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“Get ahold of yourself, man,” he shouts.
“You don’t understand. I have to—”
Havoc punches me. Not hard, but enough to stun and snap my head back and sense into me. “Let it go, Hunter. It’s over.”
The punch turns into a hug, and then Mayhem joins it. I’m shaking. The call to return to work irresistible.
“Think of what’s important. Think about Charlie,” Havoc says.
I shake my head clear. The call fades. The space those thoughts leave behind get filled with thoughts of Charlie. Of the life I need to build for him. And about someone else, too. Someone who makes all this possible, even though they don’t know how integral they are.
“It’s done. It’s finished. No more,” Mayhem says. “This thing can never see the light of day.”
Mayhem pulls me away from the creation, while Havoc goes to a locked chest the keep in the corner, opens it, and begins removing what looks like explosives. He straps these to the thing we’ve built, while Mayhem takes me outside. Moments later, Havoc joins us, and moments after that, there’s a bone-shaking roar and the sound of metal crashing against metal.
When the rumbling stops, and silence fills the air, I look at Mayhem. “Why?”
“Because we were so preoccupied with whether we could, we never stopped to think if we should,” he says.
“It was going to be too perfect, too… wrong,” Havoc says.
“You’re still going to get paid,” Mayhem says. “The full thousand.”
That snaps me back to myself. “I will?”
“Of course. Your work was flawless. And I know that, if we had kept building, the thing we would have built together would have worked like a dream. Or a dream of a nightmare.”
Havoc nods. “It would have. A stunning nightmare. I’ve never seen someone weld so well.”
“We’ve got the cash here. After a day like today, take it back to your family, put some of it aside for Charlie, and then spend a little on yourself. Have a good time. Get all of this out of your system and enjoy yourself with the people who matter most.”
“We’ll put in a word with Rabid, too.”
Not long after, I’m sitting astride my bike with a thick wad of bills in my pocket and one goal on my mind: spending this cash on the people that matter.
And I know exactly who I’m going to spend it on.
Chapter Seventeen
Emily
I sink into the couch, my body metamorphosing into languid gelatin. This house might be vacant, but whoever lived here before sure knew how to shop for furniture. This couch is less a couch and more a cloud wrapped in fabric. I sigh, and all of last night’s madness — not to mention the fact that I couldn’t sleep until it was almost dawn — that turned my body into a mess of stress, knots, and soreness, fades away like fog in a breeze.
Beside me, Charlie coos and plucks at the bandage on his arm.
“You did good today, Charlie,” I murmur. My words come out slurred and my tongue feels like it doesn’t belong to me. I release a deep sigh as my eyelids flutter closed. It’s barely after sunset, but my body is begging for sleep.
If only I could sleep, but I can’t, because I told Hunter I’d watch Charlie all day, including take him to his doctor’s appointment, while he took care of whatever business needed to be taken care of with the MC. Not that I mind — Charlie’s cute and I want to make sure he has everything he needs, and Hunter… well, Hunter excites me in ways I swore I wouldn’t think about for a long time, but can’t do a thing to fight.
I wonder how much long he’s going to be.
Because, besides being unable to fight the overwhelming sensations that Hunter stirs in my heart, I can’t fight the sleep that’s creeping over me, either. As I let my eyes close, the distant hum of the refrigerator and occasional creaks of the aging house become a lullaby. Charlie's soft breathing beside me is a reminder of the innocence that somehow survives in this chaotic world full of psychotic ex-boyfriends.
Charlie shifts closer, his small hand reaching out to touch mine. His fingers are warm, and I can feel his trust in the simple gesture. The room grows quieter, and my heartbeat slows to match the rhythm of Charlie's. As time inches forward, the lines between reality and dreams blurs. My thoughts drift like leaves on a stream, each one lazily passing before being swept away by the current of impending sleep.
But as much as they’re dreams, so many of them look like reality. Like this moment, where I’m as peaceful as I ever thought I could be considering the terror I felt last night.
This moment, with Charlie half-asleep beside me, with my tired body finally relaxing, with everything with Jay seeming so far away, with Hunter hopefully soon to arrive, it’s as if I skipped five, ten years into my ideal future, where I’ve finished pharmacy school, established myself, and built the family I always dreamed about.
