Page 28 of Texas Hold Em’ (The Devil’s Luck MC #3)

CARRIE

T ex’s apartment bustled with energy on Thursday night.

All of the MC members were there along with Suzie and Sam, both of whom had given me fierce hugs when they first arrived in the afternoon.

I wanted to believe none of them could tell that I’d spent almost the entire night crying, but who was I kidding?

My eyes were still swollen and puffy and the skin around my nose was dry from blowing it a hundred times over.

They all knew. They just had the decency not to say a word about it.

I sat in the corner of the sofa with my legs tucked under myself and a blanket thrown over my lap. In my hands was the burner phone from Bates, and every pair of eyes in the room was on me. I could feel the apprehension in their gazes, their fear, frustration, and hope.

“Go ahead,” Tex said, putting a hand on my knee over the blanket.

My hands trembled.

Abel, who stood over my right shoulder behind the sofa, lightly touched my shoulder.

His hand felt reassuring and steady and not full of hate like I expected.

Maybe some of them really did trust me. Tex and Mason had been advocating for me for some time now.

Did more of them believe I was in their corner than I thought ?

“Carrie,” Abel said softly, “give me the phone.”

I looked up at him.

He smiled. “Come on. Give it to me.”

I turned to Tex, who nodded.

I’d already typed out my message to Bates. It was simple and to the point, but it had left a knot in my throat and a stone in my gut. I’m doing it tonight. Stand by.

My hands still shook as I reached up and passed the phone to Abel.

He read the message and looked around at the group. “Here we go, boys. There’s no going back now. If anyone has a reason to not go through with this, now is the time to speak up.”

I didn’t dare look around the room. Instead, I wrapped my arms tightly around myself and stared at the coffee table. Nobody said a word. The silence threatened to swallow me whole, and it might have if Tex hadn’t brought me back by giving my knee a good squeeze.

Abel cleared his throat. “Very well.” His wrist flexed and a button clicked. The old flip phone made an animated whooshing sound before he dropped it back in my lap. “It’s done. Now we wait.”

Tex sighed beside me. “Now we wait.”

The phone, an old Nokia something or other, was smaller than my palm, but in my lap it felt like it weighed a hundred pounds. There was no going back now, and that truth felt heavy.

Cursed.

Abel moved away from the sofa. I heard him rummage around in the fridge or freezer behind us. Nobody paid him much mind, but when he made a particular ruckus and bottles clanged against each other, Tex turned around.

“What the hell are you doing back there?”

I glanced over my shoulder, too. Abel pulled a frozen bottle of some sort of liquor out of the freezer and showed all his teeth in a devilish grin.

Tex arched an eyebrow. “By all means, make yourself at home.”

Abel shook the bottle around by the neck, and amber liquid sloshed around. “I propose a shot. You know, in case it’s your last.”

My stomach heaved .

Tex, however, laughed. He pushed up from the couch and met Abel in the kitchen. All around me, the other men left their positions and went into the kitchen. As he passed me, Brody offered his hand.

“On your feet, Ranger,” he said. “You and I have the worst jobs tonight out of the rest of these assholes. If anyone deserves a shot, it’s us.”

“Worse than Tex?”

“Tex,” he said with a smirk, “will get a nasty but fleeting shock, and then none of what happens will matter much to him because, well, he’ll be dead. But us? We have to keep our game faces on. A bit of tequila might help.”

I stared at his outstretched hand a moment before accepting it. Brody pulled me to my feet and clasped my shoulder in a friendly way, using it to guide me out ahead of him into the kitchen, where Abel was loading up shot glasses with tequila.

“That big one is for Carrie,” Brody said, laying claim to the one Abel had just filled to the brim.

Abel slid it across the counter to me while Jackson silently brooded on the other side of the kitchen.

Samantha leaned in toward him and whispered something in his ear.

Perhaps she was telling him to fix his resting bitch face.

Perhaps she was merely reassuring him that things would be okay.

Either way, he wrapped an arm around her waist and held her close while the remaining shots were distributed around the room, and he didn’t say anything when she declined hers, saying something about having to drive them home soon.

Very few people knew why Sam wasn’t drinking.

Abel lifted his shot glass. “To Tex, our recklessly brave, and one might say shamelessly stupid, brother.”

“Fools come in all shapes and sizes,” Gabriel added.

“Don’t feel bad, Tex,” Knox teased. “Every group has a dimwit.”

Tex laughed in earnest, and I wondered how he could be so calm and collected as we closed in on the final hours. “Thank you for reminding me why I’m risking my life for you bastards.”

The room echoed with deep laughter. Brody nudged me in the ribs with his elbow before everyone tossed their shots back.

