Chapter Fifteen

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Riff

"Motherfuckers," I growled, kicking the door at my side of the empty goddamn house, watching the wood splinter but finding no satisfaction in the destruction.

From the looks of things, the house had been empty for a long time. Possibly even since the day I took Vienna from them and ran.

The dishes in the sink were growing five different kinds of mold, fuzzy black, yellow, and gray spreading up out of the stainless steel, a science experiment let go too far.

On the living room table, there were remnants of the men cleaning their wounds from where they'd been shot.

But everything had a thin coat of dust on it.

I mean, the place was a fucking sty even before it was abandoned. Clothes were piled sky-high in heaps on the floor, the garbages were overflowing, the fridge was full of old takeaway steadily rotting, and the black mold climbing across the showers and walls in the bathroom had clearly been there much longer than the few months since I took Vienna.

"Took our money and ran," Raff said, nudging a shoe out of his way as we walked back toward the front room of the house.

Slash was going to be fucking furious.

I mean, not that any of us expected them to be sitting on that money or anything. But we at least planned on picking them off and leaving them to rot out here in the middle of nowhere, where no one would find them for months or years. If ever.

The front door opened, and Colter walked in, decked out in an impressive amount of winter camo, since his job was to wait in the woods to take out anyone who might get away from us and make a run for it.

"No signs that anyone has moved around the grounds for a long time," he told us, further confirming what we already knew.

On a growl, I picked up a glass beer bottle with my gloved hand and hauled it at the wall, watching it splinter and fall to the floor.

I never craved violence. I wasn't someone like Crow, who seemed to enjoy that shit. It was simply a part of the job. Like, in some ways, like those who worked in law enforcement or the military. It wasn't the job, but it was an aspect of it that you had to learn to compartmentalize.

But I wanted fucking blood.

I wanted to spill it slowly and painfully. I wanted to drag it out for days, for weeks. I wanted to hear him cry and beg for mercy. Then to show him fucking none.

I wanted him to taste a fraction of the pain and fear that he inflicted upon Vienna.

Then, as I was taking his last fucking breath for him, I wanted to tell him he was losing it because of her.

This was the only reason I'd agreed to go on the road again so soon, when I felt she still needed me there with her.

Because I wanted to slay her demon for her.

So she never had to worry about him again.

Especially after, one night, when she woke up from a bad nightmare, and she'd let me into the bed with her, she curled into me, and she spilled a lot of her story, told me what had been done to her.

Fuck, I wanted him to suffer.

Then I wanted him gone.

And now… the chances of that felt a lot fucking slimmer.

"I know," Raff said, placing a hand on my shoulder and squeezing.

"I don't think you do," I said, my teeth aching from clenching my jaw so tight.

"You love her," Colter said, making me jolt and turn around, ready to object.

But, fuck, he was right.

I loved her.

Of course I did.

Everyone in the clubhouse did.

"We all do," I agreed, nodding.

"True," Colter said, but shook his head. "But not the way you do."

And, fuck if those words didn't feel like a kick to the gut. Because he was right. It was just a reality I'd been burying because, well, because Vienna didn't need that shit from me right now. She was still healing, still learning how to trust any man to just be around her, let alone get close to her.

But there was no denying it.

I mean, fuck, the way desire pinged off of every nerve ending when she was nearby was almost upsetting. It was… alarming how much I wanted her. How I couldn't stop thinking about her. How every time I tried to think of my future, she was right there in it with me.

"It's not wrong," Colter said, seeming to read me a little too well for someone who barely knew me.

"Yeah, it is."

"Why? Do you think she's not deserving of love because of what's been done to her?" he asked, a hard edge to his voice.

"No. Of course not. That's not it. It's… she doesn't need me panting after her like a dog. She's been through enough from men."

"I'm not saying you need to try to hump the woman's leg," he said, snorting. "I'm saying that there's nothing wrong with being there for her, with waiting for her."

"That's a lot of pressure to put on her," I insisted.

"It's only pressure if you pressure her," he said, shrugging. "Being there for her, letting her guide things forward, you could do that."

He was right, I guess.

I mean, we'd been at a bar the night before, and pretty women were a surplus and eligible men were hard to come by, so we'd been prime real estate. But just the thought of putting a hand on one of them made me feel sick to my stomach, like I'd be betraying Vienna.

I was the only one who went back to their room alone. Well, that wasn't even right. I hung out in the all-night coffee place because Raff brought a woman back to the room we were sharing.

Even just the smell of another woman's perfume in the room when I got back to it turned my stomach sour.

So, yeah, there was no one else.

And if there wasn't anyone else, why the fuck did it matter if I waited for Vienna to be ready?

"Yeah," I agreed, sucking in a deep breath, then instantly regretting it as I probably breathed in millions of fucking mold spores.

"We'll get these guys for her," Raff said. "We're just going to have to get Rook on this, now that we know they're not here. He'll find them. He's good at that shit."

