Page 11 of Don't Let Go

“Yes.”

Chapter

Three

PATCH

“So I told you about my job before?” Each word came out a little slower than the previous. More out of disbelief that I would confess those facts toanyonemuch less these three.

“Be hard for us to know the details, Sugar Bear, if you hadn’t told us.” McQuade gave me a wry look.

“Unless you worked for them and this was a ruse of some kind to pull information from me.” Even giving voice to the idea didn’t really sell the concept to me. Escaping the concern in their eyes, I looked down at my arms.

I’d been in sweatshirts or sweaters since waking at this cozy little cabin in the far reaches of Michigan. It was Michigan. That sounded right. With the fire burning merrily, hot coffee in my cup and all three of them surrounding me like a sexy wall of testosterone, I’d been far too warm in the sweater so I stripped it off.

There were circular scars all over my arms. Scars that hadn’t been there before. I traced one of them with a fingernail that wasn’t particularly attractive. I’d had longer nails before. Notsuper long or anything fancy, but long enough that I could shape them.

It wasn’t like I’d been able to go get a manicure in years. So I made do with giving them to myself. I’d gotten pretty good at it. Most of my nails were either ragged down to the base or lower.

One had been ripped right down into the quick and there was a cut that circled the finger. My fingers ached and there was definite stiffness around the joints. The headache pulsing behind my eye seemed to increase in its tempo.

Lifting the hand in question, I rubbed at my forehead just above my eye. The area was still tender so I had to be careful. The bruise there had faded to a sickly greenish-yellow, and the lump had begun to decrease in size.

“You don’t believe us,” Locke said, disappointment salting the neutrality of his voice. Or maybe I was imagining it.

“It’s not that I don’t believe you,” I said, testing every word. “I’m just trying to figure out why I would…”

“Why you would tell us secrets you haven’t told anyone else.” As unexpected as having one of them finish my thoughts was, it was more than a bit discomforting to hear it detailed in that distinctly sexy as fuck British accent.

Remy folded his arms as he leaned back against the counter. It was the first defensive posture I’d seen him—or any of them take—since I woke up here. His steady gaze held me captive as I tried to figure out what thoughts were rolling through his head.

“That’s part of it,” I admitted, despite the absolute truth in the statement. The last thing I wanted to do was insult them. They didn’t deserve that. “The other part is—I’m used to talking to you on the phone not…”

“In person where we can enjoy a little old-fashioned face-to-face interaction?” Was McQuade taunting me? The hint of sarcasm underlining the last few words of his question seemed a warning.

“Before two weeks ago,” I said, picking my words carefully. “We’d only ever spoken on the phone. You didn’t know me. You could have walked past me on the street and not noticed me.”

“luv,” Remy sounded disappointed. “I would definitely have noticed you.”

I sighed, then rubbed a hand over my face. We were going in circles.

“Now, if you meant we might not have recognized you as Patch, the glorious goddess on the phone who has saved my life more than once…”

“And mine,” Locke and McQuade said in one voice.

With a wry wave of one hand, Remy gestured to them. “We know you, Fallon. We’re aware you don’t remember our first meeting or everything that happened. We also know how difficult this is…”

“Or maybe we don’t,” Locke added on with a shrug. “I can’t say I’d be happy to be missing any moments in my day, much less my weeks and months.”

“The point, Sugar Bear,” McQuade half-growled with a roll of his eyes at the others and the corners of my mouth twitched despite the sobriety of the moment. “We know you’re learning to trust us again. You trusted us enough to tell us before. Or maybe you accepted that we were the best of a bad situation. That’s possible. Either way, it worked because you read us into your recruitment and then your subsequent realization that maybe you weren’t working for the people you thought you were.”

The sinking feeling of that reality threatened to drown me. I worried at the nail on my thumb. It was already beaten and broken down to a bare nub. It wasn’t like I could make it worse.

“I hate this,” I said, closing my eyes even as my heart started to race. Every single time I tried to dredge those memories up, pain drove a spike through my brain.

“We know,” Locke said and he was suddenly a lot closer. When I opened my eyes, he was crouched in front of me and he had one hand on my knee. “We really do. Now, all of this other stuff aside. You don’t remember what happened between the last calls you had with us and then waking up here two weeks ago.”

It wasn’t a question.

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