Fire Inside (Chaos, #2)(92)

He didn’t.

It was over.

That killed but I’d survived worse (I told myself) so now it was time to move on with my life. Do this. Fight the monster myself without Hop at my back.

And hope I won.

“I think this all might have to do with, uh… well, me getting you hurt, feeling guilt about it since you told me to dump Eli but also, mostly, that whole thing,” I waved my hand around, sloshing the wine I held dangerously, so I righted it and finished, “in Kansas City.”

“Do you think you need to talk to a professional?” she asked.

I put the wine to my lips, murmuring, “Maybe,” before I took a drink.

Her next question was voiced with hesitancy. “Do you want to talk about Kansas City?”

I didn’t.

Even so, I looked her straight in the eye and declared, “He used me as a shield.”

“I know,” she said so low I could barely here her.

“You know and you knew,” I stated and her head gave a slight jerk of confusion.

“I know and I knew?”

“You know what happened and you knew it would happen. That was what you tried to warn me about.”

She shook her head. “I didn’t know the Mob would find you in—”

“That’s not what I mean,” I cut her off. “You knew, in that situation or any situation in life, Elliott getting involved with the Mob at all stated it clear to you, he would not protect me.”

She sighed before she scooted closer, took another sip of wine, then locked her eyes with mine.

“Yes, I knew. There are some guys, and Elliott was one of them, that just aren’t built that way. Luckily, the Mob doesn’t normally enter someone’s life so they aren’t put to that test. I didn’t know, if it came down to bullets flying, he’d use you to take them for him. I just knew that he made a bad decision on how to invest money. Then, when he lost his money, he made a bad decision on how to get it back, and it just went downhill from there. So, yeah, I knew. But I didn’t love him, Lanie. Tack is the exact opposite of that. He’d fight, kill and die before he let anything happen to me, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t sometimes a pain in my ass. He is. Elliott made it worth it to you in his ways. Tack makes it worth it in his. It’s just the way it is.”

I couldn’t argue with this so I said nothing.

She took another sip of wine before she finished.

“It’s easier to see this stuff clearly when emotion isn’t involved and, remember Lanie, you didn’t want Tack for me in the beginning. You hated him, wanted me to quit and walk away. Pretty much any good girlfriend at that time, before he exposed the man he really is, would say the same thing because they care about their girl, not the guy. They see stuff from the outside, not with emotion coloring everything. Sometimes they’re right, like I was with Elliott. And sometimes they’re wrong, like you were with Tack. But neither of us had all the information. It’s just that you got it all when it was too late.”

That was very true.

I took a sip of my wine then set the glass on my coffee table, dropped my hands in my lap and looked at her.

“I dream of Kansas City.”

Sorrow suffused her face and she whispered, “Oh, Lanie.”

“I see his eyes open and staring at me. He looks surprised. Not just in my dream. When it happened. He was dead but still, he looked surprised.”

She grabbed my hand and squeezed.

“I think he was surprised I didn’t save him.”

I watched the tears start shimmering in her eyes.

“I wanted a man who’d save me,” I confessed.

“Maybe, if you looked, you can find that man,” she suggested.

That wasn’t going to happen.

“I think I need to give that more time,” I evaded.

“Lanie, honey, I want to be sensitive but don’t you think that seven—?” She stopped talking and turned her head just as my eyes shot to the sliding glass doors because we both heard a Harley roar up to the back of my house.

My entire body strung tight.

“Tack knows I have my car and he doesn’t have to come and get me. God, do you think something’s up with the boys?” she asked, setting her wineglass aside, quickly getting up from the couch and hustling to the door.

She was out the door and in the courtyard when I heard the Harley roar away.

I closed my eyes.

It wasn’t Hop.

“How weird was that?” Tyra asked, back in the house, and I looked at her.

“Weird, sweetie,” I agreed.

She walked back to me and sat. “Could swear that bike came right up to your garage but it was gone before I got to the back gate.”

“Maybe bad sat nav directions,” I murmured.

She grabbed her wine. I followed suit.

Again, she got her sip in before I did and thus she could sock it to me.

“Mitch and Brock have a guy they want you to meet.”

“Ty-Ty—”

She shook her head. “I know Tack talked about him with you, he was going to call Mitch about it but maybe things with Tabby got him off track. I’m going to call Mara, get things back on track.”

“This really is too soon,” I told her.

“You wait any longer, honey, it’s going to be too late,” she replied, her voice sweet but firm.