His entire body shook with the power of his restraint.
His leg twitched.
Later he’d tell himself it was just that, a twitch. Even though he knew it was really a small movement toward pushing off his bike and back into that sickening and pathetic life he pretended he’d escaped.
It wasn’t willpower or strength that stopped him. Not the weight of the chip in his pocket nor the death on his bones.
No, it was catching a glimpse of a flash coming from inside a car parked up the street. One he’d been too fuckin’ fired up to notice on first glance.
But he sure as shit noticed it now.
And the face that was illuminated by yet another flash of a fucking camera from inside the car.
Lauren.
He would’ve laughed if it weren’t so fucking horrible.
Two of the things he craved most within almost equal distance to him. Both of which were already under his skin. Both of which promised pain.
He just needed to choose which kind.
There was no hesitation as he pushed off the bike and strode across the street.
Six
Lauren
I wasn’t going to do anything. Even in the darkest corners of my mind, where the darkest version of myself existed, I didn’t have that hunger for vengeance in my bones. Or at least not the kind of vengeance that would get me out of the car to potentially get myself killed.
Even slightly out of my mind, I had enough self-preservation to realize that even trying on this new assertive and brave Lauren, I didn’t have it in me to face off with a drug dealer. I barely had the stomach to lift my newly purchased phone and snap the photographs of the drug deal.
But I did it.
Because I might not believe in vengeance, but I believed in justice.
And no one was doing anything about the man in the alley dealing death in small vials, preying on people in the clutches of addiction. Yeah, maybe the blame didn’t rest solely on him—addicts still had responsibility—but he was helping feed an ugly and deadly illness.
I wasn’t an investigative journalist. I was barely even a journalist. I didn’t have the hunger or the stomach to go as far as people like Lucy did. To take those risks. I was safe behind my computer, correcting her hard-hitting stories, fact-checking, sometimes doing a feel-good piece on the elementary school kids volunteering at the local retirement home.
But I wasn’t a good journalist. I wasn’t good at talking to people, pushing past their boundaries.
I was too busy trying to protect my own.
And now they were falling down. With comments from a sassy redhead. With glares from a dangerous biker. With words that wormed into those dark corners in my mind. With his scent, my skin pressed against the iron of his muscles, the vibration of his bike underneath mine.
He radiated pure strength, like he would be able to save me from a plane about to go down. But I wanted to be strong too. I wanted to be a person to stop the plane from crashing in the first place.
In order to do that, I finally had to take notice of all those flashing lights and warning signals I’d been closing my eyes to.
Hence me driving to Hope, to the spot where my brother had bought the drugs that killed him. I’d borrowed Niles’s car to do so, and he hadn’t even asked a question when I told him the story, had just raised one bushy eyebrow and given me the keys.
So there I was, taking photos. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with them. I could take them to the police station, show them to Troy, even if Hope was outside of his jurisdiction. And if he couldn’t help, I’d write an article. Niles thought I was already, but I’d kind of only said that to get his car. Kind of.
I’d already called Lucy about it earlier.
I waited for her to finish yelling at me for not calling her the second I crashed my car.
“I couldn’t call you the second I crashed my car, since my phone kind of shattered on impact,” I replied dryly, liking hearing Lucy’s voice, even if it was yelling at me. I hadn’t noticed how much she’d meant to me until she left. Hadn’t realized that she was one of the closest things I had to a friend, one who never pried too much, who never judged, who just… was.
“Well, I didn’t want to have to find out that my favorite and only friend not addicted to caffeine almost died in a car accident from Lucky, of all people,” she hissed. “And that was only because he was talking to me about this ‘sexy librarian’ who almost had Gage arrested for stealing her wrecked car. And I’ve seen the town librarian, in real life and in my nightmares, and I only know of one sex kitten librarian type, and that’d be you. So you’ve been seriously holding out on me, girl. I’m hurt and offended that you decided to go biker after I left Amber. Seriously.”