Only delayed by a second, I followed suit, and I relished the way the tequila burned my throat and belly.

I hadn’t eaten a full meal in the last forty-eight hours, so my head already started to feel a little fuzzy as Abel screwed the cap back on the tequila and placed it back in the fridge.

Wordlessly, the group all knew tonight wasn’t a night for indulgence.

We needed our wits about us. One shot was about as good as it was going to get.

If we all survived Friday, I was sure there would be a rip-roaring party to celebrate their immortality.

Everyone placed their shot glasses in the sink. I hovered in the corner of the kitchen while Tex went out to the pit and lit a cigarette. The men made passes to visit him and to say a few words in private. I wondered if they were saying goodbye.

Brody stayed close to me—not like a helicopter parent, but rather a concerned friend or brother. He watched every move I made, and every time I flipped open the Nokia to see if there was a new message, he’d stiffen.

“Anything?” he asked the eighth time I checked the phone.

I shook my head. “No. I wouldn’t be surprised if Bates was making me wait on purpose. Drawing it out.”

“He’s a sick fuck.”

“You can say that again,” I mumbled.

“Hey.”

I looked up at Brody. I hadn’t noticed before, but he had kind eyes.

They were the eyes of a doctor—someone who was probably used to giving good news, bad news, and all kinds of news in between.

He was a man who rode like hell at night and ran with criminals, but during the day, he saved people’s lives.

I felt somewhat guilty for not bothering to try to get to know him better.

“Yes?” I said.

“I trust you, you know.”

I blinked.

He folded his arms across his chest and smiled down at me. “I think you needed to hear that. Out of all of us, Jackson is the hardest to win over. Always has been, always will be. But me? You’ve had my buy-in for a while already. If Mason trusts you, so do I. Plain and simple.”

Oh no. My bottom lip began to tremble. Keep it together.

Brody knuckled me fondly in the chin. “You’re alright, Hart. And hey, I get it, okay? I’ve felt like shit for two days too. The thought of what we’re going to do tonight…” Brody gazed off in Tex’s direction. His brow furrowed and his jaw flexed. “It’s kept me up at night.”

“Am I a bad person if hearing that makes me feel better?”

He smiled with his eyes again. “No, not at all. You aren’t alone. Whatever happens tonight, I’ve got your back, and I trust that you have mine. Right?”

I nodded firmly. “Right.”

Brody left me to my thoughts in the kitchen and went to join Tex, Abel, and Knox in the pit.

Mason and Suzie lingered outside the bedroom door, speaking softly to each other, and Grant spoke with Sam and Jackson.

Soon the three of them made for the pit as well, but Jackson looked in my direction and, seeing that I was alone, put a hand in the small of Sam’s back and muttered something to her.

She looked warily over at me and nodded.

My stomach threatened to climb up my throat and suffocate me as Jackson walked toward me.

He stopped a few paces away. “You and I need to have a word.”

“We do?”

“Come with me.”

Wordlessly, with my heart leaping wildly in my chest, I followed the President of the Devil’s Luck out of the apartment and into the humid hallway of the warehouse.

He closed Tex’s door behind us and turned to face me where I stood under a flickering light mounted to the wall with my arms folded over my chest.

“We’re in this now,” he said. “There’s no going back. So I need you to know something.”

“What is it?” I practically squeaked.

He moved in on me so quickly I forgot how to breathe.

One minute he was standing in front of the door, and the next his massive frame was swallowing up all of my vision as he towered over me.

“If you’re fucking with us and playing with Jameson’s life, you’re going to have me to answer to.

Do you understand what I’m saying to you? ”

I nodded.

“Say it.”

“I understand.”

“For your sake, I hope you do.”

The Nokia buzzed.

Jackson’s eyes slid down to it, clasped fiercely in my hand. “Is that him?”

I didn’t want to look, but my eyes were pulled down to the tiny flip phone and the little blue light winking in the corner of the front display screen. I swallowed hard. “It has to be.”

Neither of us said a word. The sound of our breathing filled the empty hall.

Finally, Jackson reached out and took the phone from me. He flipped it open, and when he read the words aloud, his voice was thick with gravel and apprehension. “I’m waiting.”

“That’s all it says?”

Jackson flipped the phone closed. “We have to tell the others. It’s time for us to leave.”

He turned back to the door.

“Jackson.”

He didn’t look back at me, but he didn’t abandon me out in the hall either, which told me he was willing to hear what I had to say—and holy hell did I need to say it. The words were burning me up inside.

“I’m going to keep him safe,” I said. “I’m not going to let anything happen to him. And I’ll have Brody with me. We’ll do what needs to be done.”

Jackson pushed the door open. “See that you do.”