She nodded and turned away from me, looking for something. “Here, you take Mandi. She’ll keep you safe.”
Damnthiskid. No wonder my brothers were so gone over their own. “But she keeps you safe and you’ll need her to help with your mom.”
Gemma nodded sagely, thinking about it for a full minute before she nodded. “Okay. I promise.” She held up her pinky finger and waited for me to take it.
I did, of course. I hugged Gemma one last time and got to my feet.
“Wait!” Gemma pulled something from Mandi’s pocket, a smaller version of Mandi and held it out to me. “Just in case. She’s real good at her job, Miss Ash said so.”
Fuck.“Thanks, kiddo. You gonna be okay here while I say goodbye to your mommy?”
“Yep,” Gemma said happily as she turned her attention back to her coloring book.
Chloe went to the front door, slipping out quietly and I followed, not sure how the fuck to say goodbye to this woman.
“Hey,” I said when I joined her, twirling a lock of her hair around my finger.
“Hey,” she whispered back, the pain in her eyes evident when she looked at me. “I don’t want you to go.”
“I know,” I answered, cupping her cheek and running my thumb along her jaw. “But I have to.”
“I know,” she opened her mouth and then closed it.
I smiled.
She smiled back and then found her words. “I love you, Pike.”
Her words knocked the fucking wind right out of my chest. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t hear, couldn’t think of one goddamn thing other than those words.
Chloe noticed my shock and waved her hands as if that one move could push away what I wanted to say. “I’m not saying it to get you to say it back,” she sighed. “I just want you to know that someone feels that away about you, that someone other than your MC cares about you. So just… be safe, yeah?”
I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t. My throat was tight, and my chest squeezed even tighter. So I didn’t rely on words in that moment, instead I relied on my lips, kissing her until we were both breathless and panting. “I will, if for no other reason than we have a lot to talk about.”
She nodded. “Yeah, okay.”
I took a step back and grabbed my rucksack, hitching it on my back. “Lock the doors and keep your phone charged. Don’t take any unnecessary chances.”
She smiled. “Playing it safe is my middle name.”
I jumped on my bike, starting it up before I took one last look at the cabin and the woman standing on the front porch. Just behind Chloe in the window sat Gemma, waving excitedly but I swore, even from this distance I saw tears in her eyes too.
How did they come to mean so much to me?
That was a question for another time, for now I took the long dirt road to the other side of the lake before driving down the mountain, leaving them behind.
Just for a few days, I told myself, giving it more gas to speed up the trip home.
Weeks ago all I wanted was to get off this fucking mountain and get away from Chloe and now, leaving her behindhad me all fucking twisted up and thinking about defying Diesel’s orders to get my ass back to Steel City.
But I had to go. For Ashley and for Angel. For Chloe and Gemma too. Mostly I had to go for me, I had to even the fucking score because it was in my nature to do just that.
And maybe, once that was done, I’d be just fucked up enough to have something real with Chloe without fucking it up.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chloe
The cabin felt huge. It felt massive and cavernous without Pike in it.
