Page 27 of All Tied Up
Bane stood there, glaring at me like he wanted to toss me through the nearest window.
“Look, I had to go see her. Just make sure she was okay. I wasn’t going to let her see me, but then she went and walked down a street alone. You should be glad I was fucking there. If something had happened to her, I really would have gone insane. The threat of Blaise putting a bullet in me wouldn’t have been a concern. I’d have fucking done it myself.” I put my elbows on the desk and leaned forward. “You can’t tell me you wouldn’t have done the same damn thing if someone had touched Halo.”
“Halo is my wife!”
“Before she was your wife!”
“I was in love with Halo before she was my wife.”
There was a pause, and I blew out a breath. “Yeah, well, I fucking love Noa.” There, I’d admitted it.
I’d already faced the fact myself, but saying it to someone else made it real.
Bane’s eyebrows shot up. “You admit it then?”
I rolled my eyes. “Yeah.”
He sighed heavily and took off his cowboy hat and tossed it onto the chair. “Damn. That changes shit.”
I watched as he walked over to the window.
“Blaise won’t care that you love her. You went about all this wrong, starting with handing off the editor to the damn cartel.”
Blaise Hughes might be the boss, but he wasn’t going to also control who I loved. Noa had been the one thing that wasn’t controlled within the family. She wasn’t something I had to share. Fit into the darkness of our world. Being told that I couldn’t have the one person who could calm me, make me forget the other shit, wasn’t working for me.
I was glad I hadn’t admitted to Bane that this hadn’t been my first time to go check on her. If he knew I’d been four other timesthis month, then he’d really freak the hell out. I just hadn’t been seen or had to kill anyone the other times. Most of those visits, she was asleep, and I sat and watched her. It had given me peace.
“I’m not worried about Blaise,” I told him.
His head snapped around, and he looked at me. “You should be.”
“Didn’t Sebastian Shephard take his woman and run off with her? She’d been off-limits, too, and Blaise didn’t kill him.”
Sebastian was part of the Georgia branch, and when he’d broken command, it had spread through the family. He’d also lived, and he was engaged to the woman now.
“You’re not a goddamn Shephard,” Bane hissed. “Other than the Hugheses, the Shephards are the oldest line in the family. His lineage saved him. That, and his brother is a psychopath. One Blaise didn’t want to kill too. Because if he’d killed Sebastian, he’d have had to kill Thatcher. The deranged son of a bitch would have burned them all to the ground in Ocala if something had happened to Sebastian. THIS”—he held out his hands—“is a completely different situation. You don’t have a lethal psycho brother who is indispensable to Blaise Hughes.”
There was truth to that, but I was still holding on to the fact that I would be allowed to have Noa and live.
“Is she worth losing your life over?” Bane demanded.
I stared at him for only a moment before responding honestly, “She is my life.”
Bane’s shoulders rose and fell as he took a deep breath and ran his hand through his hair. “All right then. What is it you want me to do?”
A grin tugged at the corners of my mouth, but I didn’t dare give in and smile. Bane might have a change of heart if I pissed him off. And I did need his help.
“Cover for me. I need to go back and see her. Talk to her. She’s hurting, and I’m the cause of it. I can’t allow it to continue.”
Bane’s brows drew together. “And you suddenly need me to cover for you? How many times have you snuck off already to see her and not asked for a cover?”
I wasn’t going to tell him that. He was already pissed. “I don’t want to just watch her fucking sleep. I want to talk to her. Touch her. Fuck her. And I need more than a night to do that.”
“You can’t tell her anything,” he snapped.
“I’m not. I just … I need her to wait for me. To know that … that I love her.”
“Jesus Christ, Ransom. You had to go and decide you’re in love now? This is Hawkins’s first year to really understand the Santa thing and be excited about it. I can’t deal with trying to keep Hughes from taking you out and enjoy my fucking holiday at the same time.”
