It’s time for me to make good on my promise to Winslow. To leave.
Without Bo.
Chapter 14
Bo
Son of a fucking bitch!
I kick the side of the metal warehouse that houses Fight Club, my stomach stuck up under my ribs making it hard to breathe.
She left.
She fucking took the money and my bike…and left.
That bitch!
No, I don’t mean that.
Yes, I do.
Fuck!
I kick the building again, denting the metal and probably breaking a couple toes in the process. I can’t believe I just got played by Sloane McCormick. I mean, what the actual fuck?
I throw the door open and step back inside, blinking as my eyes adjust to the change in light. Winslow’s still at the bar.
Really, I can’t believe that fucker, either. The whole time he was kicking it down here in Tucson with the rest of the wolves banished from our pack. I should’ve known he’d be just fine. The pack elders try to drill it into our heads that we wouldn’t survive without a pack. Lone wolves are in danger and all that shit. Here I was so worried about Winslow being banished, and he’s been just fine. Turns out, he already has a job working for Tank, another former Wolf Ridge pack member who has a motorcycle shop here.
He’s not starving and alone, wandering the human populace with none of his own kind around him.
And I’m an idiot for even caring.
I stomp over to him, pick up his beer and drain it.
He looks over at me with an indulgent grin. Yeah, pretty much our relationship in the last few years has consisted of him buying me and my friends beer because we’re not old enough yet.
“She’s gone. She took my fucking bike and left. Do you have wheels?”
“Good riddance,” Winslow says easily. Almost like he expected it.
I narrow my eyes. Shouldn’t he be pissed on my behalf that she stole the Triumph? I mean, he didn’t like her to begin with.
Winslow orders another beer. “Tank let me borrow a truck. But I need it.”
“Alpha Green said you had to show up to council or be banished.”
“Fuck him,” Winslow says.
I’m not surprised by that answer.
“Well, at least drive me home, go see Mom and relieve her mind about you.”
He raises his brows. “You paying for gas?”
Right, with all the money I don’t have, since Sloane just took it all. But I don’t have any option but to agree. “Yeah.”
He sighs and stands up, taking the beer the bartender brings him and chugging it. “Let’s go.”
I don’t speak the entire way home. I’m pissed at Winslow, and I’m pissed at Sloane. But mostly I’m just pissed at myself.
Why the fuck did I ever get involved in this bullshit? Because a hot pair of legs walked into the shop at full moon, and I’m still such a teenage horndog I couldn’t stop chasing?
What a fucking idiot.
I try not to think about any of it but instead end up examining every moment we spent together.
The first ride on my bike. Her paying me to teach her to drop an engine, then realizing it’s too much to pick up on the fly.
Her Homecoming dance.
Getting her off with the vibrator.
Sex.
That part was real. Fates, but I have to believe that part was real. This hasn’t all been a hustle.
And she wasn’t hustling me because I was the goddamn pursuer.
Didn’t stop her from using me, though, did it?
From letting me fight for her. Taking the money I earned her.
She’s desperate, the little whisper of reason reminds me.
Yeah, but I was right by her side the whole time. Protecting her. Keeping her from doing this alone. Hopefully coming up with some way to solve this bullshit she’s caught in.
Only she didn’t want me to be her knight in shining armor.
The rejection burns a tree trunk sized hole through the center of my chest. I really fucking cared about this girl, and she crumpled me up like a used piece of paper and tossed me in the trash.
I would’ve done anything for her.
And as that thought descends and lands, I feel it through all my limbs. Through every organ, through every blood cell moving in my veins.
I still would.
Even after her betrayal, I still would.
Sloane
I cry the whole way back to Wolf Ridge. I feel like an asshole leaving Bo with his dick swinging in the wind. And I’m a selfish bitch because I really I don’t want to do this thing alone. It may have only been twenty-four hours, but I sure as hell liked having Bo on my side. Picking up the sword and fighting my battles for me.
But, of course, I can’t let him.
And I’m going to have to keep bitching him over if I want him to stay away.
I ride his motorcycle to Wolf Ridge Body Shop, which fortunately, appears to be closed. I open the envelope of money and count it out. Eleven thousand seven hundred dollars.