That was true.

As much as I hated that I couldn't be done with this, I had to believe that I would find him one day. Then I could enjoy inflicting revenge in Vienna's name.

"Let's just take a look around," Colter said, grimacing at the house. "Make sure they didn't leave any clues about where they might be heading."

With that, we spread out.

I didn't realize I found myself in the leader's room until I was digging through his closet.

And there in the back, wedged like forgotten trash, I found something that didn't belong to him.

A woman's purse.

One of the kind that women wore in the summer, slouchy and crocheted or knitted or some shit like that.

My mind flashed back to the white dress I'd found Vienna in. Definitely a spring or summery dress.

I reached a bit desperately for the bag, yanking back the zipper, and reaching inside to find a wallet.

Inside, sure enough, I found her license, bank card, store loyalty cards.

A growl moved through me as I put the wallet back in. But it wasn't until I was zipping it back up that I noticed something I'd missed before.

A spot of dark red on the material.

Blood.

I must have growled again, because Colter moved into the room. His gaze slid to the back, then back to me. "Is that hers?"

"Yeah," I said, jaw aching from clenching it.

"Are you going to give it back to her?" he asked as I followed him back out into the main room.

"I don't know," I admitted. "If I give it back to her, she will know we were here, and that they are gone. And we don't know where they went. Which might… set her progress back. But I don't want to lie to her either."

"Maybe you can ask her shrink," Raff said.

I mean, maybe that wouldn't technically break the therapist/client thing, since I was just asking for advice on how to handle a situation with Vienna.

"Worth a try," I agreed.

We didn't find anything else of note in the house, so we made our way back out, frustrated and disappointed.

Me, because I didn't get my revenge.

Then, I imagine, because we were almost a day out of our way now.

Ten days was a short ass trip for us.

It took, on the low end, forty hours to get from Shady Valley to Golden Glades. But with a third person along for the ride, we were able to do much longer days, each of us driving a solid six hours each, then crashing at a motel for the last six, everyone decompressing.

Still, it was cutting it close, considering we had two gun shows to hit up, and three different meet-ups off of online ads to do as well.

But I'd been the one to put my foot down about not being away for any longer than that. I mean, Vienna hadn't gone a single night without me since we met. Longer than ten felt impossible.

Even if I felt a little guilty that I was rushing Colter's first road trip and visit to our sister chapter.

The only thing making me feel slightly less guilty was the talk with Morgaine I'd had before I left. Where she'd insisted that maybe this was a good thing for Vienna. To learn to self-soothe, to feel safe without me literally right there all the time.

And since I was constantly worried about her healing journey, I took those words to heart.

I knew she was safe with my brothers there at the clubhouse. And the girls had promised to spend as much time around as possible, a few of them working out a schedule, so that one of them was always sleeping over in case she needed someone.

And she had Coach to help her decompress if she got too stressed. Not to mention her therapist.

She was going to be okay.

But I was still in a hurry to get back to her.

We hit up one more gun show as we made our way back to Shady Valley. An unplanned stop simply because we'd dumped all of our collected guns off in Golden Glades, and both Raff and Colter had insisted that it would be good to come back to Shady Valley with a fresh stock, that it would allow us not to do another road trip again so soon.

But to make up for that lost time, I insisted we drive all the way through the final day, not rest at a motel as usual.

All I could think about was getting back to her. To seeing her shoot me that smile she worked so hard in therapy to actually mean again. To hear her twinkling laughter as someone said something funny to her. To watch her curl up on literally any seat in the house to read her books. To feel her against me when she needed some comfort. To have her silky hair sift through my fingers.

Fuck, I just wanted to be near her again.

The absence was a pain right under my ribcage that intensified with each passing day apart.

With each mile marker we passed on the way to Shady Valley, I felt the pain start to ease. Until, finally, we were pulling down the main road, and I was barely paying attention to the lights and road signs as my gaze went to the clubhouse, watching it get closer and closer.

Raff or Colter must have told someone that we were in town, because I barely put the car into park before the front door was flying open.

Then she was running out, her copper hair flying out behind her.

If I didn't already know I had been slowly but surely falling in love with her, I would have known it right then as my heart expanded in my chest.

I rushed out of the car just in time to catch her as she flew up into my arms.

Holding onto her just as tightly as she held onto me, I whirled her in a circle, hearing a little squeal escape her even as I noticed something about her. Something different.

Her scent.

She didn't smell like the girly shit that Colter and Morgaine had gotten her.

No.

She smelled like my soap.

Like she'd been using it while I'd been gone, wanting my scent all over her to remember me by.

Fuck, my heart grew a few sizes bigger at that.

I released her down onto her feet, my grip loosening only as hers did.

But she didn't let me go.

She slid her hands up my stomach, up my chest, then grabbed the sides of my face as she went up on her tippy toes.

Then sealed her lips to mine.