Waylon (Ruthless MC 2)

Anyway, all the Fairgood men and one of their spouses would be sleeping extra-hard that night.

I waited at 11:28 in the rose garden behind the house, still not sure if Wedding Dress Girl would show up. Even if she understood the other parts, there was a chance she would mistake the meet up time for today’s date—which was why I had chosen it.

But to my relief, she actually arrived a couple of minutes early. “By the way, my name is Amira,” she whispered before handing me a pair of yoga pants, a T-shirt, and a sweatshirt.

She also handed me the five thousand dollars from Waylon's motorcycle jacket and his iPhone.

Then she called me “so smart” when I cracked Waylon’s lock screen code, ordered an Uber, and paid the guy who showed up two hundred dollars from the wad to drive just the smartphone to the closest bus station and leave it there.

It had been a while since anyone’s complimented me for being smart. Sometimes whole weeks went by where I forgot I had a brain capable of strategy. Hades hadn’t let me do drugs—only drink on special occasions. He’d said he wanted me to feel every moment of his revenge.

But being with him had felt like a drug sometimes—one of the bad trip ones that slowed down time and made everything you looked at extra nightmarish. Remembering I was smart sometimes slipped away from me during days filled with endless humiliations.

Taking several local buses all day to get us across a state line wasn’t so smart though. I’d wanted to get as far away from Nashville as possible, but we ended up missing the bus to Vegas. And Amira, who’d been weirdly calm about the situation, said we should get a hotel room.

It was a setback for sure but hope continued burning in my heart. I prayed like I hadn't since I was a little girl in Catholic school that Hades would buy my phone trick and have no idea where I’d really gone.

But now Waylon's on the other side of the closet door, asking Amira what he told her about crossing him.

I watched him earlier…I watched him snuggle her under his arm and kiss her on top of the head like she actually meant something to him.

But outside the closet door, his voice sounds cold and fatal, like she’s some other biker gang guy he’s willing to shoot straight in the face for breaking Rule #4: Don’t piss off Waylon.

I didn’t think I had much courage left in me after my time in Louisiana, but I brace to run out there—to defend her from his wrath. Even if it means having to go back to Hades.

But then, Amira begins talking….

“I know what you said, and I know he's your cousin. But you told me to start listening to myself. So, I did,” she tells him. She speaks to him like she’s a lawyer explaining a clear and reasonable argument. Like he’s not a psychopath. “I want to be with you, but she doesn’t want to be with him. And people can't be kept like that. I had to help her. I didn’t want to go against you. I didn’t want to betray you. But I had to help her.”

“He is my brother. And she is a debt,” Waylon growls outside the door. “A debt Hades was owed. She doesn't get a say in it.”

“Yes, she does, Waylon,” Amira insists. “Yes, she does. I had to help her. She's a human being, and I had to help her just like I had to help you in Delaware. But me helping her doesn't mean I don't love you. It just means that I couldn't let her continue suffering. I had to help her. But I was going to come back. That’s what I was trying to tell you when we had sex without protection last night—that I was going to come back, no matter what it looked like when you woke up.”

He goes quiet in that Fairgood way. The kind of way that makes you feel like their silence is ticking like a bomb.

Then he says, “You were going to come back?”

His voice isn’t any less hard, but it’s quieter.

And Amira sounds hopeful when she answers, “Yes! Yes, I was. I know it’s hard for you to trust. But I need you to look at me and listen to your heart. I love you. I love you so much. But I’m still a walking contradiction. I needed to help her, but I also want to be with you. I need to be with you. Even if you don’t give me a phone for the rest of my life because you don’t trust me after this, I need to be with you. I was always going to come back.”

More silence. But this one is much shorter. And when he speaks again, his voice sounds weary. “Tell me which bus you put her on.”