How was it possible to be in a room full of women yet feel totally and utterly alone?
My twice-monthly book club meeting had just ended. Five other readers plus Brooklyn, Letty, and Mrs. Simpson were milling about chatting.
All smiling.
All happy.
But not me.
I was feeling a lot of things, but not one of those feelings was happiness. Dread and shame were my constant companions. And if that wasn’t bad enough, fear and anxiety pushed in throughout the day. Then there was Reese. Thoughts of him didn’t have to push in because they were always at the forefront. The memories bombarded me. Everything he’d said, what we’d done, how I felt when I was in his company, how I felt when I wasn’t in his company, and his offer.
No strings, no-interest loan.
I’d turned him down for all the reasons he’d stated. Pride, ego, stubbornness, and embarrassment.
But he’d forgotten one—fear.
I was scared to get too close to him. I was scared of making the same mistakes. I was scared I’d do something stupid like kiss him again. Which would lead me to feeling other things. And I knew that was the case because I’d felt them. Under the lust was a twinge of longing. A pang of irrational sorrow for a man that I could never give myself to. But that didn’t stop me from wanting him.
Fingers snapped in front of my face, and I blinked until Letty’s smile came into focus.
“Please tell me you were thinking about a certain tall, green-eyed man who missed his calling as a cover model and not the hot wolf-shifter-alpha who bites his mate. Not that I’d blame you, Lance is a sexy beast and I might ask my man to act—”
“Jeez, Letty.” Brooklyn laughed. “TMI.”
Letty shrugged and smiled at her best friend.
“Like you didn’t dog-ear that scene for Dulles to read when you get home.”
“Of course, I did. But I’m not going to advertise it.”
Incidentally, Letty called Brooklyn’s fiancé Rhode, Dulles. I didn’t understand the nickname and sometimes Letty switched it up and called him Magus, which I still didn’t get because if anyone should have a Viking nickname it was Letty’s future husband River. The guy was huge. But his nickname was Pen Pal or sometimes Male BFF. I understood those nicknames because I knew of River before he’d shown up in Idaho. Letty and he had been friends for years. Though, during the years I’d been friends with Letty and had been involved in her book club I hadn’t known they’d never met in person. Nor had they ever exchanged photos. Something that made my romantic heart swoon.
I mean, how sweet was it that River fell in love with Letty without ever seeing her? His love for her was real and true.
“Have you been drinking?” Letty asked with a giggle.
I jolted and quickly glanced around looking for who Letty was speaking to. But it was just the three of us.
“Are you talking to me?”
“Yes, girl. You’re zoning out.”
I wasn’t zoning out. I was freaking out.
It had been two days since I’d seen Reese. And in those two days, he had not come into my bakery once. So my freak-out was multi-faceted, starting with my brother’s deadline to pay me back. Next up was how Reese planned on getting Josh to pay up since he was always broke. After that was the fact I hadn’t seen Reese and I couldn’t remember the last time I’d gone two full days without catching a glimpse of him. The other night, I had flat-out lied when I denied watching him. I totally did, and yes, this included checking out his ass. It was a perverse obsession. I’d turned into a masochist torturing myself daily then promising myself I’d stop giving in to my need to see him.
But I never stopped. I studiously kept an eye out. But for two days, nothing. And that caused my freak-out to intensify. I should’ve been happy I’d pushed him too far. I’d been a royal bitch to him and now he’d leave me alone like I’d demanded.
I wasn’t happy.
I was angry and I knew that was irrational as well.
“Long day,” I told Letty. “You know how it is.”
“Damn right I do. Two sisters kicking ass in the business world.”
Letty’s beaming smile made my stomach clench.
I was failing.
She was kicking ass.
But my demise was mine and I wasn’t the kind of woman or friend who dims someone else’s light to plunge them into my darkness.
The smile I returned felt fake. Yet, I plastered it on my face and buried the sick feeling that was threatening to pull me under.
“You’re always kicking ass, my friend.”
That was not fake. It was the truth. Letty had dreamed of owning a bookstore and damn if she hadn’t done it, then she made it thrive.
“On that note,” I continued. “I need to get home. Unlike you, I open at seven for the morning coffee rush.”
