“You can force me back in there.” I nodded to the clubhouse. “But I’ll just find another way out. I’m going to see my family, to be with them. I’m sure you don’t understand what that means since you abandoned yours, but mine still mean everything to me.”
I was telling myself that was the reason I was risking my life for this escape was for them. For my family, for my sister, so I didn’t miss out on another milestone like I had routinely done for the past fifteen years.
Anniversaries, birthdays, new jobs, new boyfriends and girlfriends, weddings. I’d missed most of it because I couldn’t stand my family moving on while I couldn’t. Or maybe I cared about them too much to show them how little I’d moved on, because then they couldn’t at all.
Now I had the chance to make it right.
Or make it a little better.
To hold my nephew.
That’s why I was escaping.
I wasn’t risking death to escape from Liam and the new truth between us. The new nearness amidst the distance. To escape my need for him.
A grip on my arm jerked me back into a present I could never escape.
“Let go of me,” I said through gritted teeth as Liam began to drag me.
“Not a chance.”
I didn’t fight, though the grip was painful. He wasn’t dragging me back into the club, as promised, he was dragging me out.
Jagger
He wasn’t sure if the decision was made by his cock, his heart or his soul. But he didn’t have the latter two, and his cock had been telling him to do exactly what Caroline invited—drag her back into the clubhouse by the hair, fuck her until she passed out and lock her in his room until he figured out how the fuck to control her.
But his head told him that that was crossing the line. Whatever was left of the fucking line. It was making sure that Caroline would never trust him, never stop hating him.
As it was, he knew the chances of her not hating him were slim. Even if she didn’t hate him, there was no way she would forgive him.
Some things were unforgivable.
What he’d done was unforgivable.
To her.
And now to his club.
Who he abandoned tonight.
And he’d been dreading this fucking phone call, but he had to answer it, he owed his best friend and his president that.
“Where the fuck are you?” Hansen demanded. “We have the Russians coming. We’ve got runs to make. Oh, and we’re in the middle of a fucking war with Miguel Fernandez.”
Jagger gritted his teeth, looking up at the motel room he’d rented after he’d stopped at a Walmart to get Caroline and him the shit they’d need for the almost twenty-hour ride. He had to convince her they needed to stop, because he could ride for a long time, but he was fucked. And also, because the closer he got to Castle Springs, the more he felt like he was going to lose it. He was riding back into the town that he promised himself he’d never return to as the man he was now.
It wasn’t a question as to whether he was going to enter town limits, have a family reunion. Even thinking about it had him tempted to empty the contents of his stomach onto his boots.
No, that wasn’t even an option.
He was doing this for one reason and one reason only.
Caroline.
“I’m in Texas,” he said. “Close to the state line in Louisiana.”
There was nothing but dead air on the other side of the phone. Hansen’s accusation didn’t need words. But he spoke them anyway. “Caroline’s with you?” he deduced.
“I’m not runnin’,” he said. “Nor am I letting her go. Her sister had a baby. Caught her outside the compound last night. She was intent on going no matter what we did. Short of tying her to the fuckin’ bed. I didn’t have a choice.” He ran his hand through his hair, paced the parking lot, ignored the woman sitting outside their room, chain-smoking and checking him and his cut out. “She knows that it’s twenty-four hours and then we’re back.”
“Jesus,” Hansen muttered. “I knew when you found yourself a woman, it’d be fucked up. With Sarah, it wasn’t it, because it was too fuckin’ simple. So of course it’s this.” He sighed. “I’m not sayin’ I’m happy about this. I’m pissed the fuck off at you. But I know why you’re doin’ it. If you’re not back here by Sunday, it’s your fuckin’ patch.”
He hung up.
It went better than Jagger expected it to go.
Then again, Hansen was a good friend. He’d been through it with Macy. He knew this shit.
Jagger sucked on his smoke. He was avoiding going up to that room. No, he was fuckin’ desperate to go up to that room. But he couldn’t because the more he fucked her, the more he felt like the kid he was. And if he was going back to the place that he swore he’d never set foot in again, he couldn’t go within even an inch of that kid still inside him. He needed to be Jagger so he could survive that twenty-four hours. So he could leave.