Page 25 of Other Woman Drama (Content Advisory #4)

Twenty-Two

The best safe word you can use is ‘meatloaf.’ It means ‘I would do anything for love, but I won’t do that.’

— Text from Silver to Aella

SILVER

“You’re staying here, right?” Gunner asked as he stopped at the bottom of the driveway near to where I’d parked.

I nodded. “I’ll be here for a while. I just want to…” Get out of the house so I don’t feel like I’m suffocating but do it somewhere safe where I don’t suffocate because I’m hyperventilating. “I want to be able to hang out and not worry about where I’m at.”

Gunner nodded.

He made eye contact with Webber across the top of my head and did a wave, before waiting for me to get level with Jasper before taking off.

I’d thought, at first, that the screeching of the tires was from Gunner taking off.

But that wasn’t what happened.

The look of horror on Jasper’s face was enough to enlighten me that something was very wrong.

He moved fast, and I was down on the ground before I could even blink.

Some sort of instinct kicked in as the gunshots sounded, and then I was crying out as the body on top of mine jerked.

Something hot and sharp touched my arm, and then warmth spread around me, covering my face and neck. My torso.

The body on top of me was so fucking heavy that I found it hard to breathe.

Screaming erupted all around me, and I started to cry, knowing in my heart that the man on top of me had just taken bullets meant for me.

“Jasper,” I whimpered. “Are you okay?”

He groaned and said, “No,” directly into my ear.

“Do you have bullet holes in your body right now?” I wondered.

“Pretty sure I have three of ’em,” he confirmed. “Can’t feel my legs.”

I pressed his shoulder and said, “I think something fell on top of us. I can’t breathe.”

Jasper was shoved off of me seconds later, and I was staring at Webber’s face with the sky framed around him.

“Baby,” he said. “Are you okay?”

“I think so,” I said. “Something felt like it pinched me earlier, but it doesn’t hurt anymore.”

“Probably spray from the bullets hitting the gravel.”

Gunner was here?

When did that happen?

“It happened when I heard the gunshots and turned around,” he replied to my obviously said aloud statement. “I hit the bitch with my brand-new motorcycle.”

I blinked.

The sirens started, and my breath hitched. “Is he okay, Piers?”

Please, let him be okay.

Please, please, please.

The scuff of small rocks on gravel had me turning my head, and what I saw made my heart speed up.

Jasper was reaching for me, trying to soothe my obvious worry.

Webber looked from me to Jasper and back and said, “He’s fine.”

But his eyes…his eyes said he was lying.

I closed my eyes and prayed harder than I’d ever prayed.

Bleeding. Broken. And dying.

Jasper was still thinking about me.

When my gaze met Webber’s once again, it said clearly, “You’ll fix this.”

As in, whatever beef he had with Jasper didn’t matter anymore.

Jasper had saved my life.

He wouldn’t pay for any past mistakes, I’d make sure of it.

“Who knew that old bitch had it in her?” Jasper rasped, the sound of the heart rate monitor quietly beeping in the background.

I looked from Jasper to Gunner to Webber and back. “What am I missing?”

“The old lady across the street who reports him to the HOA board every chance she gets thought shooting up his place of business might scare him. But she had no goddamn clue just how hard it would be to hold on to that gun. When she fired, she missed the trash can and fired at y’all.”

“So let me get this straight,” I said. “An old lady, your neighbor, just gets a wild hair and decides, oh, I’m going to go shoot up his place of business because he parks in the road too much? That makes zero sense.”

“Regardless of it not making sense,” Apollo said as he came into the room with his computer tucked underneath his arm, his brightly flashing black shoes squeaking as he moved.

“She still did it. She has receipts of going to buy the gun weeks ago. Looked up the address for Webb’s today on Google, then drove straight over there. ”

“That’s not enough,” I said. “People don’t just shoot up a business because of that.

They sue. They fight. They don’t automatically resort to violence.

We’re missing something.” I paused. “Plus, if they were going to try to get away with something, they don’t buy guns that will knock them on their ass and allow them to get smashed with a motorcycle. ”

Which was exactly what’d happened, according to the guys.

Jasper had thrown himself at me and covered me with his body.

The old lady, Martha Patterson, had purchased a Desert Eagle and had decided that it was the best idea in the world to shoot us with a fifty-caliber revolver that she couldn’t handle even when she was young. Let alone when she was pushing eighty.

She’d taken her first shot, which had hit true, but her second had gone wide and hit the dumpster, which had been what had caught me in the arm.

The rest of the bullets had hit the ground, causing debris to splatter everywhere. Which had been the other source of some of Jasper’s bleeding.

He’d taken a bullet to the side, which had been a through-and-through. He’d also taken some gravel from Webb’s parking area to the face, as well as a sliver of dumpster to the left shoulder. Which had been the source of bleeding that’d soaked my hair and face.

“What did the old lady say?” I questioned from my seat.

Webber dropped his hand to my head and smoothed the hair back from my face but kept his eyes on Jasper and Apollo.

I leaned into his hip, and he moved his hand to my ponytail, which he’d helped me put up.

It was still caked in blood, and there was no way that it felt good for him to touch.

I could feel parts of it crackling as he ran his fingers through it.

