Page 254 of Sweet Temptation
I wasn’t sure which would be worse, but I definitely didn’t love hearing those words.
Ronan had asked me if he should’ve spared me knowing any of this. If he should’ve just not told me.
But I’d told him, Please don’t keep things from me. I’m a big girl. I can handle it… And I need to learn this lesson.
I felt like I’d welcomed that man into my life, to some extent, in the beginning. That some of this was on me.
Ronan had told me, just like he had so many times, None of this was your fault, Summer.
But it still felt shitty as hell.
He’d insisted that if it wasn’t me Blair had chosen to fixate on, he would’ve fixated on someone else. That I was just unlucky as hell, in this instance. And that there may have been other women he was stalking, too.
That the guy was not right in the head.
Since then, I’d actually read about Blair’s case in the news. He’d be facing trial, and because of his involvement with a known criminal organization trying to make inroads into Canada, it seemed that officials were eager to press the case. Ronan’s partner, Naveen, said they wanted to make an example out of Blair. And that we were damn lucky they had enough evidence to do it.
That in a way, I’d had a part in that all coming about.
And now we could just watch the whole thing play out in the media—from a safe distance.
That was fine with me.
But fuck, I just wanted the whole thing to be over.
Ronan had assured me, many times, that it was over. That even if Blair was ever released, the Kings wouldn’t forget what he did. That he’d earned himself a life sentence on the streets, where trespasses weren’t forgiven.
Where there was no such thing as a fair trial.
He also told me something that I knew had to have been hard for him to bring up: that he couldn’t help thinking that Blair might never have noticed me at all if my brother hadn’t come under the radar of his motorcycle club.
Ronan told me how Justice had introduced him to a guy at his party who had a Bloody Bastards tattoo. He also told me that Blair grew up in Hope. He said he’d had his team run a check on Justice, and that there was no reason to worry about him. At least, not yet.
But he did advise me to mention to my brother that he should be a little more selective with his friends. That he didn’t want to affiliate himself with the Bastards, and he better stop whatever he was doing before the Kings up near Hope got him on their radar. If he was getting coke from this biker, socializing with him… whatever it was… he needed to stop.
I heard him on that. Loud and clear.
My brother liked his cocaine, unfortunately, and so far, it liked him. But he wasn’t stupid and he wasn’t all that reckless. He just had some growing up to do. So I spoke to him and I told him everything. I spoke to Mia, too.
And of course, they were both pretty upset.
But I’d chosen not to let myself spiral into worrying about it.
Instead, I’d decided to stay unworried unless there was a further reason to worry. And in the meantime, I’d asked Ronan if he might look in on Justice, so to speak, now and then. To make sure he was okay. For me.
I told him I’d cover whatever it cost.
He told me it was no problem, and there was no cost.
Of course there is, I’d said.
Not for you.
I get the preferred client discount?
You get the preferred everything discount, he told me.
And that was that.
