Total pages in book: 77
Estimated words: 75323 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 377(@200wpm)___ 301(@250wpm)___ 251(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75323 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 377(@200wpm)___ 301(@250wpm)___ 251(@300wpm)
“Well, look what the cat dragged in,” Sway called as I moved inside. “Not you,” he added to Cat when his head lifted.
“Wow, you look like shit,” Saint said.
“Nice to see you, too, man,” I said, tossing the keys to him. “Car is full. I’m exhausted. If Slash happens by, tell him I need to talk to him. Preferably before Huck gets a hold of him.”
To that, Sway stiffened. “What happened in Golden Glades?”
“Shit,” I said, grabbing a mostly empty bottle of whiskey off the tray as I passed.
“You okay?”
I turned around, walking backward, and held up a finger for each word, “Stinking, starving, exhausted.”
With nothing else, I made my way to the elevator, then up to the second floor, where I stripped out of my clothes in the bathroom across from my bedroom and scrubbed the road off of me while I chugged the liquor, enjoying the slow, warm curl of it through my body and my mind.
A quick toothbrush and I walked stark naked across the hall and dropped into my bed, out cold before I could even slide under the covers.
But my sleep was riddled with weird, nonsensical, dark dreams spliced with bright flashes of memories shared with Lula. Until, eventually, both dreams collided and I woke up with a gasp, my heart pounding until I realized it was just a dream, that Lula was fine.
“Any reason you’re in bed, ass out, instead of telling me whatever it is that went down in Florida?”
“Christ,” I hissed, turning on the mattress to see Slash sitting in the chair near the door. “How long have you been here?”
“Two or three minutes.”
“What time is it?”
“Ten.”
“At night?”
“Yep.”
“Shit,” I said, starting to push up, only to have something sail across the room and smack me in the head—a pair of sleep pants.
Slash turned, and I pulled on my pants.
“Alright. Decent.”
“Get the impression that you’ve been keeping shit from me.”
“Yep,” I agreed.
“Alright. I’m all ears.”
“This isn’t my story, mostly. And the person is sensitive about it. So this can’t go beyond this clubhouse.”
“Pretty good at discretion over here.”
“I took Lula with me on the trip to Florida.” His brows lifted at that but he didn’t say anything. “She recently got herself conned out of a shit ton of money by a guy who she’d tracked to Miami.”
“And you were just being a good guy who had no ulterior motives at all.”
“I had many reasons, yeah. But when we got to Florida, we were staying at Teddy’s house.”
“The rich guy?”
“Yeah. I got a call from Arty, so I left Lula there sleeping. York was in the other room. But someone came in and attacked Lula, tried to kill her. York… handled it. The club handled the body—”
“I’m jealous of the crocodiles sometimes,” Slash mumbled to himself. “Is Lula okay?”
“Yeah, she got lucky.”
“I’m assuming it was the guy who conned her.”
“Yeah. He hired someone to do the dirty work, though. While Lula was healing, Arty gave us an idea for how he could raid this guy’s digital wallet and get her money back so she didn’t need to have any sort of confrontation with the guy. That’s what we agreed to.”
“And?”
“And that was it. I put Lula on a plane back here. I started my drive back here, stocking up as I came. I got the text this morning that Arty got the money.”
“That why the guys say you looked like shit when you showed up here? You drove through to try to, what? Get back here to tell Lula?”
“I did drive through, but no, Arty would have texted her too. I just wanted to be home.”
“I get the feeling that I’m gonna need to plan to start demanding some of the other guys start doing this trip more. You’re burning out.”
“Sometimes, it’s great.”
“By sometimes, do you mean when you have the woman you’ve had a thing for for years sitting in the passenger seat?” he asked, shooting me a knowing smile. “There’s leftover pizza on the counter and the guys just headed down to The Bog. That’s some information I get the feeling you’d be grateful to hear.”
With that, he headed out.
I should have anticipated he would be so chill about it. Technically, what I got myself involved in didn’t involve the club. I’d kept the danger away from us and Lula away from the business. A white lie wasn’t really something someone like Slash was going to get pissed about.
I got up, threw on some clothes, then made my way downstairs, grabbing a slice of pizza and heading out the door.
Because I knew Lula.
She’d be at work again already.
And I needed to see her, whether that was smart of me or not. Nearly four days apart was long enough for me.
“There he is!” Hail called when I made my way through the pub doors and out of the oppressive heat outside. “You almost look human again,” he added. “This might help,” he said, passing me a whiskey.