“We are not just rushing our asses down there; this could be a bait and switch, Gidge.” Sin’s making sense—Crown said much the same before—but I’m also not willing to wait this one out. Cat is a very difficult man to kill; he’ll expect betrayal. After his own son, how could he not? He’ll expect snipers. He’ll except assassination attempts.
But that doesn’t mean he’ll automatically escape this unscathed.
“I know,” I say, leveling a look on Sin. “I know. I trust Grey, but it makes sense that you don’t. Let’s figure this out.”
My answer seems to satisfy Sin just enough that he releases me, and I take off, opening Crown’s door and waking him up from a light sleep. I notice that he’s already got a weapon in hand.
“Gidge?” he asks, blinking back sleep. He throws the blankets aside, and I see that he’s naked. Oh. I like that. Stuck-up Boy Scout Crown sleeps in the nude? Yes, please.
“We gotta go,” I tell him, loving the way my voice rings with authority. “The hit on Cat is supposed to happen tonight. Now.” I take off before waiting for his reply, checking the time on my phone as I go. It’s not even that late—just about ten after ten—but everyone in this house is on a hard-knock schedule. Beast and Crown regularly stay up for twenty-four hours or more at a time; I imagine Sin and Grainger generally keep the same schedule when they’re not, you know, recovering from almost dying.
I pound down the stairs as quick as I can, making a beeline for Grainger’s room.
I hesitate briefly before reaching for the handle on his door. Do I wake him up or let him sleep? Maybe he should sit this one out?
But then his door opens without my even having touched it, and there he is.
“Gidge,” he says carefully, his voice low and dangerous. Sure, he spent the night in the same room as me plenty of times before—at Cat’s house, at my Gram’s house. This seems different somehow. I mean, it is, right? We’re fucking living together.
I don’t know what our future living situation will be like, but for now, this is all of our house.
“The hit on Cat is happening tonight. Get dressed.” I start to turn away when Grainger reaches out to grab my arm. I figure if he shouldn’t be going tonight, the other men will stand in his way. Crown, in particular, has authority over the other three as their vice president. Even if the guys were willing to throw tradition to the wind in order to save me, they still believe in the way the club works; they’ll defer to him if necessary.
“Why do you insist on putting yourself—as well as our baby—in danger?” he snaps, yanking me closer to him. Somehow, thinking that I’m pregnant with his kid—maybe, maybe not—has turned on something inside of Grainger that I’m not sure I’d have seen otherwise. The possessiveness has been there all along, but the rest of it? This … sort of caring that I see in his eyes, that is brand-spanking-new.
“You heard me earlier, didn’t you?” I tell him, looking directly into his eyes. “I’m not going to sit by the sidelines and watch the world go by. I certainly am not going to let decisions be made for me the way they’ve been in the past. I have a right to dictate my own future.”
“What if,” Grainger starts, grabbing my wrists and pushing me back until I hit the wall. He presses me against it with his body weight. “I tied you to my bed and left you here. Then what?”
His eyes search my face, and I see that he’s completely and utterly serious right now.
“Then I’d start to look at you the way I look at my father,” I tell him with all due seriousness. Our eyes meet, and I feel that kick inside of me, that jolt, the electrifying crash of Cade’s energy butting up against mine. It makes my heart race, looking at him like this, bathed in the shadows of the hallway. I almost lost him, and I will never forget that feeling for as long as I live. The helplessness. The despair. The million and one things I wished I’d said to the asshole before he died. “I love you. Don’t turn that love into resentment the way Cat has done.”
Grainger releases me like he’s got whiplash, turning away with a pained expression on his face.
“Fuck.” That’s the response I get before he heads back into his room and starts tearing clothes from his duffel bag. The remainder of his clothes lie strewn across the floor. He’s managed to open one dresser drawer, and there are clothes in there, too, but I can’t tell if they’re clean or dirty. They drape over the side and spill out across the furniture’s glossy wood top.
