Valen (Henchmen MC Next Generation 6)

“Right,” I agreed, nodding and taking a step back. “Okay,” I added.

As soon as Danny was in the car, I hopped on my bike and followed them back, though.

She could have a minute.

She could even have a five-minute drive across town.

But nothing else.

I didn’t like her silence. It wasn’t like her. So she was either in a lot more pain than her pride would let her admit, or she was mentally and emotionally having a rough time. Either way, she needed someone there for her. And there was no one else at the club at the moment that she had any sort of connection to.

It had to be me.

I wanted it to be me.

And, what’s more, I bet she did too.

Even if she didn’t want to admit it to herself.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Louana

One minute, I was snapping at Seth and Finn, who had spent the entire day poking at me about Valen.

The next, I was watching something unfold like it was in slow motion, yet moving too fast to be able to stop it.

Cary’s woman, Abigail—who’d already been through so much hell in her life—was about to be taken.

And before I could even do anything, I was getting shot, Finn was getting shot, and she was gone.

I’d been hurt a lot in the past.

In training, on jobs that went sideways.

I’d been beaten and stabbed and grazed once with a bullet.

The pain from one actually going in and then back out of me, though? It was blinding. It was all I could focus on for a long minute, as I heard Seth yelling. First over where Finn had landed, then getting closer as he moved toward me.

“Stop. Stop moving. You’re hit,” he said, voice rough, but trying to be shot.

“Abigail,” I hissed as I rolled off my back and onto my good side.

“I know. I know. I have everyone else on it, okay? You need to stay still.”

“We have to do something,” I insisted, pushing up onto my knees, and the movement made bile rise up in my stomach.

“You need to stay fucking still, Louana,” Seth demanded, but it was too late. I was pushing past the nausea and getting to my feet.

“No. The rest of the club is doing it,” Seth said, grabbing me when I tried to go in the direction the truck that had taken Abigail went off in. “Goddamnit, Louana, stop. You are only going to get in the way right now,” he added.

That seemed to penetrate through the panic and the pain, making me stop.

“I couldn’t save her.”

“None of us did,” he said, taking some of the weight on his back. “Come on. We have to get you inside and looked at,” he said. “You’re covered in blood.”

I shook him off but made my way back to the apartment, deep breathing through the nausea the pain from climbing the steps caused.

In the apartment, I closed myself into the bathroom, needing a minute to myself. And, quite frankly, needing someone other than Seth around to check out a wound in my ass, of all places.

Right then, in one of my lowest moments, hurt, but also mad at myself and ashamed of myself for not being able to stop that poor woman from getting taken, was when he showed up.

Valen.

Some part of me wanted to tell him to fuck off, to accept help from anyone else.

A larger part of me, though, wanted him.

So I opened the door.

Then there he was.

An older version of the boy I had once known, a boy I’d fallen so hopelessly in love with, that I lost myself inside of him.

He was both soft and firm at the same time.

And it just… cracked something inside of me.

I didn’t cry.

Almost as a rule since I left town, I didn’t cry. I just… didn’t have any tears left, it seemed like.

But I found myself soaking through Valen’s shirt in that bathroom.

I’d never been more thankful for anything than I was for Danny when she demanded Valen head back separately.

“This ride is going to suck,” Danny warned, looking at me in the rearview.

Every moment since it happened sucked. I was pretty sure moving or existing was going to suck for a while.

“Let’s get it over with,” I said, and Danny nodded and got us across town with Valen following right along.

“Scoot,” Danny demanded to Finn as we parked. “Go find your Ma. She’s probably losing her mind right now. Now you,” she said when we were alone, turning in her seat to look back at me. “You okay?”

“I didn’t save her. I… if I was a second faster, maybe—“

“Maybe then their angle would have been better and you would have gotten a bullet in the chest or the head,” Danny said. “There’s no way to know how this might have gone if you saw the truck a second faster or you got to your gun faster or Abigail got a chance to run, or Seth and Finn were outside. There’s no way to know. And you can’t beat yourself up over how it went. You did the best you could in the moment. Now it is up to the others to do their best and find her.”