throat, not allowing any sort of emotion in at the sight of Jem falling to pieces. In the depths though something stirred at the sight of it.
“Then you’re still my friend,” Locke declared quietly.
Jem’s face was buried in his hands when Locke left the bar.
The clean-up crew had just arrived, the black vans were parked so painfully obvious in the parking lot. He passed them on the way to his car, and then he sat there behind the wheel, aware as ever of the shit show he was going to walk into when he got to his apartment.
He stared at the rain streaking the windshield. Thunder clapped over him and with it his chest lit up like lightning. He thought of the girl, and of his mother’s words.
“You say you’re scared of everything,” she said, “but maybe you’re more in tune with danger than everyone else, Max. You have the gift of fear. Every day our brain catalogues our surroundings. When something is out of the ordinary, we sense it. You sense it more than most. Listen to it, Max. Always listen to your senses.”
He sensed it with the girl.
She terrified him.
He blasted House of the Rising Sun and took off down the street.
Chapter Thirty
Thames
Time.
He treasured it every single morning he woke up with his love in his arms, with his baby girl bursting through the room and jumping on the bed to wake them. There was nothing like a good kick in the balls to get the day started.
Thames usually took Penny to school in the mornings because Charlotte was sleeping in more and more. That was what happened when you got knocked up, though. You slept your little ass off because the bun in the oven demanded it.
To be honest, though, he was surprised how many months it took for her to fall pregnant. She’d warned him so many times in the start that he was hitting the target every time, but he didn’t care, and he’d told her that. He had missed out on Penny’s life, and he felt like he needed to make up for it again.
He immersed himself in his cars. The niche auto industry had a long memory. You had to with cars, he supposed. Eight years may have been a long time away in prison, but it was not so long of a time for a man wanting to sink more of his fortune in another custom car.
Like Charlotte had said once, he had land and he needed it for all his projects. His work shed had still been left intact, though it needed a cleaning unlike no other. And with Reid funding the rebuild of Conor’s home, everything was slowly coming together. When the baby was a few months old, the house would be done and modified for a growing family.
In no time, Thames had a client list as long as his arm. Sometimes, they’d show up and drop off their pile of precious junk for him.
When Thames finished his first big project – a 1967 Dodge Dart in sublime green – it was only a few days before a buyer travelled all the way from the city. He bought it on the spot, didn’t even try to waver on the whopping price tag. That was the day Thames felt like a man again. It was also the day he waved the check in Charlotte’s face after he returned home to find her in bed and said, “It’s my turn to take care of you.”
She was fresh on maternity leave. Had tears in her eyes for him.
“I’m so proud of you, Conor,” she said.
“You can take care of our babies in our new house,” he replied. “You never have to worry about late night meetings at Locke’s seedy club.”
She laughed. “Actually, I’m still doing those for him on the side.”
“I doubt he’ll need you anymore. He seems distracted.”
“That’s true, but…that club is my responsibility. Those girls need me and those meetings are my thing.” She felt oddly possessive about them. “I like some of those weird ass clients.”
“Except that woman hater guy. What was his name?”
She rolled her eyes. “Mr Crane. What a guy. I think I’m going to see him sometime this week.”
“What’s he going to do when he sees that ring on your finger?”
She looked down at the opal wedding ring he’d proposed to her with only recently. Her face turned pink because she was thinking of that moment, too. The proposal was followed by the most savage fuck. Good