I passed out hugs and waved my goodbye to Mrs. Simpson. The older woman reminded me of Liz Taylor—a throwback to Hollywood’s glitz and glamor. She used to be Letty’s neighbor before she and River bought a house and moved in together. Letty being a good person recognized Mrs. Simpson’s loneliness and offered her a job. Mrs. Simpson worked when it suited her. I adored spending time with her. She was a riot, but she was also astute. Nothing slipped past her. So I’d been avoiding being in her presence when there weren’t a gaggle of people around. Like now, with other book club members in attendance, Mrs. Simpson would never ask me what was wrong. She was far too classy for that.
But one day, she’d catch me alone and ask and I would lie to her like I was lying to everyone else. Something I already felt guilty over and I hadn’t even done it yet.
Lying sucked.
Each one piled on top of the one before until you had a castle of deceit.
The hell of it was, I knew one day I’d be locked in that castle all alone wearing my crown of deception, cloaked in misery of my own making.
It wasn’t pride that would be my downfall.
It was fear.
Self-reflection was a bitch.
Introspection gave me the clarity of my actions, but I lacked the strength to pump the brakes to prevent the fiery crash that was coming.
Those were my thoughts on the short drive home. That was until I saw Reese’s silver Range Rover parked at the curb and my heart started to beat wildly in my chest. I pulled into my driveway, turned off the ignition, and barely folded out before Reese was cruising up my walk. He didn’t greet me by the car. He didn’t even acknowledge me on his way to my front door.
I wasn’t sure what that meant, but I knew it wasn’t good.
Damn.
I’d done it. I’d successfully pushed him away.
“Reese—”
“Inside,” he clipped.
His gaze went from me to the street. His eyes narrowed and I glanced over my shoulder to see what caught his attention. A white compact car that should’ve been put out of its misery about twenty years ago slowly drove by.
“Sadie!”
His tone dripped with impatience, but more than that, it held an edge of unease. It was the unease that made me rush past him to unlock the door. As soon as I had my key free of the lock, Reese reached around me and with his chest pressed to my back, he turned the handle, and shuffled us in.
“What’s wrong?”
Reese didn’t answer. He locked the door, tagged my hand, and pulled me farther into my house. All of this was so abrupt, and with an abrasive vibe rolling off of him it scared the shit out of me. Not because I thought Reese would hurt me, but because I had a feeling Reese had seen Josh and that meeting hadn’t gone well. I was going to repeat my question, but the words died when Reese rocked to a halt like he’d slammed into an invisible brick wall and his head swiveled around my living and dining rooms.
I didn’t have to look. I knew what he saw. Yesterday, I’d sold my dining room table and chairs on Marketplace and my kickass coffee table, along with the matching side tables sold on Swap and Shop. The buyer picked those up today on my lunch break.
“Jesus fuck,” he growled.
I remained quiet as Reese yanked my hand and moved into my kitchen. When we were next to the island he dropped my hand, reached into his back pocket, pulled out a thick envelope, and tossed it on the butcher block top.
“Three grand,” he announced.
Holy shit.
Josh paid.
That was impossible.
My gaze went from the envelope to Reese, and I took in his scowl. Everything about him was cold. The kind of cold that froze your insides and made it hard for your heart to pump.
“What happened?”
“Your brother’s a motherfucking idiot.”
Perhaps the sisterly thing would’ve been to get pissed at Reese for talking shit about my brother. But since Josh had demonstrated repeatedly over the years that he was an idiot and recently he upped the idiocy to new heights that could indeed be described as seriously screwed up, I decided not to pretend there was a sibling bond and get to the heart of the issue.
“What did he do?”
“To me? Not a damn thing. Saw him, and before I could ask, he handed me the cash and smartly walked away.”
That sounded good. So I wasn’t seeing what had Reese so angry.
“Okay,” I cautiously started. “So why do you look mad?”
“Mad?”
“Well, you look murderous but since we’re talking about my brother, and even though I don’t like him much, I’d prefer my parents not to have to bury their child. So, I settled on mad in the hopes you’d forget that you wanted to commit a felony and instead explain to me what happened.”
My eyes dropped to Reese’s lips in time to watch them twitch.
Damn.
It had only been two days, but it felt like a lifetime since I’d seen him smile.
“I didn’t think it was possible to get more pissed at your brother.” Reese’s mouth stopped moving but his eyes continued to roam my face. They were doing this searchingly. I didn’t know what he was looking for, but I supposed he found it when he parked his gaze and said, “But seeing you’re back to your normal cute, it pisses me right the fuck off I gotta squash that to explain to you just how big of an asshole your brother is.”
My normal cute?
