Inès shuffled beside me. I took my hand from my pocket and peeked at my fist, the long chain of dark red beads hanging from it. The two free ends swung at my side. I’d broken her precious rosario. I’d ruined it. It was now just a chain of stones of dried blood, not beautiful any longer, its supernatural powers destroyed.
A moan escaped the back of my throat, and my lips quivered as a wave of emotion slammed into me. She was really gone, and I was alone. This broken chain was all I had left of her.
I sucked in a deep breath and stuffed the rosario back in my pocket. At least I’d gotten something of hers to keep. She could have the cross. She would need it to protect her in that box in the ground.
I’d get by.
“TANIA’S HERE!” Grace shut down her phone and slid it in her pocket.
“She’s back?” I asked, taking the work orders I needed off her desk.
“She’s back. Finally. It’s been two months too long,” Grace said.
Becca held her arms up at me. “Bo!”
I lifted her high up, her legs and arms swimming in the air, and then I squeezed her in my arms.
“You’re going to spoil her, always picking her up every time she bats her eyelashes at you,” Grace said.
“Ah, I’m a sucker for this girl. End of story.”
Whenever Grace had Becca at the office, I’d sneak in to see her. She remembered me from our trip to the supermarket a while back and liked all the funny faces I made at her. Not to mention, when I held her on my lap, we’d play peekaboo, and she’d hide behind my hair.
One afternoon, maybe the second time I’d seen her at the office, Grace had asked me to watch her for a few minutes when an important call had come through.
I’d taken Becca in my lap. “Becca, Boner,” I said to her, popping the B’s of our names really loudly.
She’d become fascinated with my lips, and I kept doing it.
“B-ecca, B-oner!”
Becca’s face had lit up, and she shrieked, her hand going to my mouth, pulling on my lips. I did it again and again, both of us laughing in our corner of the office.
Then, it happened.
“Bo! Bo!”
“Yeah, yeah, okay. Sure, Bo-Bo, it is.” I tweaked her chin.
“There she is.” Grace’s voice snapped me back to reality, her eyes trained on a vehicle entering the open gate in the distance.
She turned to me. “You got Becca, or should I—”
“You go ahead. I’ve got her.”
Grace dashed out the door toward the yard where Tania’s Yukon was pulling in. A bike suddenly roared around Tania’s vehicle and came to a stop by the line of our bikes.
It was Butler.
“Fuck me,” I muttered to myself. “Oh, sorry, Becs. Damn.”
With Becca in my arms, I made my way out the door to the thick of the yard where Butler swung off his bike.
“Dude! It’s about time!” Dready hollered.
Butler ripped off his lid, and his face split into a grin a mile wide. Dawes, Bear, Kicker, and Tricky came out of the clubhouse and the shop, crowding around him, hugging him. Lock stood to the side, his arms folded.
Time might heal all wounds but way the fuck slowly for some of us.
I clamped a hand on Lock’s shoulder. His teeth dragged across his bottom lip.
Last year, Butler and Grace had had a short-lived fling before she and Lock had finally gotten their act together. It had turned out to be more fucked-up club business than personal feelings—at least for Grace—but thank fuck all that mess had finally been put to rest and was behind us.
“Give her to me,” Lock muttered.
I handed Becca over to him, and she immediately squashed her face in his broad chest. He put his hand on her back and made his way toward Grace and Tania.
I headed for Butler. “Well, well, well.”
That huge white-toothed grin of his beamed at me, his light-blue eyes dancing. “Get over here, you crazy fuck,” he growled.
We lunged at each other, hands slapping backs. He’d been an unruly prospect when he first started out, a temperamental and sometimes self-indulgent one who’d met with many holes and ditches on his road, but in the end, he was a good brother, a good man. I was glad to see him again, here where he belonged.
“Jump around?” he asked about our president.
“Yeah. Actually, he’s—”
“It’s about time. Where the fuck have you been?” shouted Nina, marching toward Butler.
Nina, our surprise guest, had arrived the other day with her bodyguard, Led, announcing herself to the club. Led was Flames of Hell. Turns out, so was Nina.
Butler froze. “What are you doing here?” His voice was suddenly several octaves lower.
A hush settled over the yard. Jump appeared, crossing his muscled arms with a sneer on his face, like he’d bitten into broken glass yet actually enjoyed the crunch. “What’s the matter? Not happy to see your old lady?”
Butler’s eyes drilled into Jump and then shifted to Nina.
Butler had an old lady, a woman with a family connection to the Flames of Hell, and he hadn’t even bothered to tell me about it.
“When did you get here?” Butler asked her, his voice sharp. “We’d said next week.”