Page 29

“ M orning, sleepyhead.” Jack’s voice has me blinking my eyes open to see her horizontal before I sit up and stretch.

“How long was I out for?” My bones pop, and it feels nice, so I roll my neck again and pop my fingers.

“A few hours. Docs gave you a sedative after they forced a bunch of that nasty shit down your throat.” She pushes off the doorframe she was leaning by and comes in to sit in the single chair in my room.

I note that it’s not a hospital room, nothing more than an IV bag that’s attached to me. Everything else is clean, white, and sterile. Typical Crazy Eights temp facility for those needing a few hours to recoup.

“Soup, Jack. It was soup. Still don’t understand why you have such an aversion to it.” Doesn’t matter the kind, it’s a complete ick for Jack. Somedays I agree with my counterparts in calling her odd.

“Whatever. It’s gross. They gave you something to rest, but it wasn’t anything much. I was able to get here before you woke, so maybe a handful of hours.” She tosses her hands up in a show of unknown before placing them back on the arms of the chair.

“Right.” I stand and pull the needle out of my arm. I feel fine, so no need to keep at it. Sure, my face hurts like a bitch and my wrist is in a cast, but other than that, I’m five by five.

“Where you going?” She sings it as I grab the black jeans off the end of the bed and slide them on.

“Where do you think? Back to work.” I sit as I pull on my shirt, having to take a second to catch my breath and stop the room from spinning. I refuse to stay in a bed longer than I already have. Memories of Blue trigger when I do, and we don’t need me falling down that rabbit hole anytime soon.

“He left. Candy’s home. Job’s done. What else do you got to do?”

He left? Why?

I rack my brain, forcing it to recall everything before I don’t remember. Getting Candy, discovering Hounds were involved, the boat, getting rescued… fuck. Psy.

I tilt my head up to the ceiling and close my eyes out of frustration and to keep me from screaming. Or punching something. Or doing just about anything that’ll get me the same result as I’m doing now, letting the anger fester and sizzle. Nothing can be done with the past—learned that the hard way. I’ve got to move on from here, no matter what that entails.

I stand and grab the phone off the side table. Unlocking the screen, I see it has everything that my other one had, just without the picture of a kitty tossing a ball of yarn in the air that Jack put on it. Whatever, they’re all company issued. When one’s destroyed, another’s provided. Same things as the last one—same tracker in it too.

I don’t mind being tracked. I like it, actually. Means I always have someone at my back. That I’m never alone, even if I feel like it. It’s a small safety net that every member of the Crazy Eights clings to but will deny to their last dying breath.

“Charles wants you prepped for surgery.”

I pause my scrolling through the phone to look up at her.

“When?”

She shrugs. “As soon as possible. We pushed it back to get that warm shit down your throat to get rid of the hypo, but now you’re meant to fast and prep. Still don’t get why you need an empty stomach for face surgery. I get it when it’s in the stomach, but fixing a busted cheekbone? Doesn’t make sense.”

I roll my eyes. She gets it. She just likes to act like she doesn’t. I might be Billy the Kid for my smarts, but she’s the epitome of Jack of All Trades. She’s smarter than she gives herself credit for and picks up most things within an hour of learning it. She’s probably a certified genius, too, if she’d ever be willing to sit still for a few hours to get tested. That’s her problem—ADHD and a refusal to do anything about it.

Looking back at my phone, I go through all my email accounts for the vet job and the C8 gig. I scan my texts and even pull up the website for the vet clinic to check the message boards. Nothing from him. Not a single thing. I get that he’s understandably mad, but I never figured he’d ghost me.

He’s Casper, a fucking ghost. He was named for being invisible, not the friendly part.

“You like him.”

I stop scrolling.

Not sure when it happened. Could have been the first time he threatened me and used that hard note in his voice when he spoke to me. Or maybe it was when he started to be nice to me. I’m sure him being nice to my pups helped him in that department as well. Hell, it could have been knowing that his club was attacked, and the thought of a world without him wasn’t something I wanted to see. Maybe it was when he put himself in danger over sending one of his guys on this mission. Or when he called me pet.

I never was big on the nickname thing, even if it seems like I have a hundred that I use to get what I want from people. It wasn’t that he called me a name but rather what it meant, what it involved with us when I was his pet. Something I appreciated being, as crazy as it sounds. It grounded me in the moment, made me think about when it was just him and me. A part of me that no one else had, he was getting.

Whatever it is, my sister’s right. I like Casper. No, I love him. I fell hard for him, and fell quickly.

Maybe I was starved for love or something. It is what it is. It happened.

But now I have to let it go. I have to move on. I can’t love him. I shouldn’t.

“You can like the guy. Won’t hurt nothing if you do.” Jack was always good at knowing what’s on my mind, usually even before I did.

I nod as I walk past her. “Yeah, but acting on it isn’t in the cards.”

