Page 85 of Pen Me

He turned around, and I noticed Henny’s phone in his hand. “That don’t mean you ain’t the best damn one a person couldn’t ask for, you hear me?”

She laughed and called back, “Love you, too.”

It should have been endearing, but instead, it left me with the sickest feeling in my gut.

“Wh-what’s going on?” I studied his face for clues, but he glanced around the kitchen, his gaze coming to my forehead as he drifted down to plant a kiss to my crown.

“Explain everything in a minute, I need to piss.”

I squinted, and whirled in my chair, but he dipped into the bathroom, and I heard it lock behind him. I’d known of women who ran water from the faucet while they used the restroom, but I’d never heard of a man doing it. I broke out in goosebumps.

When the water shut off a few minutes later, tears pricked my eyes. My hand trembled as I stared at him in the bathroom doorway.

“What the fuck did you just do?” I barely heard my own voice.

I’d never smoked a day in my life, nor had I ever suffered from childhood asthma or any other respiratory condition, but I swear to fuck, it suddenly felt like every breath became moreof a struggle than the last when he cocked his head in that sympathetic way.

I started to shake my head, and those hard-fought breaths were being expelled with force, edging on a sob as he calmly sat down beside me and gathered my hands. It felt like someone had hurled us into a visiting room from a prison movie the way he kept them on the table instead of drawing me close, and I lost my battle with the tears.

“I never dreamed I’d meet someone like you.” His voice was gravelly and thick with emotion. “I never deserved to meet someone like you. God knows I didn’t.”

“Shut the fuck up,” I begged him.

“The Irish mob has your brother, Samantha.”

My head dropped onto the table and the sobs tore from me.

“Stop that. Stop. I’m gonna fix it. We don’t have long, beautiful. Let me look at you.” He lifted my head and pushed the hair back behind my ear on either side while I tried to make sense of his words.

Sauce was gone. The mob had Sauce, and he had to look at me because he didn’t have time? The mob had my brother–

And he wanted to do this shit now?

“Now?” I shouted my last thought at him. “You want to call the police now? Of all the time you had to do that… Now?”

I couldn’t breathe.

“Sammy,” He came out of his chair and hovered over me, blowing in my face until I sucked in a wild breath. “Stop. Babe, I called the head of the mob.”

I was being thrown through a cyclone of devastation. That’s what this was. One horror after another was whirling past and around me. I was losing my brother, and him.

“Wh–Why would you do that?” I demanded.

“He promised to set Sauce free, if I turned myself over to him.”

I swung for his face before he finished his sentence, but he was expecting it. He caught my wrist, pinned it between us and smashed a kiss to my lips that left me melting into it.

“Are you telling me that Henny knows about this? Does the club know about this?” I shouted, as soon as his mouth left mine. I was furious at all of them, at the situation, and the circumstance that had played out in all of this.

Mostly, I was just furious that our time together had run out when I least expected it.

“They’re gonna kill you both.” I shook my head and tried to find the words to convince him, “Run with me.”

“I can’t do that. You won’t do that. You won’t leave your brother to pay for my sins.”

“I– No, I wouldn’t do that.”

“I’d never ask you to, nor would I ask it of him. If there is a chance Sean Morgan will do as he promised, and hand him over, we have to take it. I sent Henny with Octavia’s phone so he could call your dad to come get you two.”

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