town. Any word on Zoe?” “She’s stabilized well enough to be moved from ICU but she’s still pretty banged
up,” Jax answered, chewing on the side of his cheek. A nurse friend of theirs was keeping
them in the loop on the sly, seeing as neither was family and didn’t actually have the right
to know about her recovery. “Caro said they’re keeping her sedated with plenty of good
drugs so she’s not in too much pain.”
“Well, that’s at least something,” Hunter said, risking a brief look at Jax. “Want to go take a look? See for ourselves how she’s doing?”
“No,” Jax said brusquely. “We need to fucking find Dimas. He has $5 million of our money. If we don’t catch him soon, we’ll lose it all. Besides, I told you, Zoe is better off without us.”
“I get that,” Hunter snapped. “I don’t need you schooling me on what’s important.
But only getting the bare minimum of information on Zoe’s condition is driving me crazy, you know? And if you were being honest with yourself, you’d admit that, too. Instead, you’re funneling all of your rage, fear and frustration into the search for Dimas.”
“Yeah, well someone has to keep us focused on the real details. Zoe is better off where she’s at, which is the exact opposite of our money. Get it?”
“Don’t get the wrong idea, I care about the money,” Hunter said. “But I don’t know, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking.”
“That sounds dangerous.”
“I’m being serious.” A long moment of silence passed between them until Hunter continued, “You know I never believed in love at first sight and all that bullshit but if that doesn’t exist…why do I care so much about Zoe?”
Jax shoved away from the table where he’d been sitting, not interested in this conversation. Hunter was only voicing the same questions he’d been asking himself but it didn’t help that he’d been avoiding the simple truth for as many days. “What’s the fucking point of all this?” he demanded. “It’s not like we’re cut out for the kind of life Zoe deserves so who fucking cares what the answer is. Maybe in the biggest cosmic joke of the century, we just happened to find the perfect woman for us — as if that were fucking possible — and she just happened to be the most incredible woman on the planet but none of that matters, right? Because we’re not good enough for Zoe and you know it. So who fucking cares about the answer!”
He stalked away and slammed the door behind him, leaving Hunter to shake his head with fatalistic understanding. Yeah, Jax was right. What a fucked up situation. They never thought they’d find a woman like Zoe, equally attracted to them and not the least bit hesitant or shy about being loved by two men, and so they’d buried deep that burning spark of hope. But Zoe had somehow unearthed the spark and fanned the ember into a raging fire that he wasn’t sure how to stomp out.
Who was he fooling? He didn’t want to stomp it out. He wanted to feed it, watch it grow and see what would happen if they allowed it to consume them all.
#
Zoe blinked through the haze of medication that kept her halfway to Zonked-Out Land and nearly to I-Don’t-Know-My-Own-Name Land and fought the lethargy that came with heavy doses of narcotics. She was in bad shape, that much she knew but she didn’t like this zombie-out feeling. She’d rather writhe in agony with perfect lucidity than languish in pain-free nothingness. Maybe she was weird that way. Wouldn’t be a huge surprise if she were.
One thing she did know was that Jax and Hunter had abandoned her when she needed them the most. Who was she kidding? Why did that knowledge hurt so much? It wasn’t as if they’d pledged some kind of commitment to her. If she’d been able to properly work her mouth, she would’ve barked a short laugh at her stupidity. Bad boys were bad for a reason — because they weren’t good. Good men didn’t dump their injured lovers off at the hospital and disappear. Yeah, preaching to the choir, snarky Inner Voice of Captain Obvious. Tell me something I don’t know. She shifted in her bed, having the wherewithal to wince. So, that was it. She had her epic fling of a lifetime — a brief, glorious, insanely dirty and wild love affair that she could remember fondly into her dotage — and now it was time to get back to real life. Honestly, what had she been thinking was going to happen between them? Who fell in love with two of the most unattainable men in their entire zip code in epically rapid time? A dreamy-eyed girl whose version of Prince Charming had tattoos and a rap sheet, apparently. Were they supposed to ride off into the sunset together? Throw motorcycle rallies and take turns playing house so no one caught on that she was actually the girlfriend to both men? Imagine the scandal around the Homeowner’s Association table! ‘Dirty whore’ would become her new nickname in civilized circles. She certainly didn’t relish that idea. Why did people have to poke their nose into the business of others, anyway? Hellllllooo pot calling the kettle black. Sticking their noses where it didn’t belong was the bread and butter of every journalist. It was dangerous and reckless, particularly when she’d just been unceremoniously dumped, but she couldn’t help but wish that if things were different, she and her bad boys actually could find their happy ending together. She never imagined that it would feel natural to be sandwiched between two men, both physically and emotionally, but it really did. Almost as if they’d been born to find one another. Ah crap, Zoe, romanticizing again! Stop it, already.
The reality was whatever she’d had with Jax and Hunter, it’d run its course. Time to focus on putting the pieces of her life — and body — back together again. After she’d recovered, she’d find a good man, probably someone who was financially responsible who drives a car listed in Consumer Reports as a sensible investment and she’d resign herself to vanilla sex because the trade-off was fair. Maybe it was the meds but she saw things very clearly. Maybe she’d been chasing the wrong dream. McMurphy was never going to give her a fair shot at something better; he was too comfortable in
her specific role as a fluff feature girl and she was naïve to think that even if she’d managed to pull off the story on Jax and Hunter that he’d ever see her as anything more.
But she wanted more — in every facet of her life.
She wanted more professionally and she definitely wanted more in her personal life.
Time to change everything. Time to dump all the contents of her life onto the kitchen table and start sorting out what to keep and what to toss.
McMurphy and the cramped creative cage he’d put her in — definitely toss.
That was an easy decision.
The hard one? The one involving her stubborn heart.
She knew the right decision was to walk away from Jax and Hunter as surely as they’d walked away from her but it hurt more than she imagined. Hurt more than her broken bones.
And there were no meds for that particular pain.
Put your big girl panties on and just deal, Zoe. Just deal.
#
A week after Dimas pushed Zoe off the catwalk and split with their payday, Hunter burst into the club office with news. “Someone’s seen Dimas.”
Jax perked up, instantly on alert. “Yeah? Where?”
“He’s hiding out with a cousin of Paula D’Ann’s. The word is he’s been waiting on a fake passport and I.D. so he can skip the country, likely Mexico but Dimas didn’t plan on his counterfeiter getting picked up and now he’s sweating it out until the guy gets let loose.”
Jax smiled, the first ray of hope splitting his heart. “Well, let’s go pay our friend a visit before he says goodbye.”
Hunter paused, surprising Jax when he said, “Maybe we ought to call Bent. Let him take care of the shit.”
“Why would we do that?” Jax queried in irritation. “Dimas is our problem. We’ll handle it.”
“Because if we kill Dimas, Bent will know it was us and no amount of money is going to do us any good if we’re sitting in prison on a murder charge.”