Page 18 of Entangled By You
“Well, then Pierce stays. He took Harlow’s place on the lease, and that’s up to me. So, deal with it.”
The line goes dead, and a second later, a soft tap comes from the other side of my door.
“Come on, Princess, you need to eat. I’ll be in my room. You can have the kitchen and living room to yourself. Night.”
Just when I thought my life couldn’t get any worse. The universe has a fucked up sense of humor.
DEAD AND GONE
PIERCE
Si couldn’t have putus in a more awkward situation if he’d actually tried. I listened to her soft footsteps move down the hall an hour after I said goodnight. Then the thud of cabinets closing about the kitchen. I hope she ate the food I made. It was probably the first home-cooked meal she’d had in a long time.
I don’t know what I expected when she got home last night, but her red-rimmed eyes and the tear streaks tracking down her cheeks weren’t it. I wanted nothing more than to pull her into my arms and hold her, while trying to figure out what the hell happened, but that’s not us anymore.
My eyes catch the clock as the hand ticks past the three. Ten-fifteen in the morning. I have no clue if she’s still home past the closed bedroom door that gives me an illusion of normalcy. I waited until the house turned quiet last night. Got up and double checked everything was locked up before finally calling it.
It took me forever to fall asleep, though. The house is too damn quiet. There’s no loud music until all hours of the earlymorning. No fights breaking out or clatters of bottles breaking as they’re drunkenly dropped to a concrete floor. Definitely no sounds of obnoxious sex through the thin walls like I’m used to at the clubhouse.
Our unexpected hook-up must have been a moment of insanity on her part. I don’t anticipate a repeat from the cold shoulder she’s been throwing my way. At least not anytime soon.
I need time to wear her down. She might not realize it yet, but the last six years apart mean fuck all in our story. She’s within reach, and I have every intention of getting her back.
Fuck whatever her reasons were before. Fuck the fact that she’s pregnant with some other man’s baby. Lexi has always been mine, and I think it’s time she remembers.
I breathe out a deep sigh and finally get out of the way too comfortable bed I’m not used to sleeping in. The club pays, but since I live there, it’s not typically more than pocket change to upkeep my bike. Certainly not enough to go out and get myself something like this to sleep on. At least now that I’ve moved out, my cut will go up.
It’s Lexi’s day off, which she typically spends sitting around the house, not doing much of anything, other than the few chores she keeps up on to not live in a complete pig sty. But when I make it to the kitchen in search of some caffeine, she’s not here.
Her bedroom door was wide open, not something I think she’d do if she was still in there, and the house is so quiet you could hear a pin drop. That’s going to take some getting used to.
While the coffee brews a fresh pot, I grab my phone, ready to put my question to bed.
Where are you?
The text disappears into the ether, marked as delivered, but she doesn’t respond. That’s fine. I might not be at the same level Branson was when it comes to all things tech, but he did show me a few helpful tricks.
Being close enough to her phone, I was able to get in through the Wi-Fi connection and download a tracker. Si stole his back from her car and replanted it on Harlow’s bike. After everything that happened, I don’t think she fought him on it the second time around.
Ahh, there she is. Across town at an address I don’t recognize. When I do a quick search, it pops up as a medical clinic. All the air evacuates my lungs.
Forgetting about the coffee, I pull the plug and rush back to my room to throw some clean clothes on. I refuse to let her go through whatever she’s choosing on her own.
Maybe it’s not my place. Maybe I have no right. But either way, when she walks out the door, I’ll be there if she needs me. If she doesn’t, I’ll stay away and keep my eye on her from afar. It’s not like I had any plans for today anyway.
The winter sun hides behind low-hanging gray clouds, heavy with the promise of rain. I pull back on the throttle, racing down the blacktop toward the clinic, hoping I get there before she finishes and heads out.
Lexi strides out of the clinic’s front doors, chin lifted and those oversized sunglasses shielding whatever reality isbrewing behind them. She pauses at the curb, pulling out her phone. I know exactly what she sees—my message, sitting there like a dare. A quiet reminder that I’m still around. That it wasn’t just a bad dream or hallucination last night.
She stares for a beat, her thoughts unreadable behind those dark lenses, then shakes her head with a sigh I can’t hear and slips the phone into her bag.
No buzz in my pocket. No reply. Just silence. I’m not surprised that she’s chosen to ignore me, but the sting is still there. We have so much that’s been left unsaid between us, and until we stop dancing around it, things won’t change.
She crosses the lot to her car with that familiar confident sway, every step a silent statement. A piece of her is tied neatly back up in the façade she portrays for the world.
I sit motionless on the bike, the engine quiet beneath me. She’d hear it the second I fire it up. So I wait and watch. Only when her car reaches the exit and turns onto the main road do I move, the low growl of the engine breaking up the mess in my mind, as I slip behind her.
She veers away from the road that would take her home, heading toward the far edge of town instead. There’s not much out this way, just a lonely stretch of two-lane cracked cement and the on-ramp that leads to the next town over.
