Page 62 of Dirty Rock

“I definitely want.”

She smiled, pressing her red-stained lips together. My heart raced, making my chest feel tight again.

Jesus, I was starting to worry about those pains. I reached up to rub my left pec, and Julia’s gaze followed my movements. She slowly brought my hand to her chest. The heavy thud of her heart hammering against my palm matched the beat of my own.

“I don’t know why it keeps doing this,” she said.

“Thank fuck. Me, either. I thought I was dying.”

“I hope not,” she whispered before she guided me into the house and told me to make myself comfortable in the living room. It was quaint, with a huge antique rug in front of an open fireplace, and small, cosy couches making three walls of a square around it. On the rug was an old oak coffee table that held a few already-used church candles.

I slipped off my jacket and hung it over the back of a chair by the dining table behind the living room.

“I’m just going to check my phone,” I told her. “I’ll be back down in a minute.”

“Sure.” She smiled as she glanced over her shoulder and held a bottle of wine and two glasses in her hands.

I needed to go upstairs and get my arse back down…quick.

After a swift trip to the bathroom, I walked back into Julia’s bedroom to grab my phone. It was fully charged, so I swiped the screen only to see several missed calls from Hawk, Big D, and Presley. Disconnecting it from charge, I began to walk back down the stairs with a frown on my face.

There were two voicemails, and I hit play on both messages from Hawk.

“Hey, man. It’s me. Give me a call as soon as you get this. None of us can get hold of you.” Followed by, “Dude, seriously. Fucking call me.”

Hawk’s voice drifted through the speaker when I walked back into the living room to see Julia sitting on the sofa with her legs tucked under her bum. She had a glass of wine in her hand and one arm resting over the back of the couch as she watched me approach. I slumped down into a bed of soft cushions and showed her my phone screen.

“What’s that?”

“The guys. Everyone but Coops has called. Hawk’s left two voicemails. Pres and D have sent messages asking me to call.” I looked up at her. “Have you heard anything from any of them?”

“No,” she answered quietly. Her face paled.

“They’ve called me and not you?”

She turned and looked at her wine glass before she sighed, raised the glass to her lips and took a long drink. I sat up straighter, a prickling of my skin and the twisting of my gut telling me something was definitely wrong… and Julia knew what that something was.

“Jules,” I said with a warning attached to it. “You’re hiding something.”

She lowered her glass and dropped it to the coffee table before she fell back in place and looked at me, deadpan.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“I don’t know—”

She didn’t get time to finish. Hawk’s name lit up the screen of my phone, cutting her off, and I answered without taking my eyes off of the woman in front of me.

“Hey,” I said.

“Where the fuck have you been?” Hawk cried out.

“Busy.”

“That’s not good enough, man. We have a crisis.”

“I figured.” I swallowed hard, feeling everything that had softened over the course of the last twenty-four hours being replaced with hard, edgy, coolness again. Julia’s chest expanded as she sucked in a breath and closed her eyes.

“Have you heard?” Hawk asked, sounding rough.

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