Page 101 of The Vigilant

All those promises to care for me. To protect me. To give me everything. It wasn’t for me. It wasn’t because he cared about me—because he wanted me. It was restitution. For him—my father.

All the pain that haunted Tynan’s features. It wasn’t grief for a lost friend—a lost father, it was guilt. He didn’t help me or protect me because it was the right thing to do or because Dad was his mentor. He did it because he believed it was what he owed.

And what price would ever be enough to compensate for a lost life?

“Say something,” Tynan ordered—begged? It was hard to tell through the strain in his ravaged tone.

I blinked slowly and saw we were back at the garage already. Parked outside for who knows how long. I gulped in one unsteady breath after another, each replacing the armor I’d shed at his feet.

How long had I thought that Tynan was my safe harbor from the stormy seas of solitude? It couldn’t have been very long, yet the root of that belief was impossibly deep. And now it was gone, a hole in me gaping. His safe harbor was nothing more than a mirage in a desert of disappointment.

I thought being a man’s prey was the very worst fate. That was before I’d become one’s penance.

“I’m going to work out for a little.” I unbuckled, fumbling for the door handle like there was suddenly not enough oxygen in the car. “Come find me if Robyn or Creed have any news.”

I strode into the garage, my feet moving faster and faster until I was full-on sprinting away from him.

I could be a lot of things. Reckless. A killer. A vigilante. I could even be a good man’s prey. But what I’d never be was Tynan’s guilty pleasure.His guilty penance.

Chapter Twenty-One

Tynan

“You know you can stay at my cabin.”

My eyes popped open, the ceiling in the rec room coming into focus. I lay on the longest stretch of the couch, my head resting on a pillow that had grown weary of the weight. The fire I’d started crackled in the hearth, its low light dancing on the dark panels above me.

I turned to look at Harm, wincing as my neck cramped in response. That was what I got for sleeping on a decade-old leather couch for almost a week at my age.

Except I wasn’t sleeping. Not more than an hour or two at most. And definitely not this early in the night. I’d started the small fire at seven thirty and it hadn’t burned out yet, so it couldn’t even be nine.

“I’m fine.” I pushed up to sit and reached for the back of my neck, rubbing the tight muscle. If only some of my other tight muscles were as easily soothed.

“Are you?” My friend—boss—brother—looked concerned. For me.

Fuck.

I was the oldest. The stoic one. The rational one. Though we all had each other’s backs, I was the one who felt secretly responsible for the rest of them. Maybe because of my age. Or my experience. Or maybe, as time went on, because I figured I’d be the only one left here alone.

One by one, the group of us that stuck together, started this motorcycle garage and motorcycle club together, that lived together, was slowly dismantled as my brothers found love and a way back into the world from the battle-beaten, bullet-dredged bunker we thought we’d never escape.

All except me. And I was okay with that—being the one who didn’t make it. I should’ve been the one who didn’t make it. So, I’d gladly be the one left behind to hold down the fort.

Except now, Harm looked at me like something had changed. Something had changed—her. I shook off the thought as soon as it touched me, refusing to let it land.

“Yeah. Wound’s almost healed up. I’ll be right as rain in another couple days,” I replied and half-lifted my shirt, the red-puckered seam of skin looking better each day, the adhesive Rorik used peeling away as the skin fully closed.

“Wasn’t talking about your gut.” Harm dragged out a stool from the bar and took a seat. “Though it would probably heal quicker if you were getting a good night’s rest.”

I grunted and laid back down, linking my hands over my chest.

A good night’s rest had nothing to do with sleeping on the couch. Sleeping on the couch was my best attempt at a poor excuse because the truth was, even if I’d taken the bed in any of the other vacant cabins on the property, I still wouldn’t have slept.

Because of Sutton.

I’d hurt her. I’d demanded her vulnerability and then hurt her by telling her the truth about her father, but goddamn,there was no world in which I’d let things continue without her knowing it.

Without her knowing I was the reason for her loss. The one that set her scorpion free.

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