, slowly pulling it aside and filling my vision with Colin once again.
His eyes immediately danced down and up again, and I tried to ignore the way my body immediately ran hot. “You’re wearing my towel,” he said.
“What do you want?” I growled.
“You deserve the truth. All of it,” Colin responded. “Caid told me to just come here and lay out all my feelings and let you decide. So that’s what I’m doing.”
I scoffed. “Oh, you spoke with Caid? So, he was also part of the lie?”
“No,” Colin responded. “Caid called. I just got off the phone with him. It was the first time I’ve talked to him in two months. I can show you the Munich phone number.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Show me.”
Colin dipped his hand into his pocket and pulled out his cell phone. With a few quick clicks, he was to his phone log, and he turned the phone to face me so I could see it properly. The last number was in a format that was a little bizarre and had an international calling code in front of it.
I stood to the side so he could come in. “I’m keeping my gun pulled.”
“I understand.” Colin passed me as he entered the house, and Lockjaw bounded happily next to him. Colin walked over and sat on his spot on the couch and motioned to mine. He still had a pull on me that was hard to deny, and I found myself drifting over to sit, even if it was ill-advised. “Thanks for hearing me out.”
“You’ve got about ten minutes,” I spat back.
“Understood. I swear, after this, you’ll never see me again.”
Even with my gun outstretched in Colin’s direction, hearing those words broke my heart all over again. I was so angry with him, but still, so much of me couldn’t make peace with never seeing him again. “Fine.”
“First of all, and I swear this is not meant to be an excuse, not everything I told you was a lie,” Colin began.
“How nice,” I replied flatly.
“My drunk, high mother dragged Caid and me out to Rumble, chasing one of her suppliers promises to make her rich. To this day, I have no idea what she believed he was going to do for her, but he really just wanted her in Rumble because it was his turf and he could dope her up double that way. Any money that came into our household was wasted on drugs, and with as sick as Caid was, that was a problem. I had no choice. I wandered into the Unchained Dogs’ club and asked for a job. I dropped out of high school and started running with them. I was just an errand boy, at first, responsible for shit like securing and raising the new mascot pit bull puppy.”
I looked over at Lockjaw, who was staring at Colin with his tail wagging back and forth. “I took him from you.”
“And I got the shit beat out of me for it, too, because he was fucking expensive.”
“You want an apology?” I hissed.
Colin shook his head. “No. You don’t owe me anything. He probably had a much better home here than he would have had with Luther’s crazy ass.” He sighed. “Anyway, they started to pay me, and Luther kept offering me more if I would do more shit. Eventually, I ended up working for him as an assassin. If I got caught trying to take someone out, I got hell for it, so I was careful. In and out, quietly. As little damage as possible, and as quick and painless as possible.”
“Just like those prospects.”
Colin actually chuckled. “Yeah. They were easy pickings.”
I furrowed my brow. It’d be much easier to be angry at him if he weren’t so good looking. “Did you really steal money from a bank?”
Colin stuck out a finger. “I never told you I stole it from a bank.”
“Yes, you did.”
“No. I said I took it from a place where they keep a lot of money.”
Though he was right, his reliance on semantics made me angry. How many other carefully phrased sentences had he thrown me in the past month? “You must want me to blow a hole in your head.”
“I’m sorry.” Colin shook his head. “No, I stole it from Luther. They don’t have anyone like Bullet, and I realized that they were keeping their books really loose. Caid and I heard about this experimental treatment that could potentially cure his condition, but not only did it require him to fly to Germany, the treatment alone cost forty-five thousand dollars. I stole fifty.”
“That’s insane.”
“I didn’t have a choice! Caid was getting worse. He was gonna die, Tess.”
The sincerity in Colin’s eyes was similar to what I’d seen before. When he first told me he loved me, his eyes were the same. “So, they were the ones chasing you when you crashed.”
