Page 80 of Reluctantly His

Some half-assed way to make me see her again and face my feelings. I was not the kind of man who did shit like that. You would never catch me sitting at home watching The Notebook and crying over true love or whatever it was men like that cried over.

She was just a girl.

I’d had her and now she was gone.

She’d had her little dalliance with the ‘bad boy’. She’d made it clear that was all it was, so I took my pound of flesh by fucking her like I would every other girl and took her home.

It was over. Hunter needed to accept that because I sure as fuck had.

Reid: Then how do you have yours?

Hunter: Because after I was shot, I played dead while they picked up your fucking girlfriend and her future husband. I lay still in a puddle of my own god damned blood just so I could text you as I was bleeding out.

Reid: How badly are you injured?

I sent the text as I ran around my apartment, getting my shoes and coat on.

God, I was so fucking stupid.

Yeah, I was mad at Charlotte, but there was no excuse for her to be without protection.

I thought Hunter would be enough, but clearly, I was wrong.

Now she was stuck at an event with her asshole fiancé to keep her safe.

Jesus, she would be better off with the assailants.

Hunter: Two GSWs. Non-fatal areas, losing blood.

Reid: Okay what hotel are you at?

He dropped a pin for his location, but it couldn’t have been right. It was in the middle of the ocean. I stared at my phone in disbelief for a second before I rolled my eyes.

Reid: So you are fucking with me. That wasn’t fucking funny, asshole.

Hunter: The charity event was moved to a yacht.

A yacht changed everything.

It meant that Hunter was probably the only paid security because most people thought being isolated would make them safe.

Clearly, it didn’t. It made them a more vulnerable target.

On my way, I texted back as I ran down to the basement, ignoring my car and instead grabbing my Kawasaki Ninja motorcycle, a gift from a grateful Japanese businessman after I had helped pull him and his daughter from a questionable situation some years ago. This little beauty maxed out around 200 mph, and strictly speaking, was not street-legal.

I checked my phone one more time to see if there was an essential update from Hunter, but there wasn’t. He wasn’t able to get a better view of the assailants without being spotted. So, he had no idea what was happening on the deck.

I was going in blind, but I did not give a fuck.

These assholes had stuck a gun in my girl’s face.

No one did something like that and got to live to brag about it.

If the rest of this day was going to go the way I was pretty sure it was, breaking every traffic law in the state of New York didn’t even scratch the surface of the shit that I was about to get into.

Throwing the helmet to the side, I hopped on the bike and checked my phone one last time for any updates. Then I looked at the map for the fastest route to get to the harbor.

According to the GPS, it would take me about thirty minutes to get there. That was thirty minutes far too long. I pulled out of the parking garage, revved the engine a few times to make sure it was good and warm, and took off.

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