Page 51 of Spyder
“I wouldn’t have told you any of this, but I want to be honest with you, Bell. I respect and care for you enough that I don’t want to hide this or any other part of my life from you. And I hope you’ll believe me when I tell you that this is not the norm,” I tell her. “My life and my role in the club is exactly like I described to you before… and it’s usually very boring. We don’t usually mix ourselves up in trouble. We didn’t pick this fight. But we need to see this through, not just for ourselves, but for everybody living in this town. Can you imagine what it would be like if the streets were flooded with meth and fentanyl?”
Bellamy finally raises her head and looks at me, the expression on her face pinched, but surprisingly enough, she doesn’t look angry.
“I won’t lie to you, Derek. I don’t like any of this. That you’re mixed up in this fight… it’s not good. It scares me. It scares me a lot, to be honest. But what I’m most worried about is you. What you’re mixed up in sounds dangerous as hell. I mean, shoot-outs with cartel soldiers?” she says. “No, I don’t want to see Blue Rock flooded with drugs. I love this town because it’s clean and unlike so many other places that way. But I don’t want it to come at the cost of your life. Or the lives of your friends. My feeling is you should have involved the sheriff—”
“We did, Bell. He’s in the loop on everything that’s going on. Has been from the start of all this. He’s not happy about any of it, but he’s in the know and is helping us on the back end of things,” I tell her. “We told him to stand down the night of the original shoot-out at the old hunting lodge. We told him why it wasn’t a good idea for him to involve himself or his deputies. And he agreed… reluctantly. But he did as we asked and helped cover up our involvement after the fact.”
She looks at me, the shock on her face more than apparent. But then, that fades and is replaced by an expression of fear and concern.
“Derek, I’ve come to care about you a lot,” she says. “If something were to happen to you… especially with everything happening with my mom right now—”
“Nothing’s going to happen to me, Bell.”
She scowls at me. “You can’t say that. Don’t you dare say that,” she hisses. “You haven’t lied to me so far, don’t start now. There’s no way you can know that nothing’s going to happen to you.”
I sigh and look down at the table. She’s right. I know she’s right. Once the bullets start flying, there are no guarantees, and nobody is safe. Sinner and saint alike can be killed—and often are—when you’re fighting a war.
“It was a stupid thing to say. You’re right, and I’m sorry,” I tell her. “But the guys are some of the best soldiers I’ve ever been around. They’re highly trained. Disciplined. And smart. Zavala will never get the drop on us.”
“But you still can’t promise that nothing’s going to happen to you.” She pouts.
“No. I can’t. But our mission preparation and discipline are second to none. We try to account for everything and take every precaution to ensure that nothing happens to any of us,” I tell her. “I can promise you we are always prepared and make mission safety our number one priority. We do all we can to make sure everybody comes home safely.”
“The only way to be sure everybody comes home is if you don’t fight,” she says.
“But the fight’s coming one way or the other and we’re the only thing standing between Zavala and Blue Rock,” I tell her. “If we don’t fight to save this town, who will? Who’s able to?”
“I just worry about you.”
“I know you do. And I wish I could take all the worry away from you. But all I can do is be honest and tell you that I will do everything in my power to come back to you,” I tell her. I swallow hard then add quietly, “I love you, Bellamy. Always have. And I will always do my very best to come back to you.”
Her expression is one of complete and utter shock, and she looks like I just slapped her across the face. It makes my heart fall into my stomach because it’s not the expression of somebody who was neither expecting me to say that nor entirely welcoming of it. My throat suddenly grows dry as I watch her eyes shimmer with tears and her cheeks grow red. But she says nothing, making my gut clench so hard it makes me feel sick.
Fucking hell, what have I just done?
Chapter Twenty-Two
Bellamy
I remember one time when I was younger, I got hit in the stomach with a softball bat. It was a total accident and I probably should have been paying attention to where I was going, but I distinctly recall the feeling of that bat smashing into my belly. It made me see stars, drove the air right out of my lungs and I honestly felt like something exploded inside of me.
Hearing Derek say he loved me feels a lot like that.
Trembling wildly from head to toe, I try to clear my mind and replay what he just said again in my mind, sure I’d heard him wrong. I had to have heard him wrong. There’s no other possible explanation. I mean, there’s no way Derek would have said that he loved me.
As I look into his eyes, I see something like panic creeping into his expression. It takes me aback for a moment until I realize that it’s because I’ve fallen completely silent. He was obviously expecting me to say something—like maybe I loved him, too. Instead, I said nothing, and now he’s freaking out. Which tells me that I hadn’t heard him incorrectly. He said he loved me. He actually said he loved me. And judging by the look on his face right now, he meant it.
The realization sends waves of disbelief and awe washing over me. And fear. There’s plenty of fear to go along with it. I don’t know what it is I’m afraid of exactly, but I am all the same. Maybe it’s because things now suddenly seem so real. Those three little words have the power to turn something abstract into something concrete. And when things like feelings become concrete, when they become real, people can get hurt.
I know how I feel about Derek. It’s powerful, it’s visceral, and the emotions he inspires in me are unlike anything I’ve ever felt before. But I didn’t think we were at the point where we were ready to use those three words. I certainly wasn’t ready to use them yet because those three words change everything. They have the power to create and build something beautiful. But they also have the power to reduce things to a pile of flaming rubble in the blink of an eye.
I do love him. I know that deep down in my bones. But I’m afraid to give myself over to those feelings just yet. There’s still so much that’s unsettled in my mind about his lifestyle, his club, and this war with the cartel, apparently. I’ve always been a pretty straight arrow all my life, and I really haven’t stopped to give a lot of thought to how I feel about what Derek and his club are into.
I mean, like I told him, the fact that they deal pot isn’t a big deal to me. They’re hardly alone or unique in that. But roughing people up and running them out of town? I’m conflicted about that, only because I know they do it for a good reason—to keep this town safe and clean. But I’ve never been a big fan of violence, personally. I always believe there are better ways to achieve your goals than by resorting to violence and hurting people.
And now this deal with the cartel. I believe him when he says that he and his club aren’t involved with the cartel and that it’s only bad luck that there is this war brewing between them. But the thought that they all went out and essentially executed a bunch of these cartel soldiers… I don’t know how to feel about that.
I mean, I believe him when he says it was in defense of themselves and this town. But I’m so anti-violence that I’m having problems even with that reasoning. The fact that they killed seven men… It’s something I’m having trouble coming to grips with. They’re all soldiers and this is apparently a war. I get that. But that doesn’t make it any less of a bitter pill to swallow.
