It wouldn’t happen.
And if, by some miracle, it did, it would only happen with a lot more blood being spilled. And there was a very real chance that I’d be burying Liam again.
For real this time.
I’d likely see a lot more people buried before my time here was out.
And maybe my time here would be out by getting hit in the crossfire. I’d dodged enough bullets throughout my career, my name was on one somewhere.
Death was inevitable, even in the best-case scenario.
I wanted to change that. To stop it. But it wasn’t my choice to make. Liam had made his choices. Luckily he wasn’t at the bar tonight, even though I felt like bleeding around him. Even though I liked bleeding around him.
In my break, I texted one of my contacts in the underworld for all information they could call up on Fernandez.
I spent the night collecting pieces of my story while I continued to lose more of the pieces of myself.
Chapter Eleven
“Bye Henry!” I called as I walked out the door.
“Don’t come back tomorrow covering up so much,” he called back. “You got shit for tips the past two nights.”
I rolled my eyes. I got shit for tips because the men knew who I was now. Not because my legs and ass were covered by baggy jeans.
I didn’t need tips.
I had my life, and in their eyes, that was gratuity enough.
The door slammed shut behind me and I stared at the empty parking lot.
No, not empty.
There was one bike in it.
One man.
“Where’s Elden?” I asked, two words working out of my throat with blood attached to them.
Liam stubbed out the smoke that had been illuminating his mouth far too much for my liking.
He still hadn’t quit.
Then again, I doubted lung cancer was a prevailing cause of death in outlaw bikers.
“He’s got club business.”
I had discovered that ‘club business’ was kind of a blanket statement for whenever the men in cuts didn’t want to explain where they were or what they were doing. And you didn’t ask questions.
Or weren’t supposed to.
I folded my arms across my chest, because the night was chilly, I was only wearing a tank and my nipples were having a reaction that had nothing to do with the chill in the air. “What kind of club business?”
Liam sighed. The sound carried over the distance between. “Doesn’t matter. Matters that from now on, to and from work, you’re on the back of my bike.”
I froze.
On the back of his bike.
I knew what that term meant too.
Obviously it didn’t mean the same thing with us.
But obviously there was no way in earth I could be on Liam’s bike, pressed up to his body. Touching him.
No. Fucking. Way.
“That’s not happening,” I said immediately.
“It’s not something you have a say in.”
I gritted my teeth if only to distract myself from the pain that came with this foreign man who didn’t ask me things, just told me what to do. Who had no care for my comfort or my autonomy.
“I would rather walk to the club. On broken glass, which is the equivalent of what these heels are.” I hissed back. I may have been back in my comfortable uniform, but the only footwear available to me was my skank heels. I didn’t want to get my Gucci sneakers stained from the floor of the bar. I turned on my heel and began to do just that until a hand circled around my upper arm.
It was painful. Not because the grip was tight. Because the grip was Liam’s.
“You think I’m gonna let you walk three miles at one in the mornin’, alone?” he growled. His breath was hot, smelled of smoke, Liam and destruction.
I tried to wrench my hand away. Tried being the operative word. He held fast. “You’re going to force me into something else, Liam?” I asked quietly. Exhaustion hit me truly and suddenly. Not physical, though I’d been on my feet all night and hadn’t had shit for sleep in what felt like years.
It was an exhaustion I’d been avoiding for years. Fifteen years worth of tiredness hit me in an empty parking lot at one in the morning faced with a biker I used to know in another life.
It must have seeped into my voice, that exhaustion, something in it caused Liam to let go of my arm. He let out a sigh. It was heavier than the last one. I battled not to let it sit on my shoulders. Because there was over a decade’s worth of tiredness and pain in that sigh.
“Okay,” he said finally.
I jerked in surprise. “Okay?” I repeated.
“Let’s walk.”
I gritted my teeth again. “The purpose of me walking is so I don’t have to be in your presence,” I said tightly.
Silence dragged on, stretching like half-chewed gum on the bottom of a shoe.