Back at his place, Merritt had sat down too carefully on his couch, excruciatingly prim and proper, like all she had left were manners and hangnails.
“There’s nothing I can do,” he’d told her gruffly. He’d already told her the deal with Antony. Or what he could tell her, anyway. That the scumbag was leaving Louisiana and he wasn’t coming back, and there was a deal in place to make sure of that. The end. “It’s club business.”
“Of course it is,” she’d said in that bloodless voice with nothing behind her eyes at all, reminding him of how he’d found her on that roof earlier. That had sat in his gut like cement. “And obviously nothing is more important than club business. Especially not what Antony wanted to do to me.” She’d shifted that dead look to him. “Don’t worry, Greeley. I’m used to it.”
He’d pretty much hated the way she’d said that, to a violent degree that he had a hard time keeping to himself, but she was beaten up. She had bruises on her face and it was his fucking fault for not heading that asshole off before he got anywhere near her.
He wasn’t that much of a dick that he couldn’t bite his goddamned tongue. For the night, anyway.
“We’re not talking about some petty bullshit,” he’d told her, keeping his tone civil no matter what it cost him. “We’re talking about a full-on war. We can’t risk it. Especially because if it started because I ended that asshole the way he deserves, they’d pay me back in kind.” He’d waited until her eyes were on him instead of her scraped up hands. “Darlin’. They’d come for you first.”
Merritt had looked at him for a long, long while, and not in a way Greeley particularly liked.
“Funny,” she’d said at last, “I thought he already did.”
And it had taken every last bit of willpower he had not to lose it at that. Spectacularly.
But he hadn’t. Because she was fucked up and she was hurt, and he was a grown ass man who didn’t need to freak out all over her just because he wasn’t loving the weird way she was acting or the things coming out of her mouth.
Instead, he’d taken care of her. He’d made sure all her cuts and scrapes were clean and slathered in antibacterial shit. Then he’d cooked her dinner and made sure she ate it, insisting she had to get something in her stomach. And he’d felt vindicated when she’d cleared her plate and had gotten some color back in her cheeks.
Then he’d settled in like a fucking martyr for a night of watching whatever the hell she wanted on his huge television, keeping his hands to himself like a goddamned monk, because she was fragile and wounded and he wasn’t an animal.
But she’d been the one to move on him. Carefully.
“Are you sure?” he’d asked her gruffly when she’d moved closer to him, running her hand down his belly and sliding it over his cock when he thought her palms had to sting.
Not that his cock had cared, the selfish asshole.
“I’m sure.” She’d whispered that directly his ear, her mouth close and her breath hot. “I want you inside me, Greeley. I want you to wash it all away.”
He’d taken that challenge. He’d eased her out of her clothes, taking care not to rub her cuts or bruises the wrong way. Then he’d spread her out on his thighs right there on the couch, settling her astride him so she could prop her forearms on his shoulders. He’d taken his time working her onto his cock. She’d set a sweet, easy pace, and he’d let her. He’d played with her clit, making her come the first time, and then he’d kept her moving until she took the lead again. He’d pretended he couldn’t see all those storms wash across her face, making her eyes like thunder. He’d let her work it out, rocking herself to another gasping, shuddering finish in his lap.
He’d wanted to roll her beneath him and lose himself in her. He’d wanted to make her come a few more times to make absolutely fucking certain she was alive and well and entirely his. But instead he’d come a few moments after she did, so she could stay in control. Maybe she needed that after what she’d been through tonight. And what did he care, as long as she was here with him?
When she’d stirred against him he’d lifted her up and carried her into the bedroom, tucking her into the bed like she was the most precious thing in the world to him. Because she was. She wasn’t leading him around by his dick or whatever the fuck Digger had said. Greeley wished it was his dick that was the problem.
But his chest had been tight and he’d known it was something else entirely.
It always had been.
Now, he was fuming in that same bed in the middle of the night and saying nothing was not calming him down. At all.
“Why are you packing at three in the morning?” he asked her, not turning on a light. The moon was taking care of that. And he didn’t keep his voice low, either. Or anything like soft. “Or at all?”
She didn’t jump or freak out that he was awake, which he figured wasn’t the best sign. “I have to go.”
“Jesus Christ, Merritt. Get in bed. You’re tired and freaked out—”
“No,” she said, her voice harder than he’d ever heard it. It made him sit up, eyes narrow and gut tight. “I have to go. Lanie will be here in fifteen minutes.”
Greeley reached over and slapped on the light with enough force he was surprised the lamp didn’t splinter on contact.
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
She hoisted the strap of her duffel bag up to her shoulder, but all he could see were the scrapes on her face. Her pretty face that should never have had a mark on it besides those sixteen perfect freckles. He wanted to wrap her up and keep her safe forever, right here in his bed and in his house and all up in his life, and she was talking about leaving him.
Again.
She was always, always leaving him, and that tore at him. A bullet would have felt better. Several fucking bullets.
How the hell had they gotten back to the exact same place they’d been in five years ago? When he’d vowed this would never happen again? But he knew how.
