Page 100 of The Kings of Kearny

Once Jakob gave the all clear, I jumped on the highway. He fell in behind me as soon as I merged, and from that point on, he stuck to my tailpipe like glue. What did he think I was going to do? Push my shitty car to the limit, which was about seventy miles per hour on a good day, and try to lose him? Unlikely. Plus his parents still had Gran.

Every now and then, I glanced in my rearview only to be met with Jakob’s stony expression. He’d been curt, bordering on short-tempered before we got off the phone, and now that hisfuck youface was back full force, I realized how much Ihadn’tseen it in the past few days.

Maybe I wasn’t the only one who could use a break. Jakob might have sounded willing to give me a chance earlier, but he should take some time to really think about it too. My betrayal was monumental. Unforgivable to a lot of people. I knew how wrong it was to bring the feds here, and yet I’d done it. Sure, I’d made the call because I wanted to keep everyone safe, but my intentions didn’t matter. Liam’s intentions had been good too, and look where that had landed everyone.

I worried my lip as I drove, wondering what might come of what I’d done. Nick knew who I was sleeping with, and I had a feeling I hadn’t seen the last of my old pal. It was one thing to know I worked in one of the club’s establishments, another thing entirely for him to learn how deep I really was in Kings business.

I glanced in the rearview again. Jakob had his phone pressed to his ear, hopefully filling his father in so I wouldn’t have to. I’d had enough excitement for the day, and I had no desire to relive each humiliating moment as I explained how I’d underestimated everyone and misjudged every situation.

Seeing Jakob on the phone reminded me that I needed to make a few calls of my own. The first one was to Charley’s wife, Lisa. She was in charge of scheduling shifts at the bar, and I needed to ask for the night off. I braced myself for a frustrating conversation. Usually, she was as much of a hard-ass as her husband, but her tone was soft when she answered the phone.

“Hey, honey,” she said. “How you holding up?”

“I’m good, thanks. You?”

“Can’t complain. How’s your gran doing?”

I frowned at the road ahead of me, wondering who’d told her about Gran, before remembering how bad the Kings gossiped. We had several of them with us at the nursing home the other day. At this point, rumor of what happened must have spread to the entire club, inflating with each retelling so that Jakob had come to my rescue like a white knight and I became his damsel in distress. The tale she heard probably had him single-handedly defeating the Jokers in a firestorm of a shootout before throwing me over his shoulder and riding off into the sunset like the conquering hero they all thought he was.

“My gran’s okay. Thanks for asking,” I said. “Listen, I’m calling because I need to take tonight off. I know it’s last minute, and I’m sor—”

“Already done,” she said.

I blinked. “Oh, okay.”

“Jakob called this morning and said you might need a few days. I took you off the schedule until Friday. Will that work, or do you need more time?”

Wow, she was being really nice about this. What the hell did Jakob tell her? Or was she being so agreeable just because it was Jakob who’d asked? Either way, I wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth.

“That works,” I said. “Thank you, Lisa. I appreciate this.”

“No problem, honey.”

We said goodbye and got off the phone. Having until Friday off was good. It would give me time to see what I could salvage from my apartment, find a new place to live, and get Gran settled back into Magnolia. In the interim, I could take her up north to her sister Iliza’s little homestead outside of Austin. They hadn’t visited for a while, and the last time I spoke to Iliza, she told me we were always welcome to stay.

I called her, and sure enough, she was thrilled to have us.

The tension in my shoulders eased after I hung up. Iliza and her husband Fred’s farm was a little slice of heaven in the Texas countryside, and I couldn’t think of a better place for me to step back, relax, and figure my shit out. I couldn’t stay with the Larsons another night. First off, I’d end up sleeping with Jakob again, and my thoughts were muddled enough without adding a shot of sex-drunk hormones to the mix. Secondly, Liam would probably kick me out anyway. If not for what I had already done, then definitely for the conversation I planned to have with him.

I spent the rest of the drive practicing what to say. I wanted to make as much of an impact as I could without the conversation going off the rails. As tempting as it was to indulge in an imaginary scream fight that ended with me scissor-kicking Liam in the throat, I knew how unhelpful that was. How unhealthy. Plus he was as tall as his son, and I doubted I could jump high enough to hit him in the neck. At least not without a running start, and he’d see that coming from a mile away.

Katherine Jenkins had to be my inspiration for this. Her unshakable calm during my interview in the police station was something to aspire to. If I could manage to keep my cool and say all the things that Liam needed to hear, I might be able to stop a civil war and keep a relationship from imploding. It was too late for my parents and me, but I saw firsthand how much Liam loved Jakob, and I thought he might still have time to fix what he had broken between them.

By the time I parked in the Larsons’ driveway, I felt, well, not calm but centered, focused on what I had to do. Jakob pulled up beside me and was out of the van before I even got my seat belt unbuckled. From the way he stalked toward my car, I knew he was still pissed. Instead of getting out, I met his hard gaze and slowly reclined my seat, disappearing from his view.

I just caught sight of the exasperation spreading over his features before I ended up flat out in the seat with nowhere else to go.

“Get out of the car, Krista,” he said, his voice muffled from the other side of my window.

“No. You have your scary face on,” I yelled back at him.

He pressed his forehead to the glass and stared down at me. “This isn’t my scary face. This is my worried face.”

“You promise you’re not about to violently murder me?” I asked.

He shot me a look that said he was tempted. “No. Now stop acting like a child and get out of the car.”

I stuck my tongue out at him.

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