Inmate of the Month (Souls Chapel Revenants MC 7)

“I did. Almost immediately,” she grumbled, then went back into her dozing state.

“She really did,” Harlow admitted. “I would have to admit that was my fault as well. I was just so excited and into Trent that I told her to keep giving him chances. At least until I knew that Trent and I could make it when she broke up with Thor. She stuck it out for me, which sucks because Trent ended up being a whole lot more like his brother than either of us realized.”

“I hope you’re moving,” I muttered.

She smiled then. “I am. I found a job in Paris, Texas. I start in a few weeks once my two weeks’ notice is up at my current place of employment. Which is good because it gives me time to pack, find a house over there, and hire movers to take my crap.”

“We’re taking you,” Catori grunted. “Well, my family is. I can’t move boxes anymore. How sad.”

She turned a little bit in the bed then, her face scrunching up minutely in pain, and then dug her feet farther into my side.

I chuckled.

So did Adam and Jack.

“You know we will, Harlow,” Jack said, his eyes once again coming to me. “Where do you live?”

My brows lifted. “You don’t already know that?”

I mean, based on what I’d heard as I was walking up, I knew that they knew more about me than they should know unless they had some very illegal fingers working like we had.

Hunt, a club brother and resident computer genius, could find out things on a computer that most people could only dream about.

That was how I knew that Jack and his wife were pretty decent hackers. They weren’t at the level that Hunt was, but they could get some information on people that most people couldn’t.

“I know that.” He paused. “I think I’m more curious about your place, though. How safe is it?”

I thought about the little shack that I lived in at the back of my father’s property.

“I have a two-bedroom, twelve hundred square foot cabin that I built about two years ago. It’s a small but comfortable log home that you can barely see from the air. It’s all but hidden unless you know what to look for.” I paused. “It wasn’t supposed to be used as such, but I found myself in need of lodging, and at the time, I took what was offered to me seeing as it was at this particular place, or at a halfway house for convicted felons like me.”

Jack’s head tilted. “There’s an underlying emotion there that is making me think I’m not getting the whole story.”

I flashed him a quick grin. “I’m pretty sure that my father—though at the time I didn’t realize Lynn was my father—sabotaged my lodging hunt. Kind of like he also made sure that I didn’t spend four years in prison like I should have.”

Harlow gasped. “You were in prison?”

I could all but read her thoughts.

And she wants to stay with you?

“When I was fresh in the foster care system, I had this man that took me in. My first foster home was great… until it wasn’t. When I found out that the foster guy had gotten himself a new kid despite my warnings for him not to, I might or might not have overreacted and done something brash when I saw what he was doing.”

I could tell she had a thousand other questions, but just as she was about to ask, a nurse walked in with a doctor, and they interrupted her.

All of us turned to give them our attention, including the curious Harlow.

“Hi, all,” the doctor greeted us.

He looked like he’d gone three or four rounds in a boxing ring. His face was black and blue, his eyes were tired as hell, and there was a split on his lip that said he’d recently gotten punched in the face.

I frowned.

“Let me explain,” the doctor said tiredly. “Since I can tell that you’re curious.”

That was a fuckin’ understatement.

It wasn’t every day that you saw a doctor looking like he’d been abused.

“We have a charity boxing match every year,” he said. “That boxing match was last night. I was supposed to have the day off.” He jerked his chin toward the bed where Catori lay sleeping against me. “She came in and I was called in to help with her shoulder. Which, I might add, is going to be perfectly okay.”

Winter blew out a deep breath. One she’d obviously been holding for a while.

I, on the other hand, only dropped my head in relief.

I didn’t know why it was so important.

But it was.

She needed to be okay.

“It was extremely lucky that you had people that knew what they were doing there in the beginning,” the doctor continued. “Based on what I found when I got in there, I would definitely say that if they hadn’t been there, she would be dead right now. The artery that supplies her arm was nicked by a bullet fragment. If she hadn’t had early intervention, there’s no doubt in my mind she would’ve bled out before she got here. You have to give thanks to whoever it was for saving your daughter’s life. All I did when I got in there was make sure that the wound was clean of debris from the bullet and sew her up.”