WAYLON (Ruthless MC 1)

“Closet,” I tell her, steering her to the room’s only hiding space.

But she plasters her hand against the closet door after I push her in and try to close it behind her. “What about you?”

I think she thought I’d join her inside—that we’d hide together from the incoming storm. But we have no one to turn to, and Steph only has me. A sacrifice has to be made for even the slimmest chance of saving her from the Reaper’s version of hell.

I shake my head. “I’ll face them alone. Tell him we already split ways and that you caught a bus to Milwaukee.”

Stephanie’s eyes flare at my last moment plan. “I can’t let you do that. Waylon is going to go crazy on you after what you did. He’ll—”

She’s sweet, but… “We don’t have time to argue about this. It’s the only way.”

I push at the door, and luckily, she’s too weak and thin to keep me from closing her into the closet alone.

“Hide as far back in there as you can and be quiet. Don’t come out, no matter what you hear.”

“Okay,” she agrees, her voice small and shuddering with tears. But I see she gets the situation.

People don’t get away with crossing me. Ever.

Okay…okay….

I once again take a seat on the edge of the bed. On TV, Issa and Molly are laughing over something that just happened to them in their silly, sunshine-coated lives. It must be nice to live in L.A. without a motorcycle gang care in the world. I just wish—

The crash of wood hitting the wall interrupts my wish before I can finish making it.

I snap my eyes to the kicked-in door, and there stands Waylon.

I jump to my feet and reel back, shudders running along my spine as weakness claims my knees. I want to act calm—not give him the satisfaction of seeing how scared I am now that he’s caught up to me. But my heart screeches and derails like an out-of-control train at the sight of him standing in the doorway, his crystal-blue eyes blazing.

Viking. That’s what the other Reapers sometimes called him, even though Iowa is nowhere near the sea. I never asked him why. But I get it now without a word of explanation.

He takes another step forward to loom over me, his face as hard as stone.

Then he asks, “What did I tell you about crossing me?”

CHAPTER 2

A YEAR EARLIER

“I know it’s my birthday, but I’ve bought you a gift,” Jonathan says after we put in our dinner orders. “It’s something I want you to have. Something I’ve been thinking about giving you for a while now.”

Oh my God.

Jonathan told me to wear something nice tonight since we were going to The Spotless Dove, one of the most expensive restaurants in Philadelphia. I thought he’d chosen this place because Jonathan would settle for nothing but the best for his birthday. But I glance around the five-star restaurant with new eyes.

Is he about to propose? Am I, Amira Wylie, the foster kid who barely managed to graduate from high school and become a nurse, about to be asked for her hand in marriage tonight? By Dr. Jonathan Kershaw, the hotshot neurosurgeon resident, all the other nurses drool over and call Dr. America due to his chisel-jawed resemblance to a certain comic book hero?

We’ve only been dating for four months, and we haven’t had real sex yet. But maybe that’s what pleasant, normal men who’ve been raised in nice, normal ways do. Date a girl they like for a short amount of time, then take her to a nice restaurant and—

Jonathan sets a book down on the expanse of white linen between us. It has a waifish blonde with a huge toothy smile on the cover. She’s wearing a navy-blue power suit with her arms crossed underneath her breasts as if to say whatever life she’s living, it’s way better than the rest of ours. Above her image, the words YOU CAN HAVE IT ALL are written in giant block letters. And below that, Missy Anders is written in slightly smaller letters.

I crook my head to the side. “Um…what is this?”

A pleased/smug smile touches his mouth, and his hazel eyes brighten. “A book by one of my college friends. She has a similar story to yours—she was raised in a trailer park. Still, she managed to overcome her tragic background to get accepted into Princeton and become a highly sought-after executive life coach.”

I wasn’t raised in a trailer park. I enrolled in my nursing program directly after high school, not an elite Ivy. And though I’ve done everything from holding tweaked-out meth addicts down to telling teen moms to push in the ER, I wouldn’t exactly call myself a life coach. Not to mention the fact that she’s a lily-white-blonde in a power suit, and I’m a dark brown brunette who usually wears scrubs.