I grinned weakly. “Not exactly.”
She smiled warmly back. “But I’m also going to take some more shots and say you’re a good woman. And not because you have some kickass interior decorating skills and somehow manage to look like a goddess at eight in the morning without makeup or coffee.” She narrowed her eyebrows as if that was some kind of crime. “And I also see that you’ve got some darkness in you too. Don’t worry, I’m not going to be nosy about that,” she said, as if she sensed my panic. “But you want to share, I’m always here. Despite how much I talk, I’m a great listener. I’m saying this because not every man can conquer you demons. In fact, no man can. Women are the best at conquering demons, slaying their own dragons and all that. But the right man with the wrong demons can show you that. And the right men don’t always seem like that with their leather cuts, their motorcycles, and their monosyllabic declarations of ‘mine.’” She grinned at me as if we were sharing a secret.
I liked that. Someone relating to me. Having someone to relate to. Someone to squeeze my hand and let me into a club I didn’t think I’d ever be admitted to. One I’d never let myself be admitted to.
“Do they all do that?” I asked.
She grinned wider. “Oh, honey, I think it’s a prerequisite to patching in. But you’re the right woman, because Gage has been in a downright murderous mood all week. And that means good things. The greatest. Angry sex is the best, after all.” She gave me another wink and her phone buzzed in her purse once again. “Speaking of that,” she muttered, standing and snatching her purse. “I’ve got a husband to let ravage me.” She exited the booth, leaning down to kiss me on the cheek. “We’ll have drinks this week. I’ll invite the girls, have an initiation or something.”
Then she was gone.
But I wasn’t alone in the booth.
No, her words stayed there with me.
“Women are the best at conquering demons, slaying their own dragons and all that. But the right man with the wrong demons can show you that.”
I didn’t go to the right man.
Or the wrong one, for that matter.
And I didn’t go to Gage.
He was separate from the two of those. Because I didn’t know which one he was.
Neither? Or both?
But it wasn’t about him. It was about what he awakened within me. What Amy wore better than whatever couture was on her body.
Strength.
And mine had a darkness to it that Gage woke up.
Which had me in my newly repaired car in Hope, at midnight, on the wrong side of town, looking at my brother’s murderer.
Gage
Gage had wanted to ride out for the contract immediately. But Cade wanted him to wait another day, make sure payment was cleared, that everything was in place.
So he had to stay in Amber another night.
Fucking torture.
Because all he’d wanted was to go over to Lauren’s. To kick her fucking door down if need be. Get rid of his bullshit conscience and do what every one of his instincts—which didn’t give a shit about his conscience—was telling him to do.
Claim her.
Yank her deep down into the pit with him, make it so she would never get out. For all the selfish reasons, like not wanting to walk through the valley of the shadow of death alone.
And because he wanted her.
With more than just his cock—but fuck, did he need to sink inside her too.
That need had driven him nearer to true insanity than he’d been in a long time. So just when he was about to give in to that battle, he forced himself into another one. He drove to Hope, parking his bike outside the dimly lit dive bar in the shittiest part of town where shitty people did drugs.
Where even shittier people sold them.
And he sat.
Stared at the flickering light above the door, illuminating the alley to the left in a barely visible glow. But enough to show him the shadows of bodies. Of movements he knew all too well.
His entire body was wired, as if it could sense the junk, the proximity to near total oblivion. To that blissed nothingness that stopped time and sped it up simultaneously. Because that’s why he’d started doing it. To stop time. To preserve the feeling of the high, the freedom, the nirvana of it.
But in the end, toward the grizzly, bloody, and fucking horrific end, he’d done it to speed it up. To try to hasten the sand in the hourglass, to bring him that much closer to death. To the death he was living but was too much of a fucking coward to make legit.
He wasn’t sure which one awaited him if he crossed the street, made the deal and injected junk into his blood, but he didn’t much care. What came after it didn’t matter. He just wanted to sink that needle in. Fuck the consequences.