Page 86 of Direct Action
“What about Len Taylor?”
“He’s a lapdog. He’s a dick with wandering eyes. A total creep who weirds me out but doesn’t freak me out, if that makes sense.”
I took another breath that did nothing to quell my burning desire to carve the man’s eyeballs out of his head.
“Maybe I was over—”
“Don’t do that,” I interrupted. “If your gut’s telling you something’s wrong, you listen to it. If something doesn’t sit well, creeps you, freaks you, makes you uneasy, you listen to that and you tell me.”
The silence stretched. I drove. Finally, I heard Chloe sigh. “That guy Dex freaked me out. Now you’re freaking me out. So now I’m thinking I should be more freaked out. And I’m freaked out more because I feel some rage-y energy rolling off of you and it’s making it hard to breathe.”
Rage-y.
How in the hell can she make me want to smile when I want to find Taylor and torture him until he spills his guts?
“You should be all the way freaked out,” I told her. “You know I don’t like you being there—full stop. But tonight proves one of the many reasons why this isn’t a good idea. There are too many unknowns.”
“Ryan—”
“I’m trying,” I interrupted her. An ugly taste filled my mouth, ready to spew in great detail what happens to beautiful women who find themselves entangled with men like Blackwell and Taylor.
“I know you are,” she whispered. “Tomorrow your membership will be approved. I have the next two days off, and when I’m back to work, you’ll be there.”
That was something but not enough.
“And I’m freaked out, which means I’m being careful. I’m listening but not asking questions, just like Catarina told me.”
As fucked up as it was, I wanted Chloe to be freaked. I wanted her so scared she wouldn’t take any chances beyond the already big fucking one she was taking.
“Poppy wanted to break into Muriel’s office.”
Jesus, fuck me.
“But I talked her out of it. I reminded her there were cameras. She backed down, but then she broke down and had an epic crying jag. She wasn’t any better after she talked to Pamela.”
“You need to contain her.”
“I’m trying. But, Ryan, Poppy loves big. Once you’re in her heart, that’s it. You’re there forever. Which means she’s friendly, she has a lot of friends, but she only lets in a select few. She let in Cynthia—they’re tight. That means she’s feeling this deep. It also means she’s not going to back down. Not for me. Not for anyone. And I have to admit, as much as this scares me, it’s one of the reasons I love her. She’s the type of friend who you know that no matter what, no matter how crazy, how scary, how dangerous, she will never leave your side.”
I was not having good thoughts. Not that I’d had any good thoughts about this from the beginning, but now they’d plummeted down to the pits of hell. “And it’s your job to protect her while she’s going all out putting herself out there for a friend.”
“It’s what friends do,” she muttered.
No, it’s what someone who values loyalty and deep, meaningful relationships does. It’s what I would do for Pete, Mase, Aiden, Gavin, Fallon, and even Jack and Beckett. It’s what those men would do for me and each other, and that now extended to Catarina and Calista.
Chloe was curled into me, wearing my tee, hair still piled on top of her head, where she’d tied it before she’d taken a shower, smelling like my soap, and I couldn’t help thinking about all the times I’d lain exactly where I was, arms empty, wishing Chloe was next to me. The fuck of it was half of the fantasies I’d had about her, what she would feel like, had nothing to do with sex.
It was this.
Her cuddled next to me, getting ready to drift off to sleep, while knowing she’d be right there when I woke up.
That was the fantasy—the dream that I’d ruthlessly shoved aside, not wanting to believe it was within reach.
The risk of having everything I wanted and losing it was a gamble I’d been too scared to take.
Now I had her exactly where I’d never thought she’d be, and she was caught up in a situation that twisted my insides.
“You know,” Chloe said into the dark. “You’re a noisy thinker too.”
