Page 9 of Gather the Storm

I hadn’t expected her to issue what was practically an engraved invitation to the creepy old house that had belonged to her mother’s side of the family, the one asset Charles Hammond, Daisy’s dad, hadn’t managed to appropriate.

I hadn’t expected to want to go.

Although that part was only natural. Anyone would be curious after getting this kind of letter. It definitely wasn’t that I wanted to see her again. That I’d fuckingdreamedabout her for five years, not just the dark hair that I’d always wanted to feel in my fingers, but her sweet, curvaceous body, a rack worthy of a fucking porn star, freckles across her nose that I wanted totrace with my finger, those violet eyes that seemed to see right through all my bullshit.

Fuck.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

I looked down at my chest, bare after my shower. It was covered in ink: the Blades’ logo, a river running through trees, my bike, my dad’s initials.

Everything but a daisy to match the one Wolf and Otis had gotten inked onto their skin — a reminder of why we were doing what we were doing, why we’d done what we’d done — before we surrendered.

Because I didn’t need a reminder of how completely Daisy Hammond had already fucked up my life. Being around her was the last thing I should do. The last thing any of us should do.

And not just because Blake had hung a big DO NOT ENTER sign around her neck.

I was considering heading to the kitchen for dinner when a knock sounded at my door. A second later, it was opened by Wolf.

“Hey,” he said, stepping into the room with Otis.

Any other visitor would have been stopped by someone at the compound — it wasn’t a place where you could wander around like a fucking tourist — but every member of the Blades knew Wolf and Otis, knew we were like brothers.

They’d been coming to the sprawling property since we were kids, before my dad died, back when we spent our time running wild through the woods instead of joining Little League or youth soccer with the upstanding kids of Blackwell.

They filed into the room and Wolf flopped onto my bed while Otis scanned the books and other miscellaneous stuff on my shelf like they were artifacts from another time, which I guess they were.

“Back so soon?” I asked.

Wolf’s mom, Daya, had dropped me off hours ago before taking Otis home. I’d let Mac know I was back and said hello to some of the guys, but I’d wasted no time getting to my room to take a long hot shower alone for the first time in five years.

“I would have called but…” Wolf shrugged.

Right. We’d have to reactivate our cell phone plans.

“What’s up?” I asked.

But I fucking knew.

“We have to talk about Daisy,” Wolf said.

“The fuck we do,” I said.

There was nothing to talk about. Daisy was Blake’s little sister. We’d done what we had to do to protect her. This was where we went our separate ways.

“You know it’s not that simple,” Wolf said.

“Another girl went missing from the community college.” Otis rubbed his thumb and middle finger together, something he did when he was thinking

I wanted to tell them that I didn’t fucking care. That it didn’t matter because I’d done my part to keep Daisy safe and it had cost me five years of my life.

I sighed instead and got to my feet. “Fucking fine. Let’s take a walk.” I reached for a clean T-shirt and pulled it on. “You probably want your wheels back anyway.”

Chapter 4

Jace

I’d had enough of being inside four walls. And there was something else, something I didn’t want to say out loud: I didn’t entirely trust everyone in the MC anymore.

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