Page 24 of Bullet

“I don’t want her around this.” I don’t have to elaborate. He knows I mean the club, and he doesn’t take offense the way I was afraid he would the second those words came tumbling out.

“She doesn’t have to be. We’ll find you a place here and have men driving by or keeping watch over it constantly.”

“I don’t want to be a prisoner! I had a good life. I had a great life. One I was perfectly happy with.”

Liar.

It’s not very often that I let that small, internal voice ridicule me, but when it does, it really bites deep.

“You’ve already taken the first few steps. There isn’t any going back.”

Nowthatsounds ominous.

I grab the dough too forcefully, slapping it down on the countertop without flouring it first. I attack it with the rolling pin. At least the damn pie is one thing I can pretend I have some semblance of control over. “This doesn’t have to be the only way forward. I can pick up and move. Take Willa with me. I can leave this state and all of this behind and—”

“What if I asked you not to do that?”

His voice, like slow rolling thunder, booms through me, even though the words were softly uttered.

My mother used to say that one day I’d find the one. It wouldn’t just be him who was a balm to my wounds, but I’d be shelter for his weary heart. A perfect match, a friend, a lover, someone to grow old with. She made it sound so romantic. So storybook.

All I saw was the reality of every single time she’d thought she’d found the man she was searching for. The bruises and the abuse that became the signatures of her hopes and dreams.

It’s the way Hamish asked the question that brings all of that crashing through the hard bars of my mind. His words cause goosebumps to break out on my skin.

I don’t like it.

I don’t like the way he steps towards me either, slowly caging me in against the counter with his huge form. The energy in the room crackles between us, hot enough to bake that pie, no oven needed.

He leaves me enough room to slip by. He’s not threatening. I don’t feel attacked. This man might be rough around the edges, he might be a biker, he might have been a soldier, and he might be far too enthusiastic for being on the other side of the law, but he’s nothing like those men my mother dated.

He’s not really like anyone I’ve ever met before. The problem is, he doesn’t need to physically crowd me to push me out of my comfort zone and take my brain to a strange place of hyperfocus.

His hand moves and I know I could step away. I still have time, but I’m frozen. His rough fingertips land on my chin, tilting my face up. I lock eyes with him and his are so intense, there’s no chance I can break away now, even though my heart is skittering and my pulse is racing.

“I thought you were stubborn when I first met you. Capable, cold, put together, driven, ambitious, vastly intelligent. And I mean all of that as a compliment.”

He could tell me I’m as warty as a toad in his eyes and still make it sound like fucking poetry. I want to shake his hold off and offer some kind of rebuttal, even to his compliments, but my mouth is too dry to say anything.

A small, insane part of me wants to lean into that touch, to welcome his proximity. I’m somehow drowning in lava, but I have goosebumps.

It’s probably the part of me that has zero love life and is wildly unsatisfied by seeing no more action in the past few years other than my vibrator and my fingers.

“I thought you saw things in black and white, but I realize what an error that was. You’ve defended far too many guilty clients to believe in morality the way some people do. I apologize for that comment about the stick up your—”

“Yes, well,” I snap, shaking myself loose from his delicate hold and dodging around him. My hand grazes his side accidentally, which causes an audible gasp that I’m immediately mortified over.

“You can represent yourself in the trial.” I head for the fridge, though I don’t need anything out of it.

No, that’s not true. Milk, eggs—the wash for the top of the pie.

It’s a relief to stick my head inside and feel that cold air. It would be more helpful if I could cram my whole body inside.

I shouldn’t have come here. I should never have gotten involved with this man.

“You’ll be fine on your own,” I say from the fridge, loud enough that I know he’ll hear me. “It’s not like it’s for anything other than assault, and the security footage will more than likely show that you did nothing. At the very worst, you’ll have to pay a fine, which the club will have covered. I was just being an asshole when I was telling you the worst-case scenario back at the jail. And if Harold comes for you, I’m sure you’ll find someone willing to stand up to him.”

He waits until I shut the fridge before pushing me back into that place of irritation. “Everyone has their price.” His words cause me to bristle, but it’s nowhere near as irritating as seeing his leather jacket strain over the muscles of his arms when he crosses them.

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