Even now, while she stood there with that ornery look on her face, her duffel bag packed, and her friend on the way to extract her, he wanted her. He’d accepted he always would.
But that didn’t mean he wasn’t feeling the very strong urge to kick her ass.
“I’m talking about leaving Louisiana,” she told him, squaring her shoulders, because she had to know he wasn’t going to take this well. Of course she knew. That’s why she was sneaking out in the middle of the night. “I never planned to stay here. You know that. I was just laying low until the Antony situation resolved itself.”
“This is you feeling resolved?” He nodded at the duffel bag. “Sneaking away in the middle of the night like this was a drunken one-night stand?”
She obviously didn’t like that, but she didn’t cave. “I don’t want to have a fight about this. I don’t want you to lose your shit and get in my face about it like you did last time.”
“Seems to me that if you don’t want to do me the courtesy of having a fucking grown-up conversation about whatever the hell is going on in your head, you don’t get to tell me how or when to lose my shit about how you choose to act on it. You don’t give a fuck how you sneaking off might bother me, why should I care if me losing my shit gets to you?”
Merritt made a frustrated noise. “We’re from different worlds, Greeley.”
“Seems like we fuck right here in the same one.”
“I’m done,” she told him, hard and hot, but he could see the way those fine tremors shook through her. “I never should have come back here. You were right to tell me to stay away five years ago. I should have listened.”
She turned then, abruptly, and walked away from him. Through the bedroom door and down the hall. Greeley let her. Because he had to take a fucking breath before he tore down the whole damned house. He had to keep himself under control here, or he’d lose everything.
It crossed his mind that he hadn’t cared what he might lose, getting in Digger’s face earlier. But he couldn’t lose Merritt. No
t again.
He heard his front door open, then shut with a little temper behind it, and he muttered a series of vicious curses to himself. They didn’t help.
He rolled out of the bed, swiping up his jeans as he went. He stepped into them in the bedroom doorway, then buttoned them as he walked down the hall. When he pushed his way out his front door, the warm spring night was still and close, and Merritt stiffened where she stood in the grass below the steps.
The moon was fucking with him, bathing Merritt in silver and making her glow. Like he needed that shit. This sucked enough as it was.
“What happened?” he asked her, not trying too hard to make his voice accommodating. What mattered was he wasn’t yelling, and he hadn’t pinned her to a wall. He’d obviously matured. “You were loopy on the drive to the clubhouse, but fine.” He thought about it for a second. “What did the old ladies say to you?”
“Not a thing.”
She sounded pissed—but not necessarily at him, he thought. He knew what that looked like. It didn’t come with her walking away from him. It usually had her in his face. If she was scared of something tonight, it wasn’t him. Merritt had never been scared of him. It was one of the great many reasons she was the only woman he’d ever wanted as his old lady.
Maybe that was why he couldn’t get a handle on this. He knew what to do with an attack. But this was something else. It felt a lot like the same something else it had been five years ago, when she’d made it clear that even an attempt at a long distance thing was out of the question. He’d told himself that it never would have worked anyway, so good riddance—but the truth was, he would have tried. For her, there wasn’t a lot he wouldn’t try. But five years ago she’d had a fancy law school to go to and he’d been exactly who he was. An outlaw biker. On some level, he must have known that she deserved better than him if she wanted it, because he’d let her go, hadn’t he?
But she’d come back to him. And that changed everything.
“The old ladies talked about the life,” Merritt said, and he didn’t like the edge in her voice. “The many times they had to patch someone up, usually their own men. The many times they had to cower in the clubhouse with their children and hope no one killed them. And, of course, the times that cowering and waiting for death was spent in the company of skanks they were pretty sure fucked their husbands.”
“Is that what this is?” Greeley dragged a hand through his hair. “You haven’t given me one single indication that you won’t bail, Merritt. Not one reason to believe you’ll stick around. You ready to do that? Your duffel bag says no. And still, I haven’t touched another woman since you came home.”
“I don’t care who you fuck.” That sheen in her blue eyes said otherwise.
“If that’s true, great. If not, I’ll make any promise you want. But you have to stay here. With me.”
“No.” Her gaze slammed into his, too dark and filled with ghosts. “I’m not staying here. I’ve already been here too long.”
“Listen,” he said. Carefully. “Baby—”
“You make me feel powerless,” she threw at him, and she backed up when he jerked at that, like she’d landed a serious punch. “And I hate it.”
And for a long moment there was nothing but the way she stared back at him, her eyes big and haunted, like she was the one who was in agony here. Like she hadn’t just stabbed him through the fucking heart.
Headlights danced over the top of his drive, announcing Lanie’s arrival with perfect fucking timing.
Merritt swallowed like it hurt her, then shifted her hands on the strap of her duffel and started walking, as if she was considering throwing herself into Lanie’s car before it came to a complete stop. While Greeley stood there like his bare feet were welded to the dirt, like an asshole.
He was more than a little sick of that feeling.
“You’re so full of shit,” he told her, and he didn’t hide anything then. The venom. The pain. The heart she’d just ripped out of his body and stamped on—again. “This is the same crap as it was five years ago.”
“We have great chemistry, that’s all. It feels like more than it is. But it’s not.”
