Page 58 of Happily Undead in Dark River

My eyes fly back up to hers, and I shake my head subconsciously. “No.”

She raises an eyebrow, just a hint of the old Angeline in her expression, and my heart cracked. “No?”

I hiss out a breath. “You can’t leave. I feel… you can’t… Ugh!” I tripped over my words, unable to get any coherent reason why she shouldn’t leave to pass my lips.

She smiled down at me sadly, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “Dark River is no longer my home. It is a place filled with bad memories and constant reminders. I need to leave. Whether you take the cafe doesn’t change anything except…” she takes a deep breath. “Except as some kind of repatriation for what Alice did, to how I treated you afterward. If being taken by the Enforcers taught me anything, it was what it was like to truly fear. To stand there and be judged for someone else's actions. I did that to you, even if I didn’t mean to, even if I was mourning, and it wasn’t fair. So take the keys. Even if you never use them and the store stays locked up forever. Take them so I can selfishly appease my own guilt.”

I swallowed hard and my eyes welled with tears. I didn’t know what to say to her, so I just reached out and pulled the keys closer to me, removing my hand so quickly that they may as well have been silver dipped in garlic. She closed her eyes in relief.

It all felt so wrong. “I’ll watch the store until you get back,” I said quietly, but she just shook her head.

“I’m never coming back, Raine. There’s no going back, only moving forward.” Then she was gone. She didn’t say goodbye, and I didn’t get to say anything else. Like the fact that I forgave her. She was just gone. I turn to Tex, and he pulled me to his chest so I could cry in peace.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

It shouldn’t surprise me that Beatrice had been right. If I sat in the booth at the diner for long enough, my guys would come and find me. It may have been Brody’s fault though, rather than the pull of my magical lady charms. Brody had sensed my distress, called Tex, who had filled him in on what had happened that morning. I was in rare form to get a head and a cafe in one day. Lucky me.

I could hear Brody cussing over the phone, and then he hung up, and I had no doubt he was calling Walker. Like my knight in shining armor, he’d appeared at the table with a gust of displaced air. He looks between Tex and me, then down at the keys on the table that I’m avoiding like a tarantula, and pulled me out of the booth and into his arms. He kisses the hell out of me, then slid me back down, hopping into the booth after me until I’m jammed between him and Tex. I was about to ask why we were all on one side of the table when the door opens and Judge and X swagger in like they are made of sin and violence. Who needed sugar and spice? They slid down opposite me, Judge leaning over to kiss me softly on the lips, and X doing the same. In public. In front of Beatrice. I flushed, my cheeks turning pink when I notice her giving me a knowing look. Gah. Do not think about the ropes. Do not think about the ropes.

I look up at X’s face, and the shit-eating grin he’s giving me tells me he knows exactly what I’m thinking about. Dick.

I clear my throat and will my blood to cool. “Where’s Nico?”

X grins. “Like that already, is it? Well, I guess I can deal with one more banger in your little mash.”

I blinked at him. Was I supposed to know what the fuck he was talking about? Judge just rolled his eyes, he seemed to do that a lot around X, and elbowed him in the ribs. “Like you have a choice, Asshole. You’re smitten.”

X looks completely offended at the term smitten, but when he looks at me, he did look less like a sociopath. He looked softer. Beatrice bustled over and placed a steak in front of Judge and Walker. Apparently, no one even needed to order any more. She places this weird, puffy monstrosity in front of X, and he looked up at her like she just hung him the moon and the stars. I might have been a little jealous.

“Tsch. Don’t give me that look, Redcoat. Bert was just experimenting and we didn’t want to poison the good customers.”

X was still staring at her adoringly. “You made me Toad In The Hole? Beatrice, Love. Would you marry me?” Yep, I was definitely jealous.

She rolled her eyes at him. “T’was Bert who made it.”

He looked over her shoulder. “Bert! Marry me you talented bugger,” he yelled, and every person who wasn’t already staring at our table turned to look. Beatrice tapped his cheek in a motherly fashion and walked away muttering to herself in Scots.

X digs into his food with abandon and we can’t help but stare.

“I have to ask, what the hell is a Toad-in-the-hole?” Tex mumbles around a mouth full of food. Gross. “It sounds like a sex position.”

The huge scarred Enforcer gave Tex a lascivious look. “I can show you exactly where to put your toad later, Snakelet.”

Walker choked on his steak and looked between us all again. “Did I miss something?”

I shook my head. “I’ll tell you later. What are we going to do about You-Know-Who and the Head?” Walker looks resigned, and casts a look between Judge and X. “We are going to have to call in Miranda.”

Both guys look like they are going to choke. Fuck. Me.

I was beginningto think that Miranda waited outside Dark River for us to call. Just loitering there in the background, hoping that we will be stupid enough to invite the fox into the henhouse. Which we do because she has a skill set that apparently rivals no one else. When she saw my lack of hair, she winced.

“Fashion statement?”

“Brain surgery,” I said flatly. We parted on reasonably good terms last time, but Brody was there to keep her happy and I wasn’t flanked by her two former partners/lovers/whatever the fuck they were.

She shrugged and turned her attention to Nico, but I see the way her eyes sweep over X and Judge. I look at X, trying to gauge his expression like it would give me the secrets to how he was feeling. I should have known better. His face was all business, well, if ‘paid killer’ could be considered an expression.

Miranda did her best professional face too as she faced Nico. “What can I do for the Town Council of Dark River?”

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