“Don’t know,” Apollo said, frustrated. “Took her to Dallas, and I haven’t had any time to hack into their feeds. It’s what I’m doing right now.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be campaigning right now?” I wondered.

Apollo scrunched his nose up. “I’m a shoo-in.

Everyone loves me because the woman I’m replacing is the woman that I made no secret about hating.

” Apollo shrugged. “I’m ahead by thirty-five percent in all the polls.

Both parties love me, so I have no doubt that I’ll win.

Plus, y’all are more important to me than them. ”

I felt all warm and gooey inside at his words.

“And I’m already sick of the bullshit.” He sighed. “Once I get everything I want done accomplished, I’m getting the fuck out.”

I wasn’t sure he had the best attitude for a potential Texas representative, but I wouldn’t be pointing that out.

He was an adult, and I couldn’t change his mind.

I wasn’t sure what his motive was behind getting into politics, but I hoped it healed whatever was broken inside of him.

Apollo stepped up to Jasper and poked him in the bandage covering his chest.

Jasper’s heart rate skyrocketed as he cursed and tried to shove Apollo away.

“Webber’s shit at bein’ sneaky,” he said to the man that’d saved my life. “I’m not sure what your motives were behind wanting to work undercover with us, but it’s time to make a choice. Us or them.”

“You,” Jasper rasped, his hand covering his chest. “It’s been y’all for a long time.”

“Then why are you still in?” Apollo asked point-blank.

My heart seized inside my chest.

He was working undercover for the cops?

What the hell?

I stiffened, but Webber’s hand on my hair tightened, quietly telling me without words to stay in my chair and keep quiet.

“In the beginning, it was because I was burned out. Wanted a change in life. But then I came here and immersed myself in the club. I found a family that I desperately needed, and I just…” he trailed off.

“I’m not sure at which point I switched sides, but I’ve been the one feeding you the insider information for the last eighteen months. ”

Apollo nodded. “Knew that, actually. I just didn’t know that you were doing it from the inside.”

“Haven’t really been on the inside in about three months, though. I think they’ve caught on,” he admitted. “They asked for a meeting last month, and I’ve been putting it off since.”

“Well.” Apollo poked him in the chest with his laptop, narrowly missing his bullet wound by an inch at most. “None of the other guys know…but I think you should tell them.”

Jasper’s eyes went to Webber’s.

“What do you think?” Jasper questioned.

“I think that you should keep your trap shut,” he said. “Because then they’ll want to kick your ass.”

“I didn’t,” Apollo said.

“And you comin’ in here and poking him in the chest where he was just shot wasn’t hurting him?” I countered.

“Well, when you put it that way…” Apollo grinned, and I was once again reminded how damn handsome he was.

Cleaned up as he was for the campaign trail, he was a real looker.

Not as hot as Webber, but he was a close second.

Then again, all of the men of the Truth Tellers were hot as hell. There wasn’t a single one of them that wasn’t attractive.

Hell, even scarred up and bleeding, Jasper had been attractive.

Admittedly, he might’ve been more attractive because he gave off that bad ass vibe.

“I got some info,” Chevy came in through the door carrying a stack of papers. “Ol’ lady is fucked up and on painkillers because Gunner broke her hip with his bike. She admitted that she has a granddaughter. You’re never going to guess who!”

“Let me guess!” I raised my hands. “It was Cadence Moran, wasn’t it!”

“Got it in one,” he said. “Martha Patterson is Cadence Moran’s grandmother. Mother to Cadence’s mother.”

“Maybe you should ask her where she is,” I muttered.

“I did,” Chevy flashed me a straight white smile. “Got the address out of her phone and everything.”

Webber let me go and walked toward where Chevy was holding out a cell phone.

I was guessing based on the fact that the cell phone was at least five to six years old that it belonged to Martha. I’d noted that the older generation didn’t really subscribe to modern technology like the younger generations did.

Even when I was poor and had no credit, I usually only went about two years out of date on my phone before I was scouring eBay to find a newer model.

“That’s near my boat house lot,” Chevy said as he showed the address to Apollo and Webber. “In fact, it’s just down the road from the house that Copper’s building.”

He turned to look at me and leveled me with a glare. “You’ll stay here.”

“What about going home?” I asked.

“Could go to the shop, too,” Apollo said. “Secured. Has a nice little lounge area in the back that’s fully behind a six-inch concrete wall.”

“Or I could go home, crawl into bed, and wait for y’all to do whatever it is that you’re going to do.

Then I could go open Webb’s up tomorrow and work and say that you were with me all day and night.

” I shrugged. “Then, when I’m done at Webb’s, I could go back to work, because eventually they’ll get tired of me not being there. ”

“I’m still on that,” Apollo said. “You can go back when you want to go back, but until then, I have it covered.”

I rolled my eyes.

Not that I wasn’t appreciative, but I wanted to go back to normal.

Or as normal as it could be with the president of the Truth Tellers MC as my old man.

The four men spoke like I hadn’t spoken at all, so I sighed and sat back into my chair and closed my eyes.

When I opened them again, everyone was gone but Jasper, who was wide awake and watching the door.

“What time is it?” I asked.

Jasper looked over and grinned. “You’ve been sleeping for about six hours.”

Shit.

“And I’m guessing that you’re not supposed to let me leave?”

He winked. “Nope.”