Page 31 of Redemption

“Can we do that tomorrow night?” Sloane immediately responds, before looking up at me. “Or at least me? I’m sorry, I worked all day and I’m barely keeping my eyes open.”

“We’re going to call it a night, also,” Ford responds, giving me a nod before we walk away.

Chapter 11

Sloane

The sound of the door being opened wakes me and Vector peaks around the corner, checking on me before holding up a finger, and entering the bathroom. Considering he’s still dressed, I look around in confusion as I try to figure out what time it is.

When I finally locate my phone, I realize we came upstairs several hours ago, so he must have headed back down to meet up with the guys.

“Is everything alright?” I ask him when he comes to sit on the bed by my side, worried about everything that’s been happening around his MC lately.

“Yeah, I needed to talk to the Saints a bit. You were out the moment you put your head down, so I went down to meet them,” he says, but I can tell there’s something else bothering him. “Ford let me have a few minutes with Grace.”

In my haste to sit up, I nearly headbutt him.

“I think she’s been through the wringer, babe,” Vector tells me, his voice low and his eyes anchored on my lips as he gently rubs my arms. “I apologized for what I did to her, and she let me off easy.”

“Would you have been happier with a scene?”

“No, but at least I would have seen a spark of who she wasthen.” He heavily exhales before wrapping his arms around me. “I hurt her. I may not have been responsible for what happened between then and now, but I could have done—”

“Now you’ll have to live with her forgiveness,” I interrupt him, lightly shrugging the shoulder that his chin is resting on. “And be worthy of it.”

If his body were any more tense, I’d worry about his spine snapping in two.

“That was kind of brutal, Sloane,” he whispers after a moment.

“No matter how much I love you, when it’s just us, I’m not going to pull the punches,” I promise and threaten him at the same time.

“My little roughneck,” he grumbles, pulling back just enough to thoroughly kiss me. “I love you, too.”

*

A few hours later, I jolt awake once again and my brain immediately clicks into overdrive, thinking about my family and when it would be the best time to bring Andrew down to meet them.

Twenty minutes later, he’s still snoring away when I decide to head downstairs in search of coffee. It’s early enough that the only chance I have of running into any of the guys is if they’ve been out all night, which is entirely possible.

Scribbling out a quick note to let him know where I am, I leave the room as stealthily as possible. The elevator doors open and I am startled when I see Grace a few steps ahead of me.

“We have to stop meeting like this,” I tease her, and she turns with a look of panic on her face.

“Um … hi,” she murmurs, and my smile widens when I realize that we both instinctively reached up to feel how out of control our hair is.

“You must stir early, like I do.”

“I needed some coffee. Ford was still asleep,” she responds, and I nod in understanding.

“Yeah, Andrew doesn’t take many days to himself, so I figured I’d let him sleep,” I say, stopping myself when I realize that I’m nervously babbling.

We make small talk as we head to the coffee counter, and each get ourselves our caffeine of choice before she gives another one of her guarded looks and points to a small table in the corner. “I was just going to grab a seat.”

“I was going to go do some window shopping, seeing what stores there are without tormenting Andrew,” I counter, motioning in the direction of the walkway to the mall.

“I think shopping for anything nonmechanical is torturing a man. My hip is bothering me, though. So, I should probably sit. By all means, though, feel free to go window-shop. I’m just going to call and check on my son.”

“That’s right, Andrew told me you have a son,” I respond, wanting to acknowledge that he shared their conversation with me, but also so curious about this woman. “I’m sure he keeps you running.”

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