Dauntless (Sons of Templar MC #5)(91)
“What the f*ck happened now?” he gritted out, his mind immediately going to Becky.
“They got all the Tuckers. Except one.”
He knew who it was before Bull confirmed it.
“Dylan.”
“Fuck!” he roared in frustration.
He found a sense of calm. They’d get him. He’d get him. Because he had to.
It was that simple.
Chapter Twenty-One
“Love her, but leave her wild.”
-Atticus
One month later
“I want you to move in with me.”
I shifted my eyes from the skin that was turning into something beautiful, covering the ugly—on the outside, at least—to Gabriel’s honeyed gaze. “What?”
He frowned at me. “You heard me.”
I frowned back. “Yes, I heard, but I was giving you a chance to rectify your Tourette’s.”
He grinned at me, reaching out to play with my fingers.
That was okay, that touch. We’d worked our way up to it, and his patience was reminiscent of a monk. Night spent watching stupid movies at opposite ends of the sofa, that invisible glass between us. There were moments, a lot of them actually, when he caught himself about to stroke my face, bring me to his body, kiss me. He stopped himself before contact was made.
Every time, every single time, I was both relieved and disappointed.
And each time, there was a little more disappointment and a little more relief.
I was healing.
It was a slow process.
Snail’s pace.
A frustrating one at that. Even now, a month later, I still had the constant itch, constant need for nothingness when I woke up and went to sleep overflowing with the weight of it all. Of everything. And no matter how much sleep I got—which ranged from not enough to too much—I couldn’t beat the exhaustion. Because from dawn till dusk, I was fighting. And the battle was rough, and gritty, and ugly.
But I was winning.
I think.
Obviously I didn’t go back to stripping after the whole fiasco that everyone kindly pretended didn’t happen.
Cade had walked up to me in Gabriel’s kitchen the next morning, his eyes soft. “You good at math?”
I frowned at him through my coffee mug. “Math?” I repeated. I’d only had two coffees, but even at full Bex I reasoned I’d still be confused by the greeting. These macho bikers had their own language that I needed to become fluent in if I planned on living in their world.
I was finding I kind of was.
Maybe.
“Accounts, expenses, that type of shit.”
I nodded slowly. I had been premed, and I had a logical brain. All that chemical and number crap had come easy to me. It had rules, limitations. I liked that in the limitless world I was living in. It was comforting.
He gave me a small smile. “Good. We need someone since our current bookkeeper is useless.” His gray stare flickered to Gabriel, who was leaning against the stove, sipping from his own cup and wearing low-slung sweats. And nothing else.
I should have gotten an award or something for maintaining eye contact with Cade the entire conversation.
Okay, not the entire conversation. Maybe like eighty percent of it.
“Words hurt, you know,” Gabriel shot back in a faux wounded voice.
I rolled my eyes and focused on my coffee.
“So?” Cade asked, looking back to me.
My eyes, which had crept back to Gabriel’s abs, snapped to Cade. “So?”
He did the mouth twitch. “You want the job?”
He had my full attention then. A job where I didn’t have to sell my body? I didn’t want to seem too eager, like jump up and down or anything, so I took another sip. “What’s the pay like?” I asked, playing it cool “More than what you got on the stage.”
“I got pretty good tips.”
“Including tips. It’s still generous.”
I nodded. “And the benefits?”
“Full.”
I took another sip, and then something occurred to me. “Just so we’re clear, this isn’t charity, right? Because I don’t need that.”
The mouth twitch disappeared. “No, it’s not,” he said firmly. “We need someone who won’t run our business to the ground, and Gwen mentioned you’d been premed so I figured you’d be smarter than someone who didn’t graduate high school.” He gave Gabriel a look, though not at his abs like I had been. He moved his attention back to me. “We need you. It’s not charity. I’ll expect you to work.”
I gaped at him. “Wow, I think that’s the longest and most complete sentence I’ve ever heard you say.”
The mouth twitch came back. “So that’s a yes?”
“That’s a yes.”
He was right; it wasn’t charity. It was hard work. The books were a f*cking mess and it took me a week to get them in order again. But I loved it. Got lost in the numbers and the logic of it all. I could find it there, some form of escape from my world free of logic.
So that was a part of it.
Not the biggest.
He was the biggest. And now he was sitting there, asking that. Something that would shake up my only just-settled world. Or as settled as chaos could be.