Lust exploded inside me. But it was more than that. It was fucking longing. Like she was more than just a girl. Like she was something I thought I’d lost all those years ago. Like she was home.
She was incredibly beautiful, even with the boy clothes and the smudge of dirt on her face. She was cool and funny and flawless. She was sweet and kind and strong.
I shook my head, backing away. I did not want to examine my feelings too closely. I wasn’t ready for any of this. Hell, I wasn’t supposed to have any feelings. Just the thirst for vengeance.
“I got to think. Just . . . you make yourself some lunch. I need to go out for a while.”
“Shane?” her huge eyes were filling with tears. “I’m sorry?”
She was asking me something with those words. I wasn’t sure what. I didn’t want to know.
I grabbed my jacket off the porch steps and got on my bike, muttering, ‘I’m not mad.’ And I wasn’t. Not mad-mad, anyway. I wasn’t sure exactly what I was.
Confused as fuck, that’s what you are, dumbass. Tell her it’s okay.
I turned back and forced a smile.
“It’s okay, Parker. It will all be okay.”
Her eyes searched my face for a clue, any sign of what I might be feeling. I kept my face shuttered. She didn’t need to know. I couldn’t exactly say my feelings had gone from brotherly to creepy older man with filthy desires for her young flesh in a half a heartbeat, now could I? I’d promised her I wasn’t a pervert. Now I wasn’t so sure.
So I did what I did best.
I rode away.
I didn’t go to the clubhouse to get shitfaced on my private stash of high-end booze. That’s what I usually would have done. But I stopped by The Jar first. After a good, long ride that was way too fast.
I went right to the bar and asked for a tequila. Mason kept the good stuff here too, thank God. I slid a hundred across the bar.
“Keep ‘em coming. Is Mason here?”
Jaken nodded, jerking his head toward the office upstairs. He poured me a drink and picked up the phone. A few minutes later, I heard heavy footsteps and the stool next to me scraped the floor.
He looked at me. I looked at him.
“You know.”
He nodded. “You’ve got yourself a situation.”
“Yeah.”
I had assumed Michelle told Mason what was up. He was the only damn person I could talk to about this. Thank fuck he wasn’t rubbing my nose in that.
I hated asking for help, more than anything.
Jaken refilled my drink and I knocked it back again.
“So. You’ve got a girl.”
“She’s not a girl. She’s all grown up.”
“Are you upset about that?”
“No. Yes. I don’t fucking know.” I looked at him and waited for another refill. I had a feeling I could drink the whole bottle and not forget the look in Parker’s eyes when I was leaving. “She was a boy. Just a kid. Now she’s what, nineteen? I just don’t know what to think.”
“You gonna kick her out? Cause Michelle already told me we’re taking her if you do.”
“She’s an adult. I don’t know why she’d want to stay with me to begin with.”
“If she’s anything like Cass, it’s because she hasn’t got her own people. No one and nothing. Nowhere to go.”
I took another shot to numb the pit that made in my stomach. The kid had seemed alone. Lost. In trouble.
“What would make a kid do that, Shane? Leave a happy home? School and all that? That’s what worries me. Michelle said she could tell the girl was scared.”
“Somebody messed with her.”
“Fuck,” he breathed. Mason looked as pissed off as I felt. “That’s what I thought too.”
My mouth was dry. I felt sick. Anyone getting messed with as a kid was horrifying to me. Somehow, this was even worse.
Because it was her. My sweet Parker. Somehow, despite my stupidity, she was mine. I had planned on keeping her when she was a boy, anyway.
Now that she was a girl, it was a hell of a lot more complicated.
Not just a girl either. A beautiful girl who’d been living there, right under my oblivious nose, for almost a month now. I flinched at Mason’s next words.
“She was running from something bad, that’s for damn sure.”
“I’ll kill them.”
“Who?”
“Whoever hurt her,” I growled, clenching my drink in my hand.
Mason nodded.
“I’ll help.” He cleared his throat. “The girls are going to swing by and take her shopping, if that’s all right.”
I nodded. That’s right. I hadn’t thought of that. She needed girl clothes. I closed my eyes and groaned.
I wasn’t sure I was ready to see Parker in girl clothes.
“Maybe she could wear a potato sack for the rest of her life.”
“Is that what’s bothering you? You find her attractive?”