“No,” Colin grumbled. “I didn’t crash. They set my house on fire. With me in it.”
“Jesus.”
“I really didn’t think that he would figure it out so fast, but Luther’s smarter than I thought. My plan was to get Caid situated, earn a few more pay checks, and then leave for Germany. Even when I came here, that was always the plan.”
“So, you always planned to leave me?” I asked, my stomach knotting at the phrase.
“Tess.” The seriousness in Colin’s voice brought my gaze up to his. “When I first came to Hoppa, I thought, ‘Yeah, I’ll get some help and be gone in a week.’” His hand drifted past my gun to settle on my face. “That was all it took for you to fuck everything up.”
“Me?”
“Yeah. Being back with you again, it was like everything that I didn’t know I was dreaming of. I talked to your dad, and he…” his voice trailed off.
Finally, I set my gun down on the coffee table. “What, Colin?” He shook his head, and I stabbed a finger into his face. “Hey! You told me you were going to tell me the whole truth.”
He looked into my eyes. “I did, but I don’t want you to get hurt.”
The scoff that left my mouth was so loud that it made Lockjaw jump. “I think it’s a little late for that.”
“Yeah,” he replied. “I spoke with your dad. He told me he wanted to turn the club over to you but that the guys would never go for it. He was hoping that he could one day hand it to me, and then you and I could lead it together.”
Any wind left in my sails was knocked clean out of me with that gut punch. “He wasn’t even gonna try?”
“It broke his heart, but…” Colin shook his head.
“Wow. Turns out all the men in my life are complete bullshit.” I swatted Colin’s hand away from my face as I stood up and walked away from the couch a few feet. “So, what? You were gonna do that?”
“I honestly didn’t know what I was gonna do, but then your dad pulled that stunt today, and I knew I couldn’t stay here. As soon as I got home, I bought a ticket to Munich.”
“What? Were you just gonna ghost? Truly live up to the name Phantom?”
“I should have been more specific.” Colin lifted his phone up again, clicked through it, and then held it out toward me. With a few careful steps forward, I grabbed his phone and stepped backward. Looking down at the screen, I could see a confirmation that there was a ticket under Colin’
s name to Munich, but there were two others with it. There was a ticket for me and one for Lockjaw. “I wanted you to come with me.”
Colin stood up and walked across the room to me. He brought his hands up to cup my face, and as much as I wanted to push him away, I couldn’t. When it came to Colin, I was powerless.
“I’m not asking you to forgive me, but I needed you to know how much I love you. How much all of my plans got screwed up the second I laid eyes on you again. I don’t want to go back to a life without you in it, but if you say that’s what you want me to do, I’ll do it. I don’t want to hurt you any more than I already have.”
Thoughts raced through my mind at a mile a minute. Had I reached a ceiling within the club? I was never going to be president, or even get a shot? Colin had wanted, maybe still wanted, to take me with him to Germany. If there was nothing left for me in Hoppa, why wouldn’t I start over with the man of my dreams in Germany? Then again, it seemed like every time I took a chance on someone, they let me down.
What was the right answer?
Colin leaned in and gently set his lips on mine. He didn’t linger. His kiss was barely there, and then he was away from me again. “Thank you for listening. I’ll go.”
He pulled his hands away from me and turned his back to me, and I panicked. The thought that Colin may walk out that door and that I would never see him again broke me. When I was with Colin, I didn’t feel like there was nothing left for me.
A future in Germany? One where I could start over and grow? That was what I wanted.
I reached out, grabbed his arm, and pulled him back to me. In a swift motion, he wrapped his arms around me and lifted me off the ground. Our lips smashed together, and my hands clawed helplessly at him, trying to find something to take away the feeling of free-falling that he gave me. He lowered me onto the bed, quickly discarding the towel that was the only thing keeping me hidden from his hands, and I made quick work of removing his shirt and unbuttoning his pants, which he pulled down with his boxers and kicked aside.