Page 14 of Knox (The Devil’s Luck MC #6)

CAROLINE

T omorrow morning ?! I needed to leave right now.

I had already wasted enough time being a battered mess with a Devil. Wearing his musty clothes, eating off-brand cereal without milk, sitting in a camping chair waiting for a spider to crawl up my butt crack…

No. Unacceptable.

I leaned forward and stretched out my arm. “Give me your phone. I can find a different service.”

Knox laced his fingers together at the back of his head, perfectly at ease.

His phone was balanced on his thigh as if daring me to lunge for it.

“We got time to kill.” He glanced up when the rain started to come down harder.

Of course it had to. “Good timing, rain.” Then he looked at me and bared those near-perfect teeth in an infuriating devil-may-care grin. “Wanna make out again?”

I was going to murder him. Right here and now with his own knife—the stupidly pretty, stolen Damascus steel knife, whatever that was supposed to be. Kill him, take his keys, take his bike or his ugly old Ford, and drive like hell into the unknown. Goodbye Reno. Goodbye Dad. Goodbye Wolverines.

Fuck you, Knox, you abrasive, annoying, pig-headed bastard.

I made my move, but Knox was quicker. In a blink, his phone was in his back pocket. “Relax, spitfire, I kid. And no, you’re not stealing my phone. Don’t expect me to give up any credit card information, either.”

I pondered the possibility of whether I could climb onto his shoulders, wrap my legs around his neck real tight, and squeeze with my thighs until he suffocated. How hard could that be?

“You’re a good kisser,” he said. I glared, and he held up his hands in surrender. “I’m not saying that as a joke. You are.”

“I was drunk,” I snapped.

“Then imagine how good you’ll be sober.”

My heart started pounding in my chest. He was playing a dangerous fucking game.

He was toying with my emotions like a cat with yarn.

And he was making it way too easy to look past his good looks, only to see his egotistic charm.

“Do you even know how to carry on a conversation without obnoxious banter?”

Knox cocked his head to the side in mock thought. “I can try. What do you want to talk about?”

“I want to talk about,” I began in a forced measured tone, hoping fruitlessly that he’d take me seriously, “how I’m getting out of this fucking hellhole.”

Knox’s grin dropped. Seriousness radiated off him like a heat wave. “Define this .”

It sounded like he was offended that I meant this makeshift campsite.

“No, not this,” I said with exasperation.

“This… This…” I clenched my teeth in frustration.

It was too hard to explain. It would be too convoluted to tell him my sob story about my father’s multifaceted decline.

So I just gestured vaguely. “Just this part of my life. That’s why I can’t wait until tomorrow.

I have to get out now before my father finds me.

Who knows what’s even happened since I got out?

You’re right. He could have eyes everywhere.

Even I don’t know the full scope of his power.

His influence. I would be surprised if you didn’t know he controls the police… ”

The more I rambled, the less I felt like myself. The more I started to panic, knowing how deep in shit I was. My father could have pulled strings to have an APB put out on me. He could paint me as a runaway. The thought made me think I was just some unruly teenager who stormed out.

I thought of him introducing Vane. The way he looked at me like I was just some kind of sin tempting his men. The way he left me alone with Vane.

“ Vane is going to keep an eye on you while I figure out how we move forward. If we can move forward at all .”

It was a threat, plain as day. But if I hadn’t escaped and I just remained bound to that chair, at the mercy of the killer he’d hired… If he had returned after stewing on my betrayal… What would have happened? What would he have done to me?

There was no sense lingering on what ifs. I refused to be bogged down by past events. It only distracted me from goals that would move me forward.

“He’s going to take revenge now,” I told Knox, pulling myself together harshly. “He’s going to pick a target to punish for me getting away in the first place.”

“That prick he locked you up with?” Knox asked, eyes darkening. “So what if he’s collateral damage?”

“That’s not who I mean.”

It took Knox a second to realize who I did mean. Then his jaw clenched. I watched the muscle feather there. “The Devil’s Luck.”

I nodded. “Your president doesn’t know you’re involved with me and my fuckups, but my father might go after your MC regardless, assuming it was club business. He doesn’t know you were there independently.”

Knox reached for his phone, as if he were going to call or text the Devils to warn them. But then he stopped and buried his face in his hands. “Fuck,” he muttered. “I fucked up. I didn’t even… Didn’t even think about…”

The thought struck me: he forsook the Devils’ safety for mine.

It didn’t sit well in my chest. No one was supposed to be selfless for the daughter of Walter Bates.

Knox scrubbed his face, then ran his fingers through his knotted hair. “Well,” he said with a steadying exhale, “looks like we’re both on the run.”

I pressed my lips together. “Looks like.”

We sat in silence for a while. I was too lost in my own thoughts to really register the forest around us, but as the sound of the rain pulled me out of my head, I started to take it in.

There was so much greenery, and it all smelled so fresh and pure.

It was so different from the chaotic sights and smells of Reno.

I hadn’t lived in this city my whole life like Knox or any of the other Devil’s Luck, but I had lived in plenty of others, pulled along wherever Father’s gang work took us.

Almost thirty years’ worth of travels, never staying in one place too long.

Five years here was the longest stretch of time we’d settled.

It had gone smoothly until the Black brothers started to cause trouble.

Until Jackson returned to reclaim his presidency after my father killed his younger brother.

From then on, that was when my father began to decline.

