One
Bullseye
Five months ago,
She was going to kill me. Yep. I was a dead man. She asked me to do one thing, and what did I do…I forgot. Technically, I didn’t forget. I just didn’t read the damn text message until I pulled into the drive. In my defense, I did have a lot of shit going on, and I could easily blame this on Reaper, but I don’t think she’d give a shit. Sitting on my bike, I looked at the house before me, wondering if I should even bother going inside. It’s not like she even needs me around anyway. She does everything. She is a one-woman energizer bunny.
All go, no quit in her.
“What are you doing?”
Jumping, I turn to see her brother staring at me. God, what is he doing here? If he starts in on me again, I’m going to have to kill him this time. In the mood I’m in right now, I can only deal with one Keller at a time, and the one that matters right now is in my house waiting for a gallon of milk.
I sigh. “Savage.”
“Bullseye.” He growls.
Taking a deep breath, I ask. “You here to see Kitty?”
“Nope.”
“Then why are you here?”
“Came to give you this,” he said, handing me a grocery bag. Looking inside, I only see one item. A gallon of milk. Looking at the bear of a man next to me, I ask, “How?”
“I saw the text she sent while in church, then she texted me to make sure you didn’t forget. You never read the text. Figured you had enough on your mind with everything going on, I thought I’d help.”
I didn’t know what to say. It was so unlike him. For the last year and a half, we’d done nothing but try and kill each other, yet since the shit that went down in Louisiana where Savage learned the truth, we had kind of come to a sort of truce. It was fragile, but it was still there.
“When are you leaving for Tennessee?”
“In the morning. Chaos needed to take care of a few things, plus he needs to get his sisters settled at his house.”
“You gonna tell her tonight?”
“Planned on it.”
“How are things between you two?”
“Fine.”
Savage was acting weird. Weider than usual, and that’s saying something because the man was never calm. He preferred his fist to do the talking. I’d never seen him this way. He was making me nervous. “Look man, I know we don’t get along, but what you’re doing for my sister and her kid, I can’t ignore that. I wanted to say thank you.”
I was dumbfounded. Speechless. Those were the most words Savage ever said to me without trying to pummel me into the ground. Getting off my bike, I nodded. I wasn’t sure how to act, so going with what I did best, I said nothing.
“What’s going to happen when you find Layla?”
I stopped dead in my tracks.
Turning to him, I looked at the man I considered a brother. A man who didn’t like me most days but would stand beside me, fight beside me, die for me, and I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know what would happen when I found Layla. I’d been looking for her for so long. There were days I wondered if she were still alive. But seeing her in Louisiana, I knew. I knew I was on the right track. That’s what my brothers didn’t know. When I left, I went dark because I was hunting. I had my list. I searched every corner of the world. I looked for any information on her or the men who took her.
Layla had been with me my whole life. She was my best friend. There wasn’t a damn thing she didn’t know about me or me her. We were that close. There wasn’t anything I wouldn’t do for her. She was mine to protect, and I failed. But I refused to give up. I would find her, and when I did, I would slaughter every mother fucker who touched her.
I would never give up on her.
I would rather die than stop looking.
I couldn’t.