Obviously, I knew Reese found me somewhat attractive, or attractive enough to have sex with. So I knew he didn’t find me to be repulsive. But since I’d never been called cute before I didn’t know what to make of it.
“That doesn’t sound good,” I murmured.
“None of it’s good,” Reese confirmed. “Had occasion to sit down with Zeus. This meeting was arranged before I knew Grinder was—”
“Wait, who’s Grinder?”
I’d never heard that club name, which wasn’t surprising since I didn’t hang out anywhere the Horsemen did. Treats wasn’t exactly biker unfriendly but none of the Horsemen had ever stepped their dirty motorcycle boots inside my girly bakery before. Praise Jesus!
Reese’s eyes flared and I didn’t take that as a good sign.
“Josh’s club name,” he informed me.
“Grinder?” I felt my lips curl. “That’s a stupid name. How’d he get stuck with that?”
“Babe,” Reese mumbled and shook his head.
Everyone knew club names were earned. Unless you were Zeus. Rumor had it Trevor had coined his own nickname as the god of all gods when he’d started the Horsemen. But everyone else as far as I knew earned theirs. It was the biker way. What could my brother have done to get stuck with Grinder?
“Does he grind the gears—”
“Babe, leave it.”
Now I really had to know.
“Tell me.”
Reese shook his head again, but this time added, “Trust me, Sadie, you don’t want to know.”
Now I really, really had to know.
“Trust me, I want to know.”
Reese leaned his hip against the counter. His eyes held mine and there it was—the feeling in my stomach I always got when I saw him fluttered. That was, it fluttered when I wasn’t pissed at him for barging into my problems. But with Reese standing in my kitchen after not seeing him for a few days—even if he was only here to drop off the money he’d gone out of his way to get from my brother—I realized how much I missed seeing him. And if he came in with Davis or Jack or one of the other guys he worked with and sat at one of my awesome bistro tables, inevitably I’d hear his laugh or see his smile, and I missed that, too.
“There are things a sister doesn’t want to know,” he returned. “And trust me, this is one of those things.”
The only thing I could think of that a sister would never, under any circumstances want to know about her baby brother was his sexual exploits.
Ack.
Gross.
“So it’s about…” I trailed off unable to vocalize the word, deciding that Reese was right, I didn’t want to know. “Never mind. Don’t tell me.”
“Good call.”
Reese’s quick comeback, not to mention the relief I saw in his eyes, had me thinking I was right. Grinder was a metaphor for some sort of sexual act, I absolutely had no desire to know about.
Gag.
“Okay, back to your story,” I prompted.
“Right. Met with Zeus and a few of his lieutenants. He wanted to make it clear the Horsemen had no knowledge of what Greg and Dora Thomas were doing and they were not involved in Letty’s kidnapping.”
Greg and Dora Thomas were horrible people. The local newspaper had printed an article about them that didn’t scratch the surface of their depravity. Greg had abducted Letty for reasons I wasn’t privy to, and the papers didn’t say. But he died in a car accident while fleeing with Letty. It was a miracle Letty had lived. Dora Thomas was now in prison serving twenty years. I couldn’t think of a better place for the vile woman to live out the rest of her days.
“I could see how having to breathe the same air as the Horsemen would be unpleasant and piss you off but what does that have to do with Josh?” I asked when Reese didn’t go on.
“After your brother gave me the money, Zeus felt like talking. Not about Letty’s kidnapping or Greg Thomas owing the Horsemen a fuckton of money. Instead, he decided to run his filthy mouth about you. Seems Josh shared with his brothers you got money problems. Further, he shared you got these problems because of that guy, Nate. Zeus happily informed me they got you covered. What the jackass wasn’t happy about was me sharing with him in terms he couldn’t misinterpret was that you are off fucking limits. Something I told your brother when we had our thing in front of your shop. Something he fucking ignored. Now, he’s got his felonious band of brothers looking for Nate and he put you on their radar.”
My heart was pounding wildly and I could barely catch my breath. I was pissed Josh had mentioned Nate’s name. I was even more pissed Reese knew Nate was involved with my money troubles. Now he was going to ask uncomfortable questions about my ex that I didn’t want to answer. If he hadn’t already looked into my finances like he’d threatened. But all of that took a back seat to Zeus talking about me. I didn’t ever want to be the topic of conversation for any of the Horsemen, but Zeus was the worst of the bunch.
