Page 40 of Volt
I nod. “I’m okay.”
I take a long swallow of beer, trying to quench my suddenly dry throat. Plus, a little alcohol in my system probably can’t hurt. If I can’t work up the courage on my own, maybe a little liquid courage will help.
“Anyway, I had this whole speech prepared,” I say. “And I can’t remember a damn bit of it now.”
That gets a small smile from him which breaks through some of the ice gripping my heart. I take another drink and set the bottle down on the coffee table.
“Coaster, please,” he says.
I look up at him with a crooked smile on my face. “Seriously?”
“Yeah, I don’t like the rings beer bottles leave,” he says, making me feel like an even bigger slob than I did a minute ago.
“I’m not used to guys being tidier than I am,” I say.
“I think I told you a while back that I’m not most guys.”
“Touché,” I say and sit back on the couch.
I cross my legs and fold my hands in my lap, doing my best to keep from wringing them together. We sit in an awkward silence for a few moments, each of us looking at the other. I can see his mind racing and wish like hell I knew what he was thinking. But his expression is totally blank. Detached. I’d get more emotion out of a rock. But I know he’s got his walls up and I can’t really blame him for it.
“I just felt like I needed to come by to talk to you,” I say. “There’s a lot of things that were left unresolved.”
“To say the least,” he mutters then cocks his head as if struck by a sudden thought. “Wait, how did you know where I lived, anyway?”
I give him a mischievous grin. “I’m a resourceful girl. I can usually get what I want when I put my mind to it. Honestly, it wasn’t hard. I asked around. You’re not as anonymous as you think you are. A guy who looks like you wearing a Pharaohs vest riding a big bike isn’t that hard to find.”
“Kutte.”
“What?”
“It’s not a vest. It’s a kutte,” he says.
“Fine. Po-tay-to, po-tah-to. Whatever,” I say and grin. “My point is that I work in a bar. It’s a hub for gossip. You just need to know the right people to ask. And I do.”
“Fair enough,” he replies.
He laughs softly then takes a swallow of his beer. It’s not much, but I’m going to count that as a breakthrough. A slight thawing of the ice wall between us. I pick up the bottle and take a long swallow, trying to fortify myself. Now that my foot is in the door, I need to push it open.
“I wanted to apologize for ghosting you for the last week or so,” I say. “I know it was a shitty thing to do. I just need a little time to… process. You kind of dropped a bombshell on me, and to be honest, it freaked me out. I didn’t know how to handle it.”
Blake’s expression softens, and he looks down. I can see that he’s debating something with himself. When he looks up at me again, I can see that he’s come to some sort of a decision in his mind.
“It was unfair of me to drop that on you like I did. Or at all actually,” he says. “I’d just been carrying it around and it was really weighing on me. And when I was with you, I felt so comfortable that I just blurted it out. I didn’t mean to. It just kind of came out.”
I give him a small smile. “I understand. I really do.”
I fall silent and look down at the bottle in my hands, trying to figure out what to say next. Honestly, it’s going better than I thought it would. Bree’s words continue to echo in my mind as I sit here. Having spent some time in my own head, I realize that she’s right. I’m terrified of my feelings for him. It’s not so much what he told me, it’s what I feel inside that caused my freak-out. For the most part anyway.
What he told me still freaks me out as I think about it. I mean, how could it not? It’s not every day you have somebody you’re starting to care about tell you that they’re caught up in a war with some drug cartel and because of it, they watched a friend of theirs be murdered right in front of them. I mean, who does that? So yeah, that story along with the thoughts running through my head about what his club does bothers me too.
It scares me a little bit for my own personal safety, but more so for the fact that he could be killed and taken from me. Having lost my parents the way I did, I’m always scared about letting myself get close to anybody. I always fear that if I open my heart to somebody that they’ll be taken away from me too. And those odds are definitely increased when you’re fighting a war against a brutal and murderous drug cartel.
“So, now that you’ve had some time to process, where’s your head at?” he asks.
“I don’t know, Blake,” I reply. “There’s still so much I don’t know. So much that scares me about what you’re into. I mean, I know you’re somebody I can care a great deal about if I let myself. But I’m afraid to, simply because I fear that you’re going to get yourself killed. Ever since you told me that story, that’s all I can think about.”
He purses his lips and nods. “I get that. And I wish I could tell you that what’s going on isn’t dangerous,” he says. “But I respect you too much to lie to you. What’s going down right now is gnarly. Yeah, I could wind up on a slab.”
