felt heavy with dread as I watched Conor turn to the door and whip it open. Looking utterly fearless, he stepped out and Jem followed right behind him, while I just stood there, unable to move my feet.
It was the shouts flooding the air that prompted me out of my dazed state and to the door. Conor was standing on the porch, Jem was at the bottom of the steps, and before us, at the end of my driveway, were over a dozen men prickling with fury.
“Don’t you go out there,” Megan scolded from behind me.
I turned back to look at her. She was outside the living room, flicking glances at Penny and then me, her expression pleading for me to stay put.
“This is not your fight,” she whisper-hissed. “The second you poke your head out there, you’re just another target for those dirty piranhas.”
“I can’t have Conor lash out –”
“He’s already decided what he wants to do. We can’t put a stop to that. He decides his fate, not us.”
She was right. I knew that. I couldn’t babysit his every move, but it was hard. It was so hard to not chase after him. I had no control, no way to sway him because Megan was right. No matter the change in him, he was determined to face his problems head on.
But the risk was too great to take. He might need me. I couldn’t leave him out there in front of all those people.
Without waiting for a response, she disappeared back into the living room. My body burst with adrenaline. I didn’t need to do anything, I told myself. I just had to be there for him. Just stand beside him and remind him I was there and he needed to be careful.
Determined, I looked back at the door and froze, my heart jumping in my chest at the sight of Billy standing in front of it, blocking my way.
“No,” he whispered, adamantly. “No, Char.”
But he needs me.
“Not this way.”
Move.
Billy shook his head. “No. Give him a chance.”
I let out a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding.
He was right. I knew he was right.
“This is your fault,” I fumed, tears pricking my eyes. “This is your fucking fault, Billy.”
He looked down at his feet, too ashamed to meet my eye.
Heart in my throat, I quickly moved out of sight, hurrying back to the window to peer out.
Chapter Thirteen
Thames
Was it bad that, aside from Paul’s red face standing in the far back, he didn’t recognize a single face bristling before him? There were older men, men his age, men even younger than him that he was certain he’d never even met.
He stood there, unflinching, eyes moving along the crowd of faces, asking himself just what in the fuck he’d done to piss them off. This couldn’t have been about Billy. That little shit was dirty, even to their standards.
This was something else entirely.
“Stay off the fucking driveway,” Jem growled, pointing his finger at the crowd.
They shouted obscenities then. He heard the random words thrown his way.
He wasn’t welcome.
He needed to leave.
He was going to get hurt one of these days.
The town wasn’t his to disrupt, never was, and never would be.
Conor Thames needed to leave and never come back.
But they weren’t shouts you’d hear from a truly enraged crowd of people. They sort of sounded weak and forced.
All of the words slid off Thames like water off a duck’s back. He felt his lips flinching, felt like he might smile, and he didn’t want to. He really didn’t, but these guys weren’t stepping forward, they weren’t moving in his direction. They stared him over, picking him apart, looking more devastated the longer they studied him, realizing he wasn’t going to be easy to put down, and it wasn’t just the look of him – it was more than that. They sensed his darkness. They saw it in his face, in the way he peered at them coldly, unafraid. The cheeky bully from the past was all gone. He was all man, and something else too.
The something else bit scared them.
Disrupting the shouts was the sound of a car screeching down the road, stopping abruptly in the middle of the street in front of the house. Thames recognized the car, had rode in the backseat of it not too long ago. He felt something in his chest stir as the door of the black car slammed open and a furious body stepped out. Jem stood up straighter, looking stiff