“You’re spiraling, spitfire.”

I started at Knox’s deep, annoyingly soothing voice. “Huh?”

“You’re thinking too much. Start talking it out.”

I gave him a flat look. “What, are you a therapist now?”

Knox flashed a quick smirk, but it was half-hearted. “No, but I’m a good listener when I’m not running my mouth. I am capable of that, by the way. I make good money by running this mouth with a few sticky fingers, but I can lend an ear.”

I never talked about my feelings. I never could and I never wanted to. I kept it bottled up, like every person who came and went in my life. No one ever offered. Even if they did, it was a trap. A ploy.

Knox? There was something about him that made it easy to talk. But I was too conditioned to fall for something that good. Anything good that I encountered usually died pretty fast.

So I deflected. “Can I have a clean ear?”

Knox touched both his lobes as if I pointed out dirt. Little flecks of blood came off, though. He grunted with mixed emotions. “I’d kill for running water.”

“Water jug,” I reminded him, forcing humor into my voice. “You gave me your childhood trauma story. I’m not giving mine until I can talk to a civilized-looking man.”

“I’m plenty civilized looking. Civilized for a Reno MC.”

“Yeah, yeah. Go wash up and smell like must with me.”

Knox stood and winked. “You got it, blondie. Try not to go wandering off.”

“I have no interest in traipsing off into a national park, thank you.”

“Good. I’m also banning access to my keys.”

“I’m too fancy to drive a Ford pickup.”

“Fair. You do look good in my clothes, though.”

With that, Knox went inside the trailer, leaving me to clamp my hands around my neck to hide the heat creeping up it.

Bastard.

I grabbed one of the water bottles on the ground between us and drank half the thing in two chugs. I needed to keep hydrated. It was the only source of energy I would get if I were on the run like some criminal.

I dissociated until Knox returned. When he dragged his chair closer to mine and dropped into it, he was in fresh clothes, and his hair was damp and clean.

Even that was a stark difference from the hell he looked like last night.

He could still use a shave, maybe a haircut, but he was still attractive.

“Clean ear,” he announced. “Ready to listen at whatever pace you’re comfortable with.”

“Um…” Put on the spot, I had no clue where to start or what he was even expecting.

As if Knox read my mind, he urged gently, “Start with your da—Walter.”

Somehow, that was all the encouragement I needed. I started slowly, testing what it felt like to voice dark memories and even darker thoughts. And with every confession, the air between us grew heavier.

“He’s just unhinged,” I said, staring at my shoes as if they were the ones listening.

They were expensive boots ruined by everything I’d dragged them through since the poker den.

“More than ever before. It’s never been this bad.

He’s taken his rage out on me before, but it was never with physical violence.

It’s not just about me anymore, either. The other club members? He…”

My throat tightened again as the memory of Kyle rose to my mind’s eye. I told Knox what happened just days ago, how my father killed one of his own men—a teenager. It occurred to me a second too late that the kid had only been three years younger than Knox when his father was killed.

It wasn’t the same, but somehow it was similar.

The haunted look in Knox’s eyes made my heart clench. I didn’t know what that meant.

“And then he left you bound to a chair with a man who wanted to hurt you.” Knox’s voice was gravelly, his hands fisted tightly at his sides like he was trying not to punch something. “Vane.”

Vane was a monster. Walter Bates was a worse monster.

He always had been, but I had been too devoted to him to see his actions as wrong.

I couldn’t truly trace back to a single moment where he snuffed out my humanity, but it happened, and it left me a doting, cruel daughter eager to please and commit violence without remorse.

He made me a monster, and now I was a monster with a mind of my own, and it was so damn hard to even begin to acknowledge that. Much less come to terms with it.

I was blindly loyal, and in my desperation to love-seek, I aligned myself with him and his plans rather than ever question the destruction they caused.

Following blindly, mindlessly, was easier than facing the truth. Because the truth hurt like a bitch.

It was gnawing away at my insides right that second. And it hurt more than I ever imagined it would.

The earth felt like it was moving under my feet. I gripped the armrests as I fought the rising emotion in my chest.

Knox seemed to sense it because his intensity suddenly softened and his brows creased together. “Are you okay?”

“No.”

The word came out in an ugly, strangled sob. I slapped my hand over my mouth and squeezed my eyes shut. “No.” My throat closed. “No, I’m not. No, I’m?—”

“I’m sorry, Caroline.”

Through a film of tears, I jerked my head up to stare at him. That was the first time he said my name without a hint of sarcasm. He spoke it like it meant something.

“But your father,” Knox said, quieter. “He has to be six feet under. For all our sakes.”

Fear burst out of me in anger. “Don’t think I don’t know that! I?—”

My voice cracked again, and then I just lost it .

I sank out of the chair onto the damp dirt floor and sobbed.

I heard and saw Knox stand and hover over me in my peripheral vision, but I couldn’t do anything but keep breaking open, even though I did register he was standing there only because he didn’t know how to deal with a crying woman.

Most men didn’t. I wouldn’t blame him if he just went into the trailer and blocked the ugly crying out with a slammed-shut door.

But then he took a knee, scooped me up into his arms, and carried me inside the trailer.

He set me on the bed like I was made of glass.

I curled up on myself immediately. But when he lay beside me, it felt like instinct to curve into him.

When his arms wrapped around me and pulled me close, I finally allowed myself to come apart fully.