Her voice cracked, and he couldn’t help it. He was moving then, catching up with her and taking her shoulders in his hands, turning her to face him. He could see her eyes were full and bright, and her cheeks were wet. She was killing him.
“It’s not enough,” she told him. Urgently. “We shouldn’t keep pretending otherwise.”
He got down so his face was even with hers.
“Bullshit, Merritt.” She stiffened again, but he kept going. “This is the standard crap you always pull. You were mad about the club earlier. Now you’re mad about whatever the old ladies said. Or maybe you’re mad at me, I can’t tell. You feel powerless after you climbed all over me and took what you wanted earlier. We have chemistry? Whatever, babe. It’s one fucking excuse after the next.”
“I’m not making excuses. Once again, I’m trying to be realistic while you have a temper tantrum.”
“What you’re doing is what you always do. Looking for a reason to run.” He got his face a little closer to hers and didn’t hate it when her breath caught. “And this is not a temper tantrum, Merritt. If I was having a temper tantrum you’d be naked and my cock would be negotiating this situation. I think you know that. Or why would you have called for backup?”
She looked pale at that, but she didn’t back down. Not his girl. “I’m not running anywhere. I’m calmly walking away from a bad scene. And yeah, I got a ride, because maybe you haven’t noticed that Lagrange doesn’t have a taxi service. Not everything is about you.”
He noticed she ignored the part about his cock, which was probably wise.
“This is not a bad scene,” he growled at her, and his hands tightened slightly around her shoulders while he said it.
“You’re not the one who loses yourself.”
He didn’t have ways to count how wrong she was about that.
“I make you feel safe, Merritt, and you love it.” His voice was low. Intent. He could see right through her. Maybe that was what freaked her out. “That’s why you ran here to get away from that douche. That’s why you’re running now. You love me, baby, and you always have.”
She made a small noise, as if he’d pierced something in her. He kept going.
“You don’t want to leave me. You never did. Not even tonight, when I let that asshole get too close to you. That’s what scares the shit out of you. And that’s not feeling powerless or losing yourself. Deep down, you know what it is. You’ve been running away from it for years.”
He felt the shudder that worked through her then, deep and long, like it was tearing her apart from the inside. He saw the sheer torment in her eyes, and it killed him that he couldn’t fix it. Fix her.
Lanie pulled up, but didn’t get out of the car, which meant he might let her live. And Greeley had to stand there and watch his woman psych herself up to leave him.
Again.
It cost him, but he took his hands off her. He stepped back.
And he watched her sway there, as if she wasn’t steady on her feet without him. But he knew he couldn’t tell her that. He knew she wouldn’t listen. She had to get there herself or what was the point?
“Merritt.” He didn’t hide the urgency in his voice. “You’re in love with me. Since the moment you laid eyes on me in a strip club and, yeah, I know. That wasn’t how it was supposed to happen for Doc Broussard’s little brainiac princess. A biker in a strip joint wasn’t part of your big-city-lawyer life plan. But it happened all the same and you know as well as I do it changed everything, or you wouldn’t be here.”
She backed away from him and he let her. He wanted to flip Lanie’s car. He wanted to throw Merritt over his shoulder and lock her in his bedroom, naked, until she accepted the reality of this shit the way he had.
He wanted to set the night on fire.
But instead he stood there, tense and fur
ious and his hands in fists at his sides, and let her do this to them. Again.
For a moment, the light from Lanie’s headlights spilling across the lawn and sending the bugs into a cartwheeling frenzy, he thought she might break. He saw her waver. He saw the need and the longing in her eyes, the same way he’d seen it at her father’s house when he’d talked her off the roof. He thought that maybe, just maybe, it might win this time.
Her eyes welled up. She shook. And then she shook her head.
Greeley watched her disappear again, standing right there in front of him.
“You can’t run from me forever,” he told her, his voice ragged. It was too late and this sucked too hard. “Sooner or later, you’re going to have to face this.”
“No.” Her voice was barely a whisper, but it rocked him just the same as a shout. “I won’t.”
And then, for the second time in his life, Greeley watched the only woman he’d ever loved turn and walk away.
Just like five years ago, she didn’t look back.
Chapter 11
Lanie didn’t say a word.
She drove Merritt out to her little house in the sugarcane fields, where the moon danced over the deep green and made it all seem like a dream, and she didn’t push. She didn’t pry. When they got to her house she led Merritt inside, straight into her second bedroom, which was a tidy, cheerful space where Lanie kept her desktop computer and some books. She took a minute to move her shit off the spare bed, and then she kissed Merritt on the cheek. The unhurt cheek.
“Sleep,” she said, and if there was judgment or even curiosity in her voice Merritt was too tired to hear it. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Or later today. Whatever you want to call it.”
Merritt kicked off her shoes and crawled on the bed when Lanie pulled the door shut, not bothering to throw the sheets back out of her way. She curled up into a ball, her pulse pounding unpleasantly in all the places she was hurt, including her poor heart, and she was sure she wouldn’t sleep at all. How could she sleep? She was sure she’d stay awake for what little was left of the night. Maybe forever.