“Why not?”

I stop and look back at her, but she’s still sitting in the chair facing the bed.

“You know why.”

I ignore the yuck noise she throws out.

“Never figured you for the giving-up kind.”

“Fuck you.” It’s not even heated, more flabbergasted than anything that she would throw that at me. Giving up isn’t in my bones. Never something I’ve done. I work hard. When told no, I push and push again.

Then why aren’t you pushing now?

“Okay.” She tilts her head back to look at me. “But what are you going to do after that?”

And just like that, I know what I want. What I really want. And from the smile on her face, she knows it too.

“He’s at the local chapter clubhouse, or what’s left of it. Some of his boys showed up, then went and cleared it out. He’s still there, though, at least till his flight leaves. But I can have the ground crew hold it if you need it.”

“Love you, Penny.” I use her real name, just when it’s us and no one else around. We’re still Penny and Krista, just with better clothes and a place to sleep that isn’t a cardboard box.

“Of course you do. It’s the law.” I snort as she stands. “Plus, you’re stuck with me anyway, so you might as well enjoy it.”

“True.” And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

“We found a fuck ton of animals under that building, by the way. Think they were going to be sold or something. Not sure if it was part of the Candy sale or something else. I got the boss to agree to send them to reservations or put them back in the wild—you know, the reptile ones.” She winks at me, knowing my love-hate for all things snakelike.

We walk out of the room together. I go left; she goes right. Then she looks over her shoulder, shouting, “We’re keeping the dogs,” as she goes.

Typical.

“Club’s closed. We sent all the vamps home.”

I push past the redhead as I walk through the door. “Not a vamp.”

“What do you want?”

The club is dark, everything closed up for business, but I see the lone figure at the bar. I know that voice.

“Bane is going to make it.” It’s the excuse I gave to come out here. Not that I don’t think everyone knows why I’m really here.

He grunts into his glass, which I can see now that I’m closer as he takes another swig. There’s a bottle of whiskey beside him at the bar. Looking around, I see three others, not including the door guy, sitting about. Nothing more than that.

I guess Penny was right. They shut this place down. I would have, too, after finding out Cast Off and who knows who else were involved in something the Hounds have been very vocal about not having a hand in.

“My team found him and got him out before the building crumbled. He was shot in the stomach and lost some blood, but nothing vital,” I keep going, hoping something will make him turn and look at me. I feel sick to my stomach that he hasn’t yet.

“Too bad.” He finishes his drink.

“He wasn’t in on it. Sure, he fucked up because his focus was elsewhere, but he didn’t know they were selling people till he brought up the buyers. He was told to go get a few guests by someone else, and till he saw Cast Off, he was in the dark like you.”

“Doesn’t excuse shit.” Popping the top, he pours another drink.

“I didn’t know.” I whisper it, but it’s enough to still his hand.

“Bullshit.”

“You have to believe me.” I take a step toward him, then a step back as he throws the bottle at the back wall. The once-sitting men around us all stand, and he finally turns to look at me.

“Why? Why should I? Almost everything from the start was a lie. A ruse to get what you wanted, all at the expense of me and my club. Well, congrats. Great work. Hope the promotion is all you hoped for.”

My eyes go wide at his words.

“Yeah, heard about that. All this was some kind of test to get you up in the system? Play club against club?”

“You’re pissed about Psy.”

“Damn right I am.” He gets close to me, taking the last few steps to be in my bubble, and I can smell his intoxicating scent. Even mad, he smells and looks amazing. I’m sure I look like shit with half my face wrapped up and my arm in a cast from the broken wrist and thumb.

“How could you work with him?” he seethes. “After what he and his guys did to my club, how?”

I shake my head. “Psy was never part of what happened to the club. Trust me, we looked into it thoroughly. It was always Duke and his boys.”

“Trust you? What a laugh. You got what you wanted. You got Candy, and now you can go back to what you do best—being invisible,” he sneers, and I swallow the lump in my throat as he walks away.

“I got him for you.” Turning, I see that he’s stopped. “I… it was for you. Your team said Duke was dead, but something was off. Ruby gave me the intel, but I couldn’t let it go. I dug in deep, and then I reached out. I wanted the answers for you. Don’t you see that? It was for you—always for you.”

“And yet I don’t give a fuck.”

He walks away again, and I swear my heart is going with him.

“Stop. Please. Ford!” It’s my last-ditch effort. Anything for him to see me beyond just a liar. To remember what we had. That I was his, and he was mine.

He stills but doesn’t look back. “Don’t. Don’t you ever call me that. I’m the goddamn president of the biggest biker club in the world. My reach is far and wide. I don’t need some liar claiming to be something more than she is.”

“And what am I?”

“The past. And a lousy memory at that.”

The door shuts on his words, sealing the finality of it all.

And of us.