“You seem surprised to see me,” she said, and fuck, he needed to learn to school his expectations around her. To date, she seemed to be the only woman he hadn’t been able to lie to.
Scratch that—he had lied to her and somehow she called him on his bullshit every single time. He thought about the orchids he’d sent in a moment of weakness, hoping they’d gotten to her before S8 moved out. He’d called from the truck as it barreled out of the city. And two hours later, he’d called to cancel the order, spoken to the wife of the owner who’d promised not to deliver them.
“You’re working for Drew Landon. Again,” Jem said.
Gunner shrugged. “He keeps me busy. Pays me well. What more do I need?’
Jem stared at him, the crazy man completely lucid, leaving Gunner to feel like he was the one who needed the mental institution. The higher the walls, the better.
“It’s a job, Jeremiah. I’m good at it. What do you give a fuck what I do for the rest of my life?”
“Because you’re not the same guy I knew.”
“That guy never existed.”
“Bull. Shit. And your running didn’t help us. Landon’s trying to kill us anyway,” Jem spat. “Or maybe you knew that. Maybe you want us out of the way, since we know your secrets.”
Gunner smirked again and Jem smacked him hard across his face, splitting his lip.
“Jem, I need to talk to him alone,” Avery said.
Jem gave the chair one final kick for good measure and Gunner cursed a blue streak at him. His lip was split again, the metallic taste of blood filling his mouth. His body ached and he wanted to kill the crazy asshole who’d been torturing him for the past forty-eight-plus hours.
What was the fucking point? He was done with S8. Jem was telling him that Landon had tried to kill Avery and Billie Jean as a trick. Gunner knew tricks when he saw them, because he’d used them before.
But Jem was leaving and Avery was staying. He steeled himself against her, because nothing could’ve prepared him for the jolt he’d felt.
You thought you were dead inside. And just like that, Avery’s presence gave him the jump start to his heart.
He hated her for that, and that hate was what he focused on. “Why don’t you follow your friend and get the fuck out of here?”
Her mouth fell open, but only for a second. It was like steel grew in place of her spine, and when she straightened, her eyes snapped angry fire. “What have they done to you?”
He stared at her as obscenely as possible, refusing to break the gaze first as he spat blood in a straight line through his teeth. “They didn’t do anything. This is me, Avery. I told you—go to Key and stay the hell away.”
“I’m not with Key.”
“You’re fucking someone else, then? Good for you. I told you to leave me alone. What don’t you get about that?”
Avery’s chin raised defiantly. Instead of making her angry enough to walk out, he seemed to be succeeding only in making her will stronger. “There’s a lot I’m not getting about you. Where’ve you been?”
“Around.”
“Doing what?”
“Stuff. Christ, who the fuck are you, my mother?”
She ignored that, countered with a stack of files she held so he could see them marked “I know exactly what kind of stuff you’ve been doing.”
“So why ask?”
“Because I want to see if you have the balls to admit it.”
He gave a short, dirty laugh, rocked his pelvis into the air. “You want to see those balls, go right ahead. Doesn’t mean I have to make you wife number—”
“Five?” she finished, moved close enough to touch him and leaned in. “Wouldn’t I be wife number five, Gunner?”
“James,” he bit out. “And fuck you.”
She reached out then. He thought she would slap him, but what she did was worse. She ran her hand through his hair, a gentle touch that honest to God nearly broke him.
He wanted to lean into her hand, rest his head on her, let her take care of him. Confess things she already knew and some she didn’t.
“Talk to me, Gunner. Come back to me.”
He closed his eyes, took a breath. He opened them, the fantasy ruthlessly pushed aside. “I was never yours to begin with.”
“I’m not letting you go,” she said, but she had to know that some part of him was already long gone. She held up the sale papers he’d left for her months earlier. “We bought it all back—the tattoo shop, the garage, the bar. All of it. And we’re fixing it back up.”
“Then you’re stupider than I thought.”
She picked up the files then and flipped through them. “The El Coyote was the first job you did after you left me,” she said. It seemed like years ago that he’d done that. “And then we traced a line of crimes along the Ivory Coast and through the Sudan.”
Brutal jobs. His bank account was fat with blood money. But Avery and Jem had been standing here safe in front of him, and he had to assume the same of Key, Dare and Grace. It was all he’d asked, and in turn he’d separated himself from them.
Fuck, being back here in Avery’s presence was wiping away his carefully built resolve. He didn’t want her to know all this shit. Didn’t want her seeing into his past, his present, especially when she couldn’t be a part of his future.
She tipped his chin up so he was forced to meet her eyes. His chin brushed the file she still held, until she climbed into his lap, holding the file behind the back of his chair. His dick was hard and she ground against it while he ground out, “Simple biology, baby. You want to fuck me, go for it. Don’t expect it to change anything.”
“It already has, Gunner.” She leaned in, licked his earlobe. He fought a shiver, tried to stay cold as fuck, but she was so goddamned warm. He wanted to thrust against her, let her come against him, calling his name. “I’m going to fight dirty. And I’m not stopping until you give in.”
“Why?” He heard a trace of despair in his own voice.
“Because you wouldn’t stop for me. Because I don’t think you want me to stop.”
He looked up at the ceiling. She took the opportunity to kiss his neck. Run her hands over his chest. “Come back to me, Gunner. Please, come home.”
“I don’t have a home, Avery. Especially not one with you.”
She blinked at him.
“You told us we have to make our own decisions. I’ve made mine. You need to accept it.”
“I won’t.”
Infuriatingly stubborn. He stared into her beautiful eyes—she had an old soul and he’d noticed that from the moment he’d met her. She could always see right through him. “Let me go.”
“I can’t.”
“You have no idea the kind of wrath you’re going to bring down on your newly formed family.”
“You’re part of the family, Gunner.”
“James. My name is James.”
“Never to me. I don’t know him.”
“You’re meeting him. This is me, Avery. Gunner was a facade.”
Avery blanched and he knew he needed to hurt her, needed to twist the knife, sink it so deep she’d ache if she even started to think about him.
Gunner cocked his head, smirked when he told her, “Your family couldn’t beat mine—in the end, it wasn’t you or Dare who took out Powell. You needed me. Your own father couldn’t do it.”
Chapter Eleven
Avery blinked at him in disbelief for only a second at his callousness at Darius’s death. Before she could think, she’d slapped him, twice, hard across his cheek. It didn’t wipe the smug, satisfied look off his face, the one that said he knew he’d driven the knife deep.
The one that said he didn’t care. But if he had to try this hard, he must care. Must be feeling threatened.