Page 6 of Reaper and Ruin

She lifted her head at his voice. “What are you doing here?”

He stopped a few inches short, not hugging her, even though I knew him well enough to notice his fingers twitching like he wanted to but wasn’t sure if that sort of contact between the two of them was okay. But his gaze ran all over her with big-brother concern. Satisfied she was in one piece, he answered her question. “Chirp called me after Levi stole his bike.”

Violet looked at me with questions in her expression.

I caught Whip’s arm, steadying him and making sure he wasn’t going to pass out. “I didn’t steal his bike. X left us out…” I was going to say at the Murder Squad dump site, but after what we’d found there, the bodies of a dozen mutilated and abused women, I didn’t want to scare Violet. So instead I just said, “In the middle of nowhere. We hiked out on foot until we had phonereception, and then I called the club for a pickup. We got your message while we were waiting.”

Violet’s mouth twisted into a line. “Oh.”

Truth was, Whip and I had both been wild with fear over Violet and anger over X by the time the prospect had shown up on his bike, like a bloody dumbass. I didn’t know how he’d thought he was going to get both Whip and me anywhere with only one bike, and with Violet’s message burning a hole in my brain, we’d left him there and taken the bike for ourselves.

I glanced over at Chirp now and cringed at him. “Sorry.”

At least the kid had been smart enough to make sense of the tumbled mess of words we’d shouted at him as we’d stolen his bike and had gotten the rest of the club out here, even if it had been too late to help.

Everyone was in one piece, and that was the main thing.

Well, except for the cliff face.

Whip coughed again, spitting up water.

I eyed him but said nothing.

Hawk studied all of us. “If you aren’t going to the hospital, you all need to come back to the clubhouse so we can assess you. I’ll get Grayson and Kara up to help.”

But X shook his head and moved toward his van. “I don’t need a doctor. I’ve never felt better in my life! Look at the grass, blowing in the breeze! Isn’t it magical? Hear that owl? What a magnificent creature!”

Violet frowned at him. “I really think you should let Hawk check you over… You might have a concussion…”

I was more concerned his brain might have been starved of oxygen while he’d been underwater, but then again, X acting crazy wasn’t actually all that unusual. To his credit, X did not seem to be in any sort of physical distress. He pulled himself up into his van and waved at everyone.

“Enjoy this splendid night, friends! Live every moment to its fullest!”

Everyone stared at him like he’d lost his mind.

Because he probably had.

Hawk twitched. “He shouldn’t be alone right now. None of you should. You all need to be monitored.” I’d seen Hawk studying for his paramedic’s degree at the table in the Slayers’ compound and knew he worked shifts at the hospital too, so his warning wasn’t taken lightly.

But X was too high on his second chance at life to listen.

“I’ll go with him,” Violet offered. “Can someone take Bliss’s car? Keys are in the ignition.”

I wanted to argue, or at the very least, go with them, but there weren’t enough seats for all four of us in X’s van, and he clearly wasn’t going to be talked out of anything tonight.

My bigger concern was Whip and the way he kept fucking coughing.

Was nobody else noticing that?

“We’re all on our bikes,” War said to me. “Can you drive Bliss’s car? Just take it back to the clubhouse, we can get it back to her in the morning.”

I gave my prez a curt nod. “Yeah, of course.”

He eyed me. “You’re good to drive?”

If X was, I was. “I’ll be fine.”

“Does anybody think I could be a pro hockey player?” X called through the open window of his van.