Page 20 of Nitro

Tommy nodded. He bit his lower lip.

"I keep thinking, maybe it was all in my head, you know? It's just...I'm just messed up," he whispered.

That confession seemed to take plenty out of him. I didn't like where Tommy's train of thought was going.

"Hey, if it's any consolation, everyone messes up and makes mistakes. Take Spike and me, for example. Today, we were supposed to handle this simple delivery job, but we screwed up in a really big way," I said.

"You screwed up?" Tommy asked, sounding like he didn't quite believe me.

"I'll tell you another time," I said, wanting to focus on him.

Maybe I shouldn't have brought up Spike and my messed-up delivery. Tommy shook his head.

"I really want to know," he insisted.

So I told him, and we ended up staying up for a few hours, talking. It felt...admittedly nice.

Finally, I convinced Tommy to go back to bed and sleep for a few hours.

"You'll be right here?" he asked, a hint of desperation in his voice.

"Absolutely," I promised him, then gave his hand a reassuring squeeze. "I'm not going anywhere."

I leaned in close, gave him a quick kiss on the mouth, and seeing his smile made everything worthwhile.

Tommy was dead certain he wouldn’t be able to sleep, but in five minutes, his soft snores filled the room.

I pulled up the comforter over his body, making sure he was tucked in.

Then I returned to the living room and made a call to Whizz, the MC's resident hacker.

"Nitro, what's up?" Whizz asked, sounding completely awake.

No surprise there. Whizz kept odd hours.

"I need a favor," I began.

"Sure, I still owe you one for last time,” he said.

That incident had involved Hicks, Tommy and a few captive omegas we had rescued.

In a sense, Whizz had also done me a favor because otherwise, I would have never found my fated mate.

"I need you to hack into a pharmacy's security cam," I said. "I need to know if these two alphas Tommy described followed him out of the pharmacy a few hours ago."

TOMMY

I smelled burnt toast the moment I woke up. Yawning, I rubbed at my eyes and slowly sat up in bed.

I was treated to the sight of Nitro in my small kitchen, cursing as he took out two blackened pieces of bread from the toaster.

I suppressed a giggle. Nitro kept his promise. He stayed the rest of the night over, and that made me strangely happy.

Still, I didn’t envy him. The only other comfortable furniture in my place was the lumpy second-hand sofa I purchased from a yard sale.

Nitro probably didn’t have a good night’s sleep. I, on the other hand, slept like a baby.

That never happened before. Even when I was living with Marc, I only managed to get 3-4 hours of sleep a night.

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