Fire Inside (Chaos, #2)(72)

When Tack stopped laughing, he looked back at me and replied simply, “Yes.” I opened my mouth to say something and again failed in this endeavor. “Though, only when it’s important and she’s bein’ a pain in my ass.”

“Are you inferring I’m a pain in your ass?” I enquired.

“Nope,” he shook his head, grinning. “But, you give me lip on this, I won’t infer it. I’ll just say it straight out.”

“Tack—”

“Go on the date, Lanie.”

“Tack!” I snapped and he bent over my desk, putting his hand on it and pinning me again with his blue eyes.

“Do it for Tyra,” he said softly and I shut my mouth.

How the heck was I going to get out of this?

“She’s worried,” Tack went on. “Heal yourself, help my woman stop worrying. Go on the date.”

I closed my eyes then opened them and nodded.

I mean, what else could I do?

Tack smiled.

Damn.

“Good, glad we had this talk,” he declared. “And Red’s gonna be glad you’re takin’ a shot at life again and I hope, it works out or it doesn’t but it whets your appetite to have back what you’re missin’, you’ll be glad.”

It really stunk that he was such a good guy and he was here doing this for me and I couldn’t tell him this was all unnecessary and they could stop worrying.

“Okay well, thanks again, Tack,” I said.

He straightened away from my desk. “Go home. Do somethin’ fun. Whatever. Just get the f*ck out of here,” he ordered, throwing out an arm to indicate my office.

“I was just leaving,” I informed him and got another grin before he moved to my door.

He stopped in it and turned back.

I should have lifted up my mental shield and braced.

I didn’t.

So when he shot his arrows, they tore straight through my flesh.

“Don’t regret what you did. Don’t regret the decisions you made. You did right. You followed your heart and that is never wrong, darlin’. But shit went down and it was extreme. That’s over, Lanie. Long over. Move on.”

I didn’t do right.

He knew that. I knew that. Tyra knew it.

He was just being nice.

Forgiveness is beautiful and it feels good when someone gives that gift to you.

But it’s one thing for someone you wronged to forgive you.

It was another to forgive yourself.

Too much was lost. Rivers of it. Rivers of Ty-Ty’s blood on the floor of a house I’d never been to and she’d only been there once. That blood flowed because of me.

It could have meant we lost everything, Tack and me.

But, the way he loved her, mostly Tack.

He forgave me.

I just didn’t forgive myself.

I didn’t tell him any of this.

I just said, “Okay.”

He nodded. “Okay, darlin’. Have a good night.”

“You too. Tell Ty-Ty I said hi.”

“Will do. Later.”

“Later, Tack.”

He lifted a hand to flick it out and then I watched him walk out of my office, thinking yet again my best friend was very lucky.

Then again, so was Tack.

I looked at the clock on my computer and realized to be in time for pizza, I wasn’t going to be able to get home and change.

I shut it down, pulled out my phone and called Hop to tell him I might be a bit late.

Then I got out of my office to live my life.

*

I heard a Harley. Lying on my couch, reading and drinking a glass of wine after a fun dinner with Hop and his kids, conditioned to that roar meaning good things, I listened absentmindedly but contentedly thinking about that night’s dinner.

I thought about how Molly’s exuberance was catching. About how nice it felt when a little girl told you she liked your outfit. About how Cody might not look like his dad but he acted exactly like him. About how Hop deftly negotiated Molly’s severe dislike for all things sausage, “The juice leaks across the side, Dad!”, and Cody’s demand that we get a meat lover’s since, “Pizza doesn’t matter if it don’t got meat,” by buying two Beau Joe’s pizzas and muttering, “Leftovers for a week.”

He was not wrong, though he was understating it. One Beau Joe’s pizza could feed half a battalion.

So that Harley roar outside not only reminded me of all good things Hop and a great night with his kids that, after it was over, I knew I had nothing to be nervous about, but it made me smile.

I kept listening, not absentmindedly, when the roar stopped at the back of my house.

I aimed my eyes over my couch to the sliding glass doors and was shocked to see Hopper’s tall body materialize through the dark there.

“Open up, babe,” he called through the glass, and I set my Kindle aside and got up, quickly moving to the door, unlocking and opening it.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, shifting back as he slid through and shut the door. “Where are the kids? Is everything all right?”

He turned to me. “I don’t know. You tell me.”

Great.

I’d had this beginning conversational gambit once already from a biker that night when Tack visited me, and from the look of concern and inquisitiveness on Hop’s face, I was thinking I wouldn’t like this one much better.