Page 80 of Pay the Price

“Mac?” Oh no. I was doing the repeating words thing again.

Doc’s laughter sounded like a boulder rolling down a mountain, thunderous and vaguely ominous. “The two of them were like peas and carrots back in the day.”

“Really? I… I didn’t know that.”

“How would you? You were nothing but a twinkle in her eye!” he said. “I was real sorry to hear of her passing. She was a good woman.”

This was new, thinking of my mom as agood woman. Not because she hadn’t been one, but because I’d only seen herthrough the eyes of childhood, and later, through my dad’s eyes, which, let’s be honest, wasn’t exactly flattering.

“Daisy!” I startled at the sound of Jace’s voice. When I turned around he was standing a few feet away. “You good?”

“Just talking to your girl here,” Doc said. “No harm, no foul.”

“I’m good,” I said, because Jace looked ready to murder Doc when the poor guy was just making conversation.

“You going back to the fire?” Jace asked.

“Yep.” I turned toward Doc. “It was nice meeting you.”

“You too, little darlin,” he said. “Take care.”

Jace was waiting for me, like he didn’t want to leave me alone with Doc even though he seemed perfectly harmless.

We walked back to the fire, Doc’s words echoing in my mind.

She was joined at the hip with Mac back in those days.

What the actual fuck?

Chapter 48

Daisy

It was almost two a.m by the time we started to pack up. Some of the guests had decided to stay on the compound for the night, either in the rooms of the members who’d invited them or in guest rooms.

I helped the Beasts and Mac load up the big coolers, folding tables, and extra chairs in the truck Jace had bought when he’d first moved into the house. It had come in handy more than once on our runs to the home store, and again tonight when Mac asked Jace if he could bring it to help transport the party stuff from some storage building on the compound to the fire pit area.

I guess we were those people now, those people you called to help you move or pick up a piece of used furniture you’d bought from a neighbor online.

I didn’t mind. I’d ridden over smashed between Wolf and Otis — not exactly a hardship — while Jace had followed on his bike.

“That it?” Jace asked Mac when the fire pit area was cleared.

“That’s it,” Mac said.

I studied him without being obvious, trying to imagine him being tight with my mom. I assumed it had been before my mom married my dad — I couldn’t imagine my dad being okay with my mom hanging at the Blades’ compound when we was trying to establish himself as one of Blackwell’s most upstanding citizens — but I had no way of knowing for sure.

Had my mom and Mac just been friends? Or had there been more to it than that?

Even in his early fifties, Mac was good-looking, with blond hair not yet touched with gray and blue eyes that were darker than Wolf’s, but it was still hard to picture my mom having a fling with him. He was the polar opposite of my buttoned-up dad.

“Why don’t you ride home with Jace?”

Wolf’s question pulled me from my thoughts, but it still took me a second to realize he’d directed it at me.

“Why?”

“It’s late, and it’s going to take us a while to unload all this stuff,” Wolf said.

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