Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 69026 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 345(@200wpm)___ 276(@250wpm)___ 230(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69026 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 345(@200wpm)___ 276(@250wpm)___ 230(@300wpm)
It was a liability, and one day, they just might force him to talk.
“You need to leave,” I said. “You need to get the hell out of this club, and never look back, or I won’t be able to protect you.”
The others would kill him for what he’d done.
Not even Apollo knew.
I’d done this research on my own.
I’d borne the burden on my own for weeks now, and it was slowly killing me inside.
I liked Jasper.
I wanted him here.
But if I couldn’t trust him…
“Let me explain,” he said softly.
I shook my head. “There’s no explaining that’ll ever help. You need to leave. Now.”
A familiar car pulled into the driveway of my shop, and any other time, I would’ve smiled like a lovesick fool.
Not this time.
Jasper sighed and started walking, his hands in his pockets ready to pull out the keys to his bike.
He was parallel with Silver, who was waving at him and saying hi, when it happened.
The screech of tires.
Silver’s black hair whipping around.
Gunshots.
Then blood spraying in the air.
Twenty-Two
The best safe word you can use is ‘meatloaf.’ It means ‘I would do anything for love, but I won’t do that.’
—Text from Silver to Aella
SILVER
“You’re staying here, right?” Gunner asked as he stopped at the bottom of the driveway near to where I’d parked.
I nodded. “I’ll be here for a while. I just want to…” Get out of the house so I don’t feel like I’m suffocating but do it somewhere safe where I don’t suffocate because I’m hyperventilating. “I want to be able to hang out and not worry about where I’m at.”
Gunner nodded.
He made eye contact with Webber across the top of my head and did a wave, before waiting for me to get level with Jasper before taking off.
I’d thought, at first, that the screeching of the tires was from Gunner taking off.
But that wasn’t what happened.
The look of horror on Jasper’s face was enough to enlighten me that something was very wrong.
He moved fast, and I was down on the ground before I could even blink.
Some sort of instinct kicked in as the gunshots sounded, and then I was crying out as the body on top of mine jerked.
Something hot and sharp touched my arm, and then warmth spread around me, covering my face and neck. My torso.
The body on top of me was so fucking heavy that I found it hard to breathe.
Screaming erupted all around me, and I started to cry, knowing in my heart that the man on top of me had just taken bullets meant for me.
“Jasper,” I whimpered. “Are you okay?”
He groaned and said, “No,” directly into my ear.
“Do you have bullet holes in your body right now?” I wondered.
“Pretty sure I have three of ’em,” he confirmed. “Can’t feel my legs.”
I pressed his shoulder and said, “I think something fell on top of us. I can’t breathe.”
Jasper was shoved off of me seconds later, and I was staring at Webber’s face with the sky framed around him.
“Baby,” he said. “Are you okay?”
“I think so,” I said. “Something felt like it pinched me earlier, but it doesn’t hurt anymore.”
“Probably spray from the bullets hitting the gravel.”
Gunner was here?
When did that happen?
“It happened when I heard the gunshots and turned around,” he replied to my obviously said aloud statement. “I hit the bitch with my brand-new motorcycle.”
I blinked.
The sirens started, and my breath hitched. “Is he okay, Piers?”
Please, let him be okay.
Please, please, please.
The scuff of small rocks on gravel had me turning my head, and what I saw made my heart speed up.
Jasper was reaching for me, trying to soothe my obvious worry.
Webber looked from me to Jasper and back and said, “He’s fine.”
But his eyes…his eyes said he was lying.
I closed my eyes and prayed harder than I’d ever prayed.
Bleeding. Broken. And dying.
Jasper was still thinking about me.
When my gaze met Webber’s once again, it said clearly, “You’ll fix this.”
As in, whatever beef he had with Jasper didn’t matter anymore.
Jasper had saved my life.
He wouldn’t pay for any past mistakes, I’d make sure of it.
“Who knew that old bitch had it in her?” Jasper rasped, the sound of the heart rate monitor quietly beeping in the background.
I looked from Jasper to Gunner to Webber and back. “What am I missing?”
“The old lady across the street who reports him to the HOA board every chance she gets thought shooting up his place of business might scare him. But she had no goddamn clue just how hard it would be to hold on to that gun. When she fired, she missed the trash can and fired at y’all.”
“So let me get this straight,” I said. “An old lady, your neighbor, just gets a wild hair and decides, oh, I’m going to go shoot up his place of business because he parks in the road too much? That makes zero sense.”