“This isn’t a pep talk.” Dallas braced both hands on the table. “What are you going to do if her father shows up to rescue her? If he offers her a free pass, all sins forgiven, right back to her cushy, safe little life? What are you going to do when she looks to you to help her decide?”
He’d tell her that it wasn’t his decision, that she was the only one who truly knew what to do—except he knew it was a lie. He’d do everything he had to do to keep her out of danger. “I’ll tell her she needs to go,” he snarled.
Dallas didn’t look surprised. He didn’t look happy, either. “Can you live with that?”
“I don’t exactly have a choice.”
“You have two choices, and they’re both shit.”
Let her go, or keep her and maybe get her killed. “They’re both shit,” Jasper echoed. “But they’re all I’ve got, unless you’re cooking something up in that head of yours.”
“I have a few ideas,” Dallas said, but held up his hand before Jasper could say anything. “But nothing that’ll make her any safer than she is now. Hell, for all I know, we’re headed into a territory war. I’ll protect Noelle like she’s one of us—but you know what war means.”
First Trent’s bomb, and now a sniper from Eden. Things were going to shit all over the place, just like the days when they’d had to scrounge and fight like hell for every scrap of peace that came their way. If they were smart, they’d take precautions.
Some of the men hadn’t hesitated to take women then, even knowing they might not come home to them at the end of the night, but Jasper had never been one of them. “I won’t keep a woman I can’t protect. That hasn’t changed.”
Dallas sighed. “Can’t say I fault your logic, Jas…but maybe that means we’re both looking at cold, lonely lives.”
“There are worse things.” Like more gunshots, and Noelle’s eyes blank and unseeing instead of snapping with life.
“All right.” Dallas straightened and rubbed a hand over his hair. “I’ll reach out to Cunningham and let him know I’m open to talking. Maybe you won’t have to make the choice at all.”
“He’ll want her back.” Jasper took a deep breath. “What do we do with Martel’s body? Make it disappear, or make sure they find it?”
Dallas stared at the wall and flexed his hands thoughtfully. “Put him on ice,” he said finally. “Let me hear what Cunningham has to say, and then we’ll decide.”
“Speaking of ice, get some on your hands,” Jasper advised.
“Yeah.” Dallas stared down at his bruised knuckles. “I need to go tell Lex it’s over before she crawls out of bed and hurts herself again.”
It was his job to check on Lex, to make sure she was recovering and safe. It was Jasper’s equal responsibility to do the same for Noelle, but he needed distance. He needed to let go. “Will you…?”
“I’ll take care of her,” Dallas replied quietly. “You go find Bren and Mad. It’s going to be a long night.”
That it was.
Chapter Nineteen
Jasper was avoiding her.
At first, she thought it was her imagination. Dallas had returned late and grumpy, and Noelle had been too wrung out to traverse the warren of hallways back to Lex’s empty bed. But sleep had been fleeting and restless, interrupted whenever she slipped her hand into the vacant space to her left. Every time she woke, she forced her eyes shut again by promising herself that the next time she flung her arm wide it would slam into the unforgiving wall of Jasper’s chest.
It never did.
She’d edged out of the huge bed at dawn, fleeing a loneliness that was more cutting in Dallas and Lex’s presence than it could have possibly been alone. Dallas had cracked open one eye to squint at her as she pulled on her clothing, but after admonishing her not to leave the compound, he tucked Lex’s sleeping form more firmly against his side and closed his eyes again.
He’d probably assumed she was going to find Jasper, but she hadn’t. She’d already felt it then—something beyond sneaking suspicion. The certainty that Jasper wasn’t simply not present, but absent. Deliberately not there.
It wasn’t until she was huddled in a cooling bath in Lex’s quarters that she understood the conviction. Her hands trembled as she scrubbed a washcloth over her newly healed skin, and she needed him. She needed to see him, touch him, know he was safe. She needed to curl up in his arms and know she was safe.
She needed him, and he was supposed to know that. He had to know that. If he didn’t, how could she trust him to know everything else she needed? And if he did know but was ignoring her…
No. It was too soon for such thoughts, especially with all the danger. Dallas had admitted to sending Jasper out on some unspecified errand. Maybe it had taken most of the night. Maybe he’d fallen into his bed not long before she’d crawled out of Dallas’s, and if she went to him now he’d open his arms and fold them around her—
She didn’t. She told herself it was because he needed rest, and because it didn’t matter anyway. She drained the tub and dressed for the day, braided her hair in a crown around her head and picked out a short-sleeved T-shirt that left her arms—and her tattoos—bare. Paired with heeled boots and jeans and one of Lex’s studded leather belts, it felt like armor.
She was an O’Kane. One night of uncertainty wouldn’t change that. Nothing could change that. That was the promise tattooed into her skin—her loyalty in exchange for their protection. Forever.
Besides, she wasn’t entirely helpless anymore. She didn’t need Jasper or Lex to hold her hand and give her something to do. The stage had been cleaned of Lex’s blood, but the club still needed tending. Trix would be there to open the doors by noon, ready to serve the truly dedicated drinkers and sell individual bottles of liquor to anyone unable to strike a special deal with Dallas.
Life had to go on.
Noelle had swept the floor and taken down the chairs by the time Trix arrived, trailing a quiet bouncer named Zan. Zan nodded to her and positioned himself just outside the door, a solid wall of muscle that could—and would—turn deadly at the slightest hint of danger.
Noelle had traded her broom for a cloth to wipe down the scarred wooden tables when the door swung open again, admitting two men almost as large as Zan—and tragically familiar.
Her father’s bodyguards.
She barely had time to wrap her brain around that—her father’s bodyguards—before he followed them inside, blinking against the darkness and skirting tables with a wide berth, as if merely touching them would contaminate him.
Her father. Here.
Noelle clenched her fingers around the cloth until the nubby fabric dug painfully into her skin. Her father looked impossibly older, as if months or even years had passed instead of weeks and days. The grooves carved around his steely eyes were deeper, the furrows that formed when his brows drew together more intense. He seemed tired, stressed, and she knew with a certainty borne of painful experience that her absence couldn’t possibly account for either state. Not on its own, anyway.
He looked at her—no, past her, his gaze gliding by without a glimmer of recognition before snapping back to her face. His brow crinkled, and he straightened the hem of his jacket. “Noelle. I didn’t recognize you.”
She didn’t know what to call him. Sir was an honor she wouldn’t give him, not anymore, but she’d never called him anything more familiar. She’d never been permitted to.
No greeting, then. Squaring her shoulders, she faced him with only her deathly grip on the dishtowel to betray her fear. “I wouldn’t have expected to see you here.”