Page 57 of Summer's Edge

TWENTY-EIGHT

Edge

My phone is ringing, and I feel like I’ve only just closed my eyes. All my various cuts are protesting as I disentangle myself from Summer’s arms and go fishing in my jeans for it.

“Sorry, man, but you gotta come to Sanctuary now,” Ice says as I pick up. “You’ll rest some other time.”

“I’ll be right there,” I mutter, my voice thick with sleep.

When I turn, Summer is sitting in bed, the sheet draped around her legs, her naked breasts making me wish I never got the call. Or at least that I was still dreaming, and this was just a bad one before the good one comes. But I don’t get nightmares when I’m with Summer.

“You gotta go?” she asks.

“I gotta, I’m sorry.”

I start dressing before I change my mind and just stay with her. In her soft arms, in her warm bed, with her tasty lips on mine.

“It’s so hard waiting for you,” she says as she glides out of bed and comes to me. “But I understand… it’s who you are… It’s what you do…”

She sounds like she wants me to tell her it’s not true. And I want to. But I can’t.

“I’ll be careful,” I tell her. It’s the best I can do.

She picks up my cut from the back of a chair I hung it on last night and hands it to me.

“I mean it,” she says. “I understand. But come back to me safe.”

She punctuates her words—the words that damn near broke my heart even as they made me the happiest man on earth—with a soft kiss that makes my mind instantly float back to happier times, easier times, times when nothing ever went wrong for long. Times when I still had my family, when they were all still alive and well.

“I’ll be right back,” I tell her then leave before I change my mind.

The ride to Sanctuary goes by in a flash. It’s not as early as I thought it was and the noon day sun is blinding me the whole way there. Yet another reminder that I should’ve just stayed with Summer.

I find Ice, Cross, and Tank in Cross’ office. Ruin is there too, standing off to the side and looking like he’s not sure he’s actually supposed to be there.

“Trench was nearly killed watching over Summer last night,” Ice tells me. “He’s in the hospital, but it’s touch and go. The bastards shot him and dumped him down a ravine. We didn’t find him until this morning.”

The news wakes me up real quick and snaps me out of my pining over Summer’s bed. I love her, but this is important too. And the thought of a brother almost killed is enough to make me see red and do all that needs doing to get revenge.

“So, we riding against them or what?” I ask.

Last night, there was talk that Trench might be the rat, since he had been guarding Summer, but was nowhere to be found after she was taken.

“That was never a question,” Ice says. “What they did to Summer is reason enough to take them out.”

“We’re just gonna do it sooner rather than later,” Cross says.

“I’m ready, let’s go,” I say.

Cross pierces me with his hard gaze. “No, we need you here.”

“What, no,” I say. “I’m going.”

“And who’s gonna watch over Summer?” Ice asks. “You’re the only one I trust to do that.”

I can’t argue with that, so I don’t even try.

“But there’s more to it than that,” Cross says. “As it stands now, we got the possibles for the snitch narrowed down to three of the brothers,” Cross adds. “Bane, Fossil and Archer. All close friends of yours and Ruin’s.”

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