Because I loved my brother, and loved my sister almost as much, I didn’t pull any punches with Ginger.
I’d let quite a few of them loose, in fact. With a promise to put a bullet through her skull if she came near my family again.
It wasn’t empty. I would’ve done it.
That memory, like most of mine, were connected with Luke, coiled up in my life, in the club’s life like barnacles on a rock. Most of them tried as they might to rid themselves of it, but it wasn’t going anywhere. Me? Even then, I would do anything for it to stay, no matter how much pain it caused.
I’d been icing my hand and salving my soul with a martini when the knock came.
I assumed it’d be Evie to drag me to the club to try and cheer Cade up. Again. Or Lucy to drag me to a bar. Ashley to suggest a girls’ night in. Maybe Lizzie to ask if I could babysit. All of those were common occurrences. Not that I would ever have it any other way.
But for the first time, someone foreign to my doorstep stood there. Someone I’d never expect. Someone I never knew how much I wanted to be there.
Last time he’d been there, it was as an officer of the law, ready to accuse me but not arrest me.
I didn’t say anything, I was that shocked. He wasn’t in uniform. Most of our encounters had him donning the clothes that blatantly highlighted our distance.
The white tee that clung perfectly to his sculpted torso and faded Levi’s jolted me for a second. Because he could’ve just been a man knocking on a woman’s door.
Simplicity.
But my life was never meant for simplicity.
Luke’s eyes fastened on my bruised knuckles, his brow narrowing.
“You want to tell me what happened there?” he asked.
I swallowed my hurt at the tone. The cop tone.
This was not just a man coming to visit a woman.
This was a police officer coming to interview a criminal.
Again.
“Who wants to know?” I retorted acidly.
“I do,” he almost growled.
I narrowed my own brow. “You, Deputy? Or you, Luke?” I pretended to pause. “Oh, wait. They’re one and the same. I bumped it, Officer. Didn’t realize that was a crime.”
Luke’s eyes turned liquid for a moment during my words, betraying something behind his façade. Not for long enough, though.
“Jesus, Rosie. You hurt your fuckin’ hand. I just wanted to know you’re okay.”
I pretended the visceral tone didn’t affect me. “I’m peachy, Luke. I’m always okay.”
It was a lie. One of many I told when Luke was around. I told most of them to myself.
Like the one I was telling myself right then that his moving a little closer so I could feel his breath on mine didn’t do anything to my heartbeat or my panties.
“You don’t have to be,” he whispered.
“Have to be what?” My normal tone was harsh against the soft air he’d created.
“Okay.” He searched my face and his gaze was somehow like a physical embrace, like we’d tumbled down some rabbit hole where Luke could whisper to me like that, where he could look at me like that. “You don’t always have to be okay, Rosie.”
I stared into his eyes, the welcoming water in them, urging me to show myself to them. Emotionally skinny-dip in them.
I almost did.
Even leaned forward slightly so our torsos brushed.
But then, even I wasn’t about to get into that much trouble.
I snapped my body back, so quickly I got emotional whiplash. “Whether I am or am not okay is not why you’re here,” I stated.
He stared at me with those liquid eyes once more before they solidified. “Saw Ginger this morning,” he said, his voice firmly back to professionally detached.
Though that was what I’d pretended I wanted, it hurt.
I didn’t let it show, of course.
“I hope you got yourself a course of antibiotics,” I said.
He chose to ignore that. “She was pretty banged up.” He looked pointedly at my hand, which I didn’t try to hide.
“Being a meddling and evil whore is a dangerous job,” I replied dryly. “You’re at risk of having all sorts of accidents.”
He pursed his lips.
“I’m guessing she didn’t make a statement?” I continued.
I knew she didn’t. She wouldn’t. No matter how much she wanted to, no matter how much she wanted revenge, she wasn’t that stupid.
“No,” he gritted out between his teeth.
I tilted my head. “Then I don’t exactly know why you’re here, if it’s not to arrest or accuse me. Not blatantly, at least. You’ve got no proof, no statement, so no need for handcuffs. I know you won’t like to use them in the way I like, so I repeat my earlier pondering, why are you here?”
Luke’s body was rigid, eyes glittering. He stepped forward and I itched to retreat, but I was too stubborn for that, so I let him come close, let his scent envelop me, his fury caress me.