Burn Down the Night (Everything I Left Unsaid #3)- Molly O'Keefe Page 0,52
What a bastard.
If he gave me the number for Lagan, I would let him go. I had to. Not just for him. For me. I didn’t care if he went back to his stupid motorcycle club. I didn’t care if he got murdered by his brothers. I didn’t care about any of it. I just needed him gone.
I grabbed the cellphone off the kitchen counter and walked into the bedroom.
It smelled like sex and I felt interest coil in my belly again.
I wanted to wallow in this smell. I wanted to rub it onto my skin.
“Where’d you find her?” Max asked, his voice a little awestruck.
“On the beach. She’s here with her kids visiting her in-laws. Her husband died a year ago.”
“Fuck.”
“I think we made her happy, though. For a night.”
“You did.”
I almost smiled at him. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t feel any closer to this guy. I couldn’t afford that. I held up the cellphone.
“Did I show you enough to earn the number?” I asked.
He took a deep breath, his lean hard body, ridged and tattooed, shook in the lamplight. “You showed me plenty,” he said and I looked away, not wanting to see anything in his eyes. Not lust. Not interest. Not kindness. Not respect. Nothing.
“Joan—”
“Just give me the number.”
Max
I gave it to her. Ten digits that might just get her killed. And a year ago, I wouldn’t have given a shit.
Everything was different now. She was walking right into disaster, and I was being forced to watch.
That creepy, insidious thought came back: what if things were different.
Not for me, so much—because clearly shit was. I didn’t fully know or understand how, all I knew was deep inside where I held first my fear and then the hot coal of revenge—it was empty. And I felt blank. Just…cleared out.
But what if things were different for her.
“Now let me go,” I said.
She held up a finger and the maniac pressed dial and put the phone to her ear.
“You have got some fucking death wish,” I muttered, shaking the handcuffs like this time they would just spring open. Like we’d hit some limit on crazy and I’d just go free.
But then she shook her head, pulling the phone away from her ear.
“The number’s not in service,” she whispered and then she lifted her arm like she was about to smash the phone against the ground, and I lurched forward, straining at the handcuffs, the metal biting hard into my skin. Hard enough to draw blood.
“Stop!” I cried.
“Why? It’s useless to me. Another fucking dead end!”
“No. It’s not. It’s the only phone number he has for me. He…he might call. You were right. He trusts me and he’s got a lot of product he’s got to get rid of. He doesn’t have time to start from scratch.”
Her breath heaved in her chest.
“Keep the phone,” I repeated.
“You really think he might call?”
I nodded.
She put the phone in her pocket and shook her hair out of her face, wiping it away from her lips. Her eyes were red and it seemed like she might cry.
I could see every crack in her foundation. And they were wide, deep cracks. Nothing would repair them. I knew because I had them, too.
Joan and me—we were lost causes.
She watched me for a long moment and I watched her right back.
“What are you going to do if I let you go?” she asked.
“What do you think I’m going to do?”
“Kill me?”
I shook my head. An hour ago, alone in this room before she came back with Sarah, I won’t lie, that had been my plan. I’d been fantasizing about exactly how I would kill her. But now…
“No.”
She scoffed.
“I swear,” I said.
“Is that supposed to convince me?” she asked. “What does a guy like you care enough about that you swearing on it would mean something? That bullshit club with all the guys who tried to kill you?”
“No. I don’t swear on the patch.” I did. A long time ago. But those days were gone.
“I swear on Dylan,” I said. “On my little brother. On all the shit I did to keep him safe and out of the life. You understand that, don’t you?”
She watched me for a long time, sweating despite the air-conditioning.
“Are you going to hurt Fern?”
Again I shook my head.
“Are you going to go back to the club?”
“That’s none of your fucking business.”
“Then why do I feel like it is?” She was really asking me, like I had some understanding about this connection between us that