I tried to focus through the daze.
My hands fell from my stomach, and a long slash of torn flesh branded my middle, blood everywhere.
Inès had left her mark on me.
Nothing came out of my mouth, but I screamed.
“Hey, Boner.”
Butler’s voice brought me back to Earth, to the club meeting room, to the empty gun case.
“What do you want to do about this?”
I rubbed a hand across my prickly scar. “Need to find out who took it and why,” I replied.
I have to be sure.
“Let’s do it.”
“Get ready. I got to go home, change clothes, change bikes, then I’ll meet you back here in an hour. We’re gonna pay the Flames in Nebraska a visit.”
Butler’s blue eyes flashed at me. “Right behind you, brother.”
“HI.” Jill was perched on my front steps, halfway up and halfway down. Her eyes skidded over me, and my stomach clenched. I’d done that—planted that hesitation, that doubt in her.
“Hey.”
“Um, I’m not bothering you, am I?” Jill gestured back to her car. “I can go—”
“No, you’re not bothering me. I just got out of the shower.” I rubbed a hand down my bare chest, and her eyes followed the movement. Her cheeks flushed, and she quickly averted her gaze.
She wouldn’t have done that before. Before, she would’ve grinned at me and made a flirtatious comment or made a move on me. Now, this fence of fucking propriety had shot up between us. I didn’t like it. I didn’t like a barrier between me and Jill, especially one I couldn’t see or climb or tear down with my hands.
“Get in here.” I held open my door for her.
She climbed up the last steps and shrank through the doorway, as if she were entering a portal to the dreaded realm of the unknown.
Her gaze spun over my living room furniture, the U-shaped open kitchen, the huge front bay window I had fixed up with a custom cushioned seat that doubled as storage. Her eyes finally landed over the fireplace on Lock’s huge charcoal drawing of me on my Harley. The piece was a blur of movement, thrill, and self-determination that he and Grace had framed for me last Christmas.
“That’s you, isn’t it?” she asked.
“Yeah, Lock drew it.”
“He’s so talented.”
“He is.”
Jill licked her lips. “You said you’d be back from North Dakota this morning, and I just dropped Becca off at her Aunt Penny’s, so I thought I’d stop by.”
“Glad you did.”
“I like your house,” she said, rooted to her spot in the middle of the entry way.
“Thanks. Got it on a foreclosure about seven years ago. Been fixing it up here and there.”
She took in the polished wood, her eyes widening, as if she’d suddenly realized she was stuck in the center of an iced-over lake. “It’s beautiful. You don’t see this much anymore.”
“I finally refinished the floors. I’m a traditionalist at heart.”
She peered into my living room. “It seems big for someone on his own.”
“I like open space. My own, especially.”
She only nodded.
“What is it?” I asked.
“I completely understand. I haven’t had my own space in a long, long time.”
“You’ll get there.”
She raised her head and let loose a small smile. I captured that sunbeam in my chest and felt its heat diffuse in my system. But the distance between us remained like a cold slab of stone separating us.
“Jill, come here.”
Her posture straightened. “I came over to apologize for the other night and tell you that we don’t have to keep this charade going.” She let out a breath she’d seemed to be holding on to forever.
“What charade?”
Her eyebrows lifted. “I thought after the other night on the couch—”
“Jill, I wouldn’t have had you in my bed that first night at the club if I didn’t mean it, if I didn’t want you there.”
She fidgeted, one hand rubbing up and down her opposite forearm.
“Firefly.” I reached out my hand toward her.
She stared at it, and my throat burned.
“Jillee, please, baby.”
She took three steps toward me and laid her hand in mine. Cool, soft.
I brought it to my lips. “I’m sorry for getting up and leaving the way I did that night.”
“No, I’m sorry. I went overboard. I usually do. Not that I usually…you know…” She blushed. “What I mean is, I’m sorry I brought up all those difficult memories for you and made you uncomfortable, then I only made it worse when I said your name.”
I pulled her in close, and she finally pressed into my chest.
All the tension I’d been carrying in my shoulders and back released. “Stop. You didn’t do nothing wrong. I overreacted.”
“But if that’s the way you feel, Boner, that’s the way it is.”