All because of our dad.
I’d barely taken the helmet off when I frowned at Dex. I asked him the same question he'd snapped at me for earlier. “Still nothing from Sonny?”
His head shake was grim. “Not yet, but it ain't a big deal. Knowin' them, they're drivin’ nonstop, babe.”
I let out a deep breath and nodded. There was no way I could realistically expect Sonny to keep tabs with me, and especially not with Dex. I couldn't imagine a man in his thirties calling his little half-sister to tell her every single time they stopped for gas. “Okay. Well, I guess I’ll get going.”
He extended his hand out to wrap around my wrist. “Text me when you get there.” His heavy eyes stayed on me the entire time. “There’s a spare key under the garden gnome in the front yard.”
Ahh, that would explain the garden gnome’s existence. He’d seemed so out of place in the plants that hadn’t been tended to in way too long.
“Will do.” Taking a few steps back toward my car, I wiggled my fingers at him. “Be safe.”
~ * ~ *
I tried to tell myself that there was nothing to be mad at.
I did.
I shouldn’t have been worried that Dex hadn't come home that night, that he never texted me after I messaged him that I made it to his house. He was a big boy. He could do whatever he wanted.
I swear, I really tried not to be mad, but I was.
Falling asleep on the couch was nothing new. Being paranoid that someone would break into the house that was in the middle of nowhere—without a friggin’ alarm!— was too much. I kept envisioning those men who had taken Sonny showing up. When that disaster ended, I'd start thinking of serial killers with masks on breaking a window and killing me, and then flaying my skin off to mount on their wall. Dramatic? Maybe a little.
So maybe my lack of sleep was part of the reason why I was so annoyed—not mad—that Dex hadn’t made it back. Or texted me.
I'd sent him another message that he didn’t respond to.
Feeling weird being at his house by myself and not wanting to deal with it any longer, I left a note on top of his dining room table telling him that I was going to run some errands. First, I stopped at the YMCA and swam as many laps as I could push through. Then I ended up going to the mall and bought new pants and a couple of shirts so that I wouldn’t be walking around worrying about clean cardigans that covered what my tank tops didn't. After that, I watched another movie and went to work.
Almost immediately, I regretted making it in.
I'd been in the middle of trying to look up videos on how to fix the thermo fax when a little hussy—I say little but she easily had three or four inches on me while I probably had about five pounds on her—appeared. She came in wearing a mini-skirt that looked like something made for someone my height—or a ten year old’s—and thick red hair that made me a little jealous. And she was carrying a vest that looked familiar.
Her thin, pretty face pinched into a scowl when she stopped in front of my desk, looking at me through the dark tint of her huge sunglasses. “I need to drop this off for Dex.”
“All right,” I told her, already extending my arms out to take it as my annoyance factor went up about twenty degrees.
“He left this at my house last night,” she added. Why she mentioned that I had no idea.
Why I felt a twitch at my eye, I had no idea either.
I just blinked at her, taking the vest from her hands before I stood up, my stomach fluttering. “All right.”
“All right,” she repeated in a low voice. “Later.”
And just like that she was gone.
Then, just like that I got even more annoyed.
I’d sat there worrying about goddamn Dex doing something stupid to help us out with the Reapers, while in the meantime he was off at some woman’s house? I swear even my butthole tensed up in frustration as I carried Dex’s jacket to the back and hung it up on a chair in the break room.
I knew it wasn’t worth the effort worrying about a grown ass man like Dex. I knew it, but still, I’d lost sleep over it. Asshole.
“Skyler bothers the fuck out of me, too.”
I turned around to see Blake standing at the doorway to the room, hands shoved into his pockets. “You know when you meet someone and you’re immediately annoyed?”
He laughed. “It’s her face, and maybe those windshield sized sunglasses she’s always wearing.”
They really did look like tinted windshields, the visual made me grin at Blake as I ignored the fact he'd hinted that she'd been in before. “Yeah, you’re right. That’s probably it.”
Blake's easygoing expression melted into a worried one as he crossed the room toward the vending machine. "I heard about Sonny."
Ugh. I frowned at the reminder.
“You heard anything from him?”
I wished.
“No, but then no one tells me anything either.” I paused for a second to look at my fingernails. "I'm sure he's fine."
Oh boy. How many times had I used and heard someone use the word "fine" to describe how they were doing? I could happily go the rest of my life without hearing that vague term ever again.
Blake sighed. "Sounds like a mess. That crew’s nothing to fool around with though." He raised both his black eyebrows. "You need to be careful until it all gets sorted out."
The urge to laugh was right on my tongue. Sleeping at Dex's alone was definitely being careful. Right.
I flinched a little at the thought. Where the heck had I gotten so negative? It was weird.
He shrugged. “Well, let me know if you hear anything about him. I need to go set up for my next client.”
The bald man I'd seen twice flickered through my brain. Then the memory of being terrified at Dex's house pushed that one aside.
The need to work out the issue going on with my dad seemed too important all of a sudden to leave Sonny to deal with it alone. It wasn't friggin' fair for either one of us. Plus, would they really do something to me? Oh boy, I hoped not. "Wait! Blake!"
He paused at the door, looking over his shoulder. "Yeah?"
I snapped my fingers together to play off the question poised on my tongue. “What's the name of the president of that Reapers club? The bald guy?" I was so full of shit but I knew Blake wouldn't tell me if I made it seem that Dex had hidden something like that from me.
Blake's face scrunched up. "Liam?"
I snapped my fingers like a little liar. "Yeah, I couldn't remember." I smiled at him as he shrugged and made his way toward the front, leaving me in the back to try and figure out a way to get the guy's last name without being conspicuous.
And that would be by asking Slim when Blake was busy. Sometimes a girl's gotta do, what a girl's gotta do. In my case, it was finding a way back to Sonny's.
Chapter Nineteen
Standing outside of the strip club, I knew what I was about to do was monumentally stupid. Astronomically dumb. And if—okay, when—my brother found out, he'd more than likely try to strangle me.
But screw it. Desperate times called for desperate measures, and I was used to dealing with things on my own. If the tables had been turned and I’d been the one who had gotten the shit kicked out of me, every nerve cell in my brain was confident that Sonny would have done something equally as stupid to get me back.
I wasn't about to let him down when he needed me for the first time.
That's exactly what I kept telling myself as I flashed my license at the bouncer standing at the entrance. He looked at me, then my ID, and then back at me before waving me in.