I gave myself three seconds.
Long enough to take a slow, deep breath, then let it go.
Then I was on my way out of the lot, around the front of the building, and down the street.
I still had my gun.
It was tucked into my ankle holster, safe and sound.
I had my wallet in my back pocket with a few bucks in it.
But that was it.
Well, not entirely, I remembered, reaching upward to grab the key that hung like a necklace between my breasts.
I had that.
The key to a safe deposit box where I had club money stashed. I wouldn't be able to access it until the next day. It was stupid, as a rule, to keep cash in a safe deposit box, since the bank won't insure cash. But since it was illegally obtained money anyway, I wasn't overly worried about the couple rolls of hundreds I kept in mine along with some documentation. It was just back-up money, in-case-shit-happens money.
Well, shit happened.
And I needed the back-up since I had fuck-all clue what to do with my life.
But I couldn't get that money until the bank opened in the morning.
Which left me with what?
Fifty or so bucks to my name?
I couldn't even get a hotel room for that.
But I had to get off the street.
Whoever was out for the Henchmen and Vultures clubs wouldn't know that I'd just been stripped of my title.
I had to get somewhere somewhat safe.
But I had nowhere to go.
I had no friends.
I had no family anymore either, it seemed.
Nothing.
I had absolutely nothing and no one.
The feeling of loss was so acute it damn near brought me to my knees in the middle of the street as I walked blindly through town, unsure what to do, where to go, what to do with my life.
It wasn't until I was all of fifty feet away that I realized where my misery had taken me.
Right to Fallon's new house.
In my darkest moment, that was where I wanted to turn.
To him.
Did that make sense on a rational level?
Nope, not at all.
But that was where I found myself, standing at the corner-most back of his neighbor's yard, trying to avoid detection by whichever guard was stationed out on the front porch, puffing on something that smelled like blueberries.
Taking a slow, deep breath, I crept my way across the back lawn, making my way up toward the back door, peeking inside to find Fallon sitting on the couch watching a fight on his TV, a beer sitting casually on his thigh.
Taking another steadying breath, I raised my hand and knocked as lightly as I could.
I knew he heard because his body tensed, and his hand went for the remote, turning down the volume.
I did another soft tap.
That time, he got up, put down his beer, reached for his gun, and came around the corner toward the kitchen in the back of the house.
The tension slipped to confusion as his gaze landed on me.
Not a couple seconds later, he was pulling open the door.
"Danny?" he asked, voice soft.
It was that softness that did me in.
Because it had been a hard night.
It had been a hard fucking life.
That softness stripped away what was left of my defenses.
"I had nowhere else to go," I choked out before the tears started to pour, before I felt a pain so acute in my gut that I folded forward into it.
"Danny... babe..." Fallon said, voice getting softer, more concerned. "Okay, alright," he went on as his arms moved out, wrapped around me, pulled me back upward, then against his chest as he moved backward, guiding me inside. "What's wrong?" he asked, one arm anchoring around my center, the other holding the back of my head against his chest.
"Everything."
Chapter Twelve
Fallon
I'd been raised around a lot of strong women.
And it was always utterly shocking when you saw one of them crack. Because you'd see them withstand so much, endure the weight of the world on their shoulders without slowing their stride, without missing a step. It became easy to think they were indestructible, that nothing could break them.
Something had broken Danny, that was for sure.
I'd seen the wild sort of panic in her eyes as I'd opened the door.
And then she'd cracked. Right down the center. Making her curl forward to try to hold herself together.
But there was no use.
I knew from watching it my whole life that once a strong woman cracked, she had to let herself completely fall apart for a while before putting herself back together. And all you could do was be there for her.
So that was what I did for Danny.
I pulled her through the house and into my bedroom where the blinds were drawn, so Dezi and Crow who were pulling guard shift wouldn't see her if they walked around the house to make sure everything was as it should be.