Page 2 of Love Me Back (Diamond Creek #2)

Jessie

Running down the hospital hallway, panting hard, I growled as an orderly stepped out of a room and almost crashed into me. I wasn’t a runner. In fact, I hated all forms of exercise. Everyone knew if you saw me running, to look behind me because there was bound to be someone chasing me.

I hated anything that made me sweat. But I loved my best friend. And when she asked me to be there when her son was born, nothing would have stopped me. Even if I had to run to get there on time.

Ryder called as soon as they knew it was time. Only I was driving in the opposite direction. I had to turn around. My fears could wait.

Since moving to Diamond Creek, I had been trying to face my fears. I had a lot of them. Heights were a big one. So, once a month, I would drive up to Scottsbluff and attempt to go up the monument.

I hadn’t made it yet.

In fact, I hadn’t made it past the bottom parking lot because I knew once I was on the road up, there was no turning back. Literally, you couldn’t turn around until you got to the top.

I’d made it to the top once. Ellie had driven me there. She’d distracted me with the shit she was going through with Ryder, and before I knew it, we were in the parking lot at the top.

How she convinced me to get out of the truck I didn’t know. Well, yes, I did. She literally dragged me out. But I couldn’t look out over the side of the mountain. I was too afraid.

It was an unhealthy fear. I knew that. There was no past trauma that my brain clung to. I was just short. And plump .

I was convinced there were studies showing that eight out of ten short people were afraid of heights. We spent the majority of our lives close to the ground. It was only natural that being high above it would be terrifying.

That was the day I met him .

Grayson Powell.

The ridiculously tall cowboy, who wore his faded Levi’s like a second skin. He’d barely talked to me, but it was enough that no one else in town had even come close.

I was smitten.

I would never admit that to anyone. Not even Ellie. I didn’t do men. I mean, I liked men. Men were hot. Well, some men were hot. Danny and Dante were hot. But they had eyes only for each other. God, what I wouldn’t do to be a fly on their bedroom wall.

Ryder was hot. Ellie was a lucky girl. In fact, all the guys in the MC were hot. Well, except Freeway. I shuddered as I thought about him.

I dodged a nurse who yelled at me to stop running. I waved her off. There was no chance I was missing the birth of my nephew. Ellie had better appreciate all I was doing for her because I even avoided the elevator in lieu of the stairs.

I hated stairs more than I hated running.

When I finally made it to the fourth floor, I bypassed the nurses’ desk. I knew right where she was when I saw the group of bikers waiting in the hall.

“Did I miss it?” I asked as I slid to a stop. Blade caught me in his arms and kept me from falling on my ass.

“Nope, but you better hurry,” he said as he held me while I got my bearings.

“I’m telling your wife you wrapped me up in your arms while she was at home waiting for news.”

“His wife is right here, bitch.” Beck smiled, and I laughed.

“Where’s the baby?”

“Home with Avery. Ellie better hurry up; I can’t stay much longer,” she whined.

“I’ll see if I can push her along,” I joked as I pushed through the door to her room.

I stopped just inside the room. My best friend lay in the bed, doubled over, pain etched on her face. I hated seeing her hurt.

“Grow a pair; it can’t be that bad,” I said once the contraction had let go.

“It’s about fucking time. Where the hell have you been?”

“Leave it to you to decide to have a baby when I’m trying to face my fears.” I grabbed her hand and held it tight.

“Did you make it?”

I shook my head. “Didn’t even get to the parking lot because bookboy here called when I was halfway there.”

Ryder groaned at the name Romeo had coined for him. Nicknames were our thing. Dante called me Jessabel. Ellie’s brother called her Bellie. Now that she had found him, he called me Jester.

I didn’t hate it.

Jingles had left home when he was nineteen, and Ellie was eleven. She looked for him for years, and fate brought them back together when Ellie chose Diamond Creek to have a book signing.

My best friend was award-winning international author Rayne Perry. She finally got her own happily ever after when she met Ryder.

I loved Ryder for her. The two of them were relationship goals.

If you wanted a relationship.

Which I didn’t.

That was why I avoided Grayson every chance I got. He had the power to break down my walls, and I couldn’t do it. Not even for him.

It didn’t matter that he made me feel things I’d never felt.

Like safe.

Loved.

Wanted.

My life wasn’t any different from thousands of other women. But it was still mine. At least now it was. And I was never letting anyone else have control over it again.

“So, how long do you think this will take? Can I make it back before dark?”

Ellie laughed as Ryder scowled at me. He still didn’t get my humor.

“You’d better get comfortable. It could be awhile,” Ryder said.

He’d been through this twice before already. He had two little girls from his first marriage. The woman was a cunt, from what Ellie had told me. I didn’t use that word lightly; in fact, I hated it. But sometimes it was warranted.