“Why would he do that?” I wheezed.
“Can’t answer that, Sadie, except to say your brother’s a grade-A idiot. Now we got more to talk about.”
My pulse kicked up a notch. My hands shook. My lungs started to burn. And lastly, that flutter I felt in my belly had turned sour.
There weren’t a lot of people I feared. The Horsemen as a whole scared me. Trevor by himself I was petrified of, and my damn brother knew that and knew why. The guy was creepy as hell and a pervert and my brother knew that, too.
“I don’t want Trevor to know anything about me,” I blurted out.
Everything about Reese changed. He’d gone from disgusted and mad to alert and lethal. This happened in the blink of an eye. So quickly, I didn’t have the chance to process this before he pushed away from the island and closed the minimal space between us. So quickly, I wasn’t ready when both his hands lifted and went to the sides of my neck. His thumbs at my jaw put pressure there until my head tipped back and he peered into my eyes. Watchful, wary, cautious.
And when he spoke, his tone was just as cautious as his stare. “There a reason why you look so freaked? He ever hurt you?”
Yes, there was a reason I was freaked. Trevor was…there hadn’t been a word invented yet for what he was.
“He’s bad news.”
“That he is, baby. But we’ve talked about him before and none of those times have you looked like you were scared.”
“Well, none of those times were you telling me that Trevor was talking about me. I’ve done everything I could do over the years to not be anywhere near the Horsemen, but especially Trevor. First, because they’re all crazy. I know that’s not a nice thing to say but they are. They don’t care about anything or anyone who doesn’t wear their patch. They start fights, they sell drugs, they beat people up who owe them money, they smash windows out of cars for fun, they harass women and if a man tries to step in, they’ll jump him. None of that says normal, well-adjusted behavior. They scare me. But Trevor’s in a league of his own. He preys on women. So, I wasn’t all that surprised when you told me he’s now pimping them out.”
“What do you mean he preys on women?”
The sour in my belly started to churn as the bad memories started to invade.
“He doesn’t like hearing no, so he ignores it,” I told him.
I felt Reese stiffen. His fingers pressing into the back of my neck spasmed, which made his soft, gentle tone come across as harsh and grating.
“Did he ignore you when you told him no?”
“Not me,” I rushed out. “A friend from high school. Trevor messed her up and Josh knew because she came home with me after it happened. Josh saw Lori. He saw her ripped shirt. He saw the bruising. He saw her huddled on the couch with my mom. He heard her crying. And he knew it took my mom an hour to convince her to call her parents. Josh knows it was Trevor. He knows I’m scared of him because he’s creepy as fuck, has no moral compass, and has no issues hurting women. So, knowing all of that, why would my brother mention my name to that asshole?”
“Fuck!”
I startled at his vicious curse, which made Reese’s face harden in a way that scared me.
“I would never hurt you.”
The hardness slipped from his features; however, his tone was just as vicious. Or maybe it was simply adamant, but in my current state of fear-induced panic, I couldn’t differentiate between the two. Fear of Trevor. Fear for my brother. Fear that what had happened to Lori would happen to me. And as soon as that thought hit my brain, guilt crashed in.
“Sadie, did you hear me?”
“I don’t want him to hurt me.”
“No one’s gonna hurt you.”
“But Trevor will. You don’t know him, Reese. You don’t know what he did to Lori. If he did that to me…” I paused to swallow the bile creeping up my throat. “I hate myself for even thinking that. God, what kind of person does that make me? She’s my friend, or she was before she moved away. And she moved because she was so afraid it would happen again, she couldn’t stay here. I know what he did to her and I’m a horrible person for thinking—”
“Sadie, stop!” He punctuated his demand by stroking my jaw with his thumbs. “It doesn’t make you a horrible person to not want a man to violate you. It doesn’t make you a bad friend. No one, man or woman, should have to go through what your friend did.”
He was right—absolutely. But it didn’t take away my guilt.
“Listen to me,” he continued. “No one is going to hurt you. I promise you, baby, Zeus isn’t going to get anywhere near you.”
It was nice and all that Reese would make that promise, but Trevor did what he wanted to do. Period.
“You don’t believe me,” he rightly surmised.
“Trevor does what Trevor does. He always has. He was smaller than the other kids his age, but he was mean. He grew bigger and taller, and that meanness grew right along with his size. By the time he hit high school, everyone was scared of him, even the teachers. He’s never cared about consequences. And now he’s the president of an MC and he cares even less.”
