Page 20 of Tempting Fate

I leave before any of them can stop me and suck in a lungful of city air once I’m out on the street. Fuck. Fuck! I need to get my head on straight. If Em is Patch’s mate, then that’s that. I have no claim on him. He’s made that clear.

“You seem upset.”

I whirl around to see Flynn standing there, hands deep in the pockets of his jeans. He isn’t smiling, but he isn’t wearing the same look of pitying concern I’m used to, either.

“They sent you, did they?”

He snorts. “I sent myself. You think I let anyone tell me what to do?”

I stand a little straighter, meeting his eyes. I’m far shorter than him, of course, but his gaze slips away after a second or so and colour rises to his cheeks.

“Yeah. Sometimes.”

Flynn laughs and rolls his eyes before he settles against the pub wall. “What about you? You let people tell you what to do?”

Tim. Not like that, but I let him get away with far more than I should, far more than I was comfortable with. I lean against the brick next to Flynn.

“Not really.”

“That pretty new housemate of yours?”

“What about him?”

“You’d let him do it, wouldn’t you?”

I’m glad I’m facing the street so I don’t have to see whatever expression is on Flynn’s face. Not that his tone is lascivious or anything like that. No. He sounds certain.

“I don’t think he…” My throat goes dry. Em is steady, though, isn’t he? He might be a little awkward sometimes, get flustered, but my skin tingles at the memory of how he asked if I was safe when we first met. “I don’t know if that’s his thing.”

Flynn hums. “I don’t know if it’s Patch’s thing, either.”

I jerk my head to look at him when he says that, but I can’t read his placid expression. I let out a bitter laugh. “Doesn’t matter, does it? It’s not for me to find out.”

Flynn doesn’t reply. He stays standing there, quietly breathing, and I huff in frustration.

“I might leave soon anyway,” I say, voicing for the first time the feeling that’s been encroaching on my periphery for the last few months. “Work has been… None of them know what happened because, fuck, I don’t even know what happened, you know? I don’t want to ask. But they knew he was around because I told them, and then they didn’t see me injured because I got all healed up, but they knew, somehow, or at least my boss knew that something had happened and now they all walk around me on fucking eggshells even though I’ve told them everything is fine!”

Flynn says nothing.

“And it’s the same here, too. Nick wanted all these big fucking guys, even the ones who were clearly more dangerous than they could have been helpful, just because he’s scared of—what?—someone breaking in and trying to kill me? That’s not even how it happened. It’s my shitty judgement that caused everything. Put Vince in danger too and nearly broke up him and Dax for good because it all came out, like Dax wouldn’t have told him when he knew Vince wouldn’t run. And then I thought—I thought Patch would be different and I thought—” I shake my head. A bitter taste floods my mouth. “I don’t know what I thought.”

We’re silent for a while. I don’t know if the others inside will have heard any of that and for now, I don’t care. That will come later.

After a few minutes, Flynn takes a breath. “Sounds shit,” he says, and I blurt out a wet laugh.

“Yeah, it was. Is.”

“And the leaving?”

“I’ve got an interview next week. Haven’t told anyone. The company is in Edinburgh.”

“What’s it like?”

“The company?”

“The job.”

I shrug. “Fine, I guess. Executive assistant—it’s what I do now, but slightly better pay. No one there would have a clue that anything happened to me.”