I wasn’t at the bookstore the day she came in thinking she would worm her way back into Ryder’s life after leaving him and the girls. If I had she wouldn’t have left.

If there was one thing I had learned from my family, it was how to hide a body so it would never be found.

Ellie told me how Tammi, Ryder’s ex-wife, had abused Tabby when she was only a year old and could barely talk. It’d had lasting effects because the little girl had stopped saying the few words she did say.

Only now, Melissa, one of Ryder’s MC brother’s old ladies, had been working with her. She was a child psychologist. Tabby was now talking at home, and occasionally at the store.

It was Avery, Ryder’s nanny, who had made him aware of what was going on, and Tammi disappeared. It was also Avery who had broken Tammi’s nose in the bookstore that day before Shotgun whisked her away just as the sheriff showed up.

I had to say, for a tiny little map-dot town, there was never a dull moment in Diamond Creek. Just a few weeks ago, a man had been shot dead in front of The Bake Shoppe.

That was a shit show.

Of course, the Silver Shadows had been tangled up in it somehow. I hadn’t asked Ellie for the details. I didn’t want to know. Once the rumors got around that Brian Buchanon, head of the IRA, was in town, nope, I was staying away from that shit.

I wasn’t sure if Nav had done a background check on me. Danny knew who my family was, but he never let it get in the way of our friendship. Ellie knew only a little. I tried to shield her from as much as I could.

I wouldn’t let the shit my family did touch her. She was too pure, too innocent.

They knew where I was. They always did. They kept tabs on me everywhere I went. But they kept their distance. That was the deal.

They let me go, and I didn’t talk to the Feds.

I was no stranger to the underworld. My family was one of the top dogs, now that Vasquez had been taken out at Christmas.

My uncle had called and warned me about being here. The Silver Shadows were small-time, though. In fact, this chapter wasn’t a 1% club. King wanted more.

At least that’s what Ryder had said.

My uncle didn’t believe me. He said there were things happening behind the scenes that King didn’t know about. I wanted to warn him, but I couldn’t do it without telling him who I was.

“Hey, you’re thinking awfully hard over there.”

I looked up at Ellie and smiled. “Just wondering how bad the food is gonna be while we wait.”

“Don’t worry, Mom won’t let us starve,” Ryder assured me. “I’m sure she’s already cooking and packing a cooler to bring up here.”

Ryder’s mom was the best. Abigail Thomas was a rare woman. She was nurturing and loving. She would drop everything for someone she loved. But she was tough, too.

She raised Ryder alone until she met his dad. Ryder’s biological father had taken off when Abby was pregnant. He didn’t know who his father was, and Abby hadn’t told him.

I knew, though.

It was another bomb my uncle had dropped when he called.

When he had taken over in Mexico, he dove into the people in town. He wanted to know with whom I was associating. Who might be an ally, and who might be a threat.

It was another reason I stayed away from Grayson. I wouldn’t let my past touch him. I wouldn’t put him at risk like that.

He probably wouldn’t want anything to do with me anyway if he knew who I was. Who my family was. What they did.

A nurse came in and checked Ellie’s vitals. The distraction brought me back to the present and pulled me from the nightmare I was creating in my mind.

“You’re making great progress. How are you feeling?” she asked Ellie.

“I’m hungry. I didn’t eat this morning before we came in.”

“I could get you some broth, but no food unfortunately.”

“Why can’t she have food?” I asked, my voice a little harder than I intended. Ellie squeezed my hand. She was my ground. My foundation. She kept me from falling off the deep end.

I wasn’t sure if it was my Mexican heritage or my family genes, but I had a short temper when it came to someone I loved being mistreated.

“In the unlikely case that we need to put her under anesthesia, there is too great a risk of aspiration. It’s the same reason you can’t have food after midnight when you are scheduled for surgery,” the nurse explained.

“Oh, I guess that’s good then.” I looked at Ellie. “Sorry, babe, you’re out of luck.”

Ryder scoffed, and Ellie shook her head at him. He seemed to take it as an affront to him that I wanted to protect my friend. Like he was the only one who loved her.

Until I met Ellie, I wasn’t sure I was even capable of love. But she taught me what family really meant.

She was my sister.

Danny and Dante were my brothers.

Now I had nieces, and soon I would have a nephew.

It was the only family I needed.

We waited hours for Sebastian Mark Thomas to make his entrance. And what an entrance it was! I was in awe of Ellie as she pushed and pushed. I had never seen a baby being born.

It scared the crap out of me. It was a good thing I had decided I was never settling down. I couldn’t do what I watched my best friend do.

Not a chance!