Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 68583 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 343(@200wpm)___ 274(@250wpm)___ 229(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 68583 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 343(@200wpm)___ 274(@250wpm)___ 229(@300wpm)
Something was telling me to stay far, far away.
The doorbell rang, and I glanced at the door.
Holt started to cry.
Dang it.
“Don’t like loud things,” he said. “I wouldn’t either if I had a father that screamed at the drop of a hat and woke me up like that.”
When he put it like that…
“When I was pregnant, and I was sleeping, Joey would scream,” I said. “Right next to me sometimes. I’d jolt awake, and sometimes I’d feel the baby jolt awake, too.”
Sympathy rocketed through me, and that was the first positive emotion I’d felt toward Holt in a while.
Four months old, and that was the first time?
I scrubbed my hand over my face and didn’t bother to look behind me as Copper walked with my screaming kid to the door.
I had to fight the urge to run screaming out of the room.
Six
The term ‘bear with me’ can mean one of two things. One, be patient. Two, the zoo heist was a success.
—Text from Keely to Copper
COPPER
My mind was absolutely reeling.
I wasn’t sure how I’d found myself in this particular position, but I found that I didn’t absolutely hate it.
I opened the door after taking a quick glance through the peephole, and stared at Webber.
Webber had his own baby in his hands, and he was pacing.
Webber’s baby was much smaller than the one that I was holding, and I had to laugh at Webber’s frazzled look.
Webber’s eyes came to me, then directly went down to the kid in my arms, and he said, “What the fuck’s going on?”
I jerked my chin to have him follow me inside.
The moment the door closed behind him, I turned to see Baker all but hightailing it out of the room.
“Who was that?” he asked.
I was about to start explaining when there were quick feet returning—and the only reason I could hear them over the babies screaming was because she was sprinting, pounding on the wood floor as if they were desperate to get away.
She looked frantically at me, then Webber, before all but launching herself outside.
I tensed, ready to toss a baby to Webber, when I thought about her being out on that balcony by herself, but the door slammed and she all but threw herself onto the couch that Keely had put out there when she’d moved in.
The tenseness left my body.
“What the fuck?” he asked. “You were about to yeet that kid.”
I shook my head, trying to clear it, then explained.
Webber listened for a long moment before he said, “I was about to come ask you to watch this baby for a bit, but doesn’t sound like I can leave him here.”
“Him?” I asked.
“It’s a boy.” He nodded, then looked slightly pained. “I’m not sure if your situation is more fucked up or Reign’s is.”
“What’s going on?” I asked, curious to hear about Reign.
Though I didn’t feel the need to fix it for Reign like I did for Baker.
Which was odd seeing as Reign had been a friend once upon a time.
Maybe it was because I’d felt a calling toward Baker based on the relationship Shad and I had?
“Long story short, Reign’s brother, Sonny, is really fucked up. Has been being abused for so long that I’m not even sure he’ll ever be normal again. He wants his kid, but his kid is keeping him from getting the help that he needs, and Reign’s having her own issues, and I just think the kid needs to be with someone else for a while so I can get both of them straightened out.”
I stared at my club president and best friend. “What are you getting from this? Why help at all?”
An instant wave of regret washed over me. I shouldn’t have thrown this at Webber. I should’ve dealt with Reign on my own.
Webber’s eyes went intense for a second before he said, “Seely.”
Seely was his sister, and a subject that Webber never, ever touched.
I knew a lot of it, having pieced it together over the last fifteen years as Webber had given me little bits of information here and there.
She’d been abused a lot like Keely had when she was young, but Webber hadn’t saved his sister like I had mine.
And Webber’s older brother, Boyce, had been the abuser.
Webber had tried and failed to take Boyce out, and the reason he was still alive had a lot to do with the fact that Boyce was now the president of his own MC, one of the most dangerous outlaw motorcycle clubs in the nation—the Potshots MC.
The Potshots and the Truth Tellers had an understanding.
They stayed away from us, and we stayed away from them.
The only thing that really saved us from being in an all-out war was the fact that the Potshots were based out of Illinois.
But God help them if they ventured anywhere near Dallas.