Page 112 of Wife Number One

Kara didn’t try to talk to me on the way home. She made idle chitchat with Hayley Jade, who didn’t respond.

My chest tightened with every mile that passed, buildings, trees, and the beach all flashing by outside the van windows.

At the Slayers’ gates, Kara finally looked my way and then picked up my phone from the center console.

“What are you doing?” I snapped.

“I need your passcode, please.”

“Seven, eight, three, two,” I rattled off, no fucks given that I was handing over access to everything in my phone. Kara wasn’t exactly the type to go rifling through my texts. Not that she’d find much there anyway. Some old dirty texts from Kiki. Maybe a nude from Amber. But anything of club significance got deleted or wasn’t said in a text in the first place. So she could have the fucking thing if she wanted it.

She tapped her fingers across the screen a few times and then put it to her ear.

I waited for Ice to open the gates, ignoring him when he indicated he wanted to talk, and drove past, leaving him in the cloud of dust the tires kicked up when I put my foot down on the accelerator too hard.

I couldn’t talk to anyone right now. I needed every brain cell just to keep the van on the road and my chest sucking in oxygen.

“Queenie, hello. No, it’s me. Kara. We’re just coming in the gates now. Could you meet us out the front and get Hayley Jade inside for me, please? I need Hawk to come down to the cabin with me. There’s some things we need to talk about.”

I huffed out a breath. Damn fucking right we had some things to discuss.

Like why the fuck she’d gone off on her own.

And why the fuck I’d let her.

That was never happening again.

Queenie was waiting in the doorway when I stopped the van.

Kara got out and helped her get Hayley Jade inside, and even losing sight of Kara for a millisecond as she stepped into the clubhouse had me strangling the steering wheel as that same feeling I’d had back at the hospital engulfed me once more.

Kara came back alone a moment later and slid wordlessly back into the passenger seat.

We were silent until I navigated the van along the path to the cabin. It was barely even wide enough for the vehicle, the track mostly worn into the grass only by bike tires or feet. I got out first, and she followed, neither of us making a sound until the cabin door closed behind her.

I whirled around on her. “Never again!” I shouted. “Never. Fucking. Again do you leave my sight like that, Kara! What the fuck were you thinking?”

To my surprise, she didn’t cower. She didn’t flinch like she normally did whenever I got loud. Which was a lot because I just didn’t do soft and well spoken.

“You’re right,” she agreed.

I stopped. “What? No, I’m not. I’m being completely unreasonable, yelling at you for walking away when you clearly needed a minute to compose yourself.”

She shook her head. “I put myself in danger.”

I moved in on her so quickly, I actually had to catch her as she stumbled to avoid colliding with me, her back hitting the door. I cradled her head, so it didn’t thunk on the wood, and pressed my body into hers, breathing hard, her face mere inches from mine. “I put you in danger. You were my responsibility, and I let you go.”

“You were just doing what I asked you to do. Hayley Jade needed you.”

“You needed me, Kara. You.” I inhaled her scent, letting it fill my lungs properly for the first time since I’d seen that asshole with his hands on her. I put my lips to her neck, the smell of her not enough to convince me she was safe beneath my body. I kissed her neck, opening my mouth to lick her skin.

She shivered beneath me, her fingers coming to my arms, resting lightly on my biceps. “You were scared for me.”

I’d never admitted to being scared of anything in my life, and yet that cry she’d let out when he’d grabbed her was stuck on a loop in my brain, continuing the rush of adrenaline I hadn’t been able to shake.

I’d been scared.

I’d been sure that Josiah cunt had her in his grips and that I wasn’t going to get to her in time.

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