Reese kept his eyes locked on mine, but he dipped closer. I’d worked myself into a panic, but I wasn’t so far gone I couldn’t appreciate the brown striations that streaked through the green of his irises. The contrast made the green look emerald. Couple that with his dark, spiky lashes framing his eyes perfectly, the color, the shape, the intensity was a sight to behold. He was beautiful in every way. From his chiseled jaw to his perfect bone structure, to his well-defined muscles, to his mop of dark brown hair that highlighted his golden complexion.
If I’d only met him a few years ago, before my life turned to shit. Before I’d met Nate. Before he’d stolen my life savings and cleaned out my accounts. Before the drama. Before I decided never to trust again.
“Sadie? Did you hear me?”
Hear him?
“Huh?”
“I promise.”
I believed he meant that. I also believed he thought he’d be able to keep that promise. But I knew better and since I didn’t want to argue, I agreed.
“Okay.”
“I know you don’t trust me, but…”
I felt it happen inch by inch. Starting at my toes and working up from there, every muscle seized. I knew Reese felt it because he stopped speaking and the severity of his stare deepened.
“Nate,” he murmured.
Oh, no.
Nope.
I didn’t want to go there.
“Don’t.”
“He’s the one who fucked you over.”
“Don’t.”
“He’s the one that put that wariness I see in your eyes. He’s the one that turned your thoughts. All the good you got inside of you, he used it, then jacked you around.”
He was right about that; Nate did use me. But it was humiliation I felt, not wariness.
“I don’t want to talk about him.”
“I get that. You didn’t want to talk about it the other day either and I gave you that play. But earlier I found out he’s the reason you got money problems. So, now, we gotta talk about him. Not only because he screwed you over worse than I thought but also because your brother has set the Horsemen on him, and I need to know what I’m dealing with.”
Things just kept getting worse and worse.
I didn’t want to talk about Nate, but I wanted the Horsemen trying to track him down even less.
Suddenly I felt defeated, utterly exhausted. I was so over the emotional rollercoaster I was on I wanted to jump off. I wanted to throw my hands up and quit. I wanted to scream and pitch a fit, rage against the world, and while I was at it stomp my feet. But I couldn’t give up. I had to fight until there was nothing left to fight for.
“You know I’m tired of having no control over my life,” I told him softly. “It sucks that you’re right and I have no control over that either. I have no good options. Either I tell you and hope you can stop Trevor, or Trevor does something he feels he should be paid back for. And I’d rather owe you than him.”
Reese’s eyes narrowed and his brows pinched together.
“Owe me?”
“Yes, owe—”
“Did I ask you for anything?”
“Well, no. But you went out of your way to get the money Josh borrowed from me that he had no intention of paying back. You should take a cut of the three grand; you know, like a finder’s fee. And now…”
I stopped speaking. Perhaps I never should’ve started if the low guttural rumble was any indication. Then that sound got louder and more defined and I clamped my mouth closed completely.
“I’m gonna pretend you didn’t just say that.”
I thought that was a splendid idea, so I nodded.
“Can we go sit on your couch or is someone coming by in the next five minutes to pick it up?”
“Are you making fun of me?”
“No, baby, I’m being dead serious. It didn’t escape my notice some furniture’s missing, so unless you were robbed, I’m assuming you sold it. So, is the couch sold or can we sit on it?”
“No, Reese, it’s not sold, but hopefully by tomorrow…”
Oh, boy. The rumble was back and this time it sounded even more annoyed.
“Have you eaten dinner?” He abruptly changed the subject.
I hadn’t but I wasn’t going to tell him I planned on eating a Cup Noodles if I got hungry. So I lied.
“Yes.”
And being the broke-ass woman I was, I didn’t have anything to offer him, not even a drink other than water, so we stood staring at each other silently.
“Don’t lie to me.”
There was so much concern in his tone it softened the blow of his demand.
“I haven’t eaten. But I’m not hungry.”
And that was the truth. Trevor. Nate. My brother. The Horsemen. They’d stolen my appetite. Not to mention, the impending conversation about how my ex screwed me over. None of those topics were conducive to me stomaching dinner.
Then there was Reese.
The man could inspire a thousand fantasies. He could fuel dreams and fulfill desires. But he’d never be mine. He wouldn’t be the one who got away. He wouldn’t be a regret. He would be the one who should’ve been.
My if only.
If only I’d met him before.