Page 34 of In Another Lifetime

His head tipped forward, and he stared at the floor before he nodded. “I’ll find out.”

“So you see why I should be here?” I asked hopefully. “I can help Wrecker with all the cooking…”

Kale sighed again. “I want you here more than anything. You have to know that. I always wanted you to be safe. And until our last, uh, mission, I thought this was the best place for you, but the club isn’t safe right now.”

I flew to my feet. “Kale! Are you okay?”

“These people… They hurt you before. They killed my fiancée. I can’t let… I can’t let anything happen to you again. There’s credible reason for us to expect they’re preparing a new attack. Which means you’re safer away from here. Your accident was a warning to me—but it’s not you they’re after.”

“You need to leave, too,” I urged. My house wasn’t safe. The club wasn’t safe. Was there anywhere I could be? “We could go live in LA with Caspian and Parrish.”

The quiet laugh he huffed out scoffed at my naïve idea he could just hunker down away from here. “Our brothers won’t appreciate the invasion. Plus they’re getting ready to come here in a couple months.”

So much for that idea. I hadn’t seen either of them in person for almost five years, but at the moment, I couldn’t be excited about their arrival. For all intents, they were strangers to me.

“Plus, you know I was in the military,” Kale went on as if he weren’t dropping bombs.

“Yeah, special forces.”

“Or something like that. This goes back to that. For all of us… We’re dead men walking. Ghosts.”

“No, Kale.” Was he saying I’d lose him, too?

“It is what it is. A long time in the making. Don’t worry about me, okay? Worry about you.”

“But—”

“What you’re going to do is go home to that cute-ass little house you set up. And you’re going to make up with that asshole cop, because I have never seen you as happy as you are with him. For the first time in five years, you’re smiling. Genuinely smiling. So go home and be with him—just don’t make it too easy on him.”

“But—”

“Your home security is top notch,” Kale interrupted. “And I’m gonna have a crew on you. Your personal bodyguards to shadow you until this situation with Dutch is taken care of.”

Honestly, I was less worried about the danger than the other impossible thing Kale was telling me to do.

“Dayton made up his mind about this. I know him. He made a decision he thinks is right. He’s not going to change his opinion. And I’m not begging him.”

“No begging, sis. Us Corin’s are better than that.”

“We are,” I conceded. I’d learned that and embraced it over the past few years.

“But don’t be such a quitter,” he went on.

I glared at him. He knew those were fighting words. He’d said them a lot while I was struggling through physical therapy after the accident.

“I’m not a quitter,” I growled.

“Then go fight. He clearly loves you. He’s going to come around, and you need to be there at home when he does.”

“I’ll go. But he’s not going to come around.”

Kale smirked. “We’ll see.”

Twenty

Dayton

Vale came home today, and I wanted to storm over there and demand to know where she’d been. Not that it was my business. We weren’t together. But the caveman in me still wanted to know.

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