Under Locke (33 page)

When his cheek ticked up again, I lifted both of my shoulders and wiggled my fingers. “Just let it go, your highness. Just let it all go.”

The look he gave me could have seared the flesh off of my muscles and made me break into hives if I hadn’t recognized that little gleam in his eye that assured me he would never physically hurt me. Yell at me? Sure. Call me names I’d use on my future dog? Yeah. But hurt me? Nah.

“Babe?”

“Yeah?”

“Get your ass back up front.”

Oh.

~ * ~ *

“I like having you around,” Slim told me while we were seated on the couch, waiting for Blue and Dex to finish up whatever they were doing for closing.

“Why?” I asked him carefully, smiling a little.

“Because Dex is hilarious when he’s pissed off.”

I gave him my best bug eyes. “You like seeing him mad like that?”

He nodded like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “Trust me, you know Dex a few years like we do, him getting pissed is like an early Christmas present. He never gets riled up enough to lose it at Pins. Mayhem is another story but here? Never.”

I’d thought about that after I’d finished off my soda with him in the back. His mood had switched to laid-back Dex in the blink of an eye. He’d asked me about what my life had been like back in Florida, and if I’d ever dealt with so many insolent people before at any of my other jobs. The answer to that last question had been a blatant
“
no
”
that made us both laugh.

Despite the fact that I had no doubts Dex would
ha
ve kicked that guy’s ass if he
hadn’t
le
ft
and that it was kind of scary that someone could get so angry, I had to say, it was kind of hot.

Pretty hot.

All right, it was plain hot.

But I didn’t know what to do with it and knew I shouldn’t do anything with that thought.

Dex was my boss. My boss who’d been a dick to me in the past, but still was a dick to other people.  On the other hand, this was still the same man who had opened up to me about things that were undoubtedly difficult for him. And the same one who knew things I hadn’t told anyone. The caring grump.

“How’s your piercing?” Slim asked.

Not wanting to pull up my shirt while I was sitting—my pants were really tight and that was the excuse I’d use for the little roll hanging over the waist band— I stood as I told him. “Good, I think.”

I pulled up my shirt, just over the belly button. “It’s only sore if I touch it, but that’s normal, right?”

Slim nodded, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees to look at the green gem in the middle. “Yeah, that’s normal. It looks good.”

I pushed the ring up and down like he’d told me to, to keep the skin from healing around the metal. “I like it.”

The alarm beeped from the hallway, followed by the sound of motorcycle boots on the tile floor as Slim reached up to poke at my rib cage with his index finger. “One day, you have to let me do something here. I think it’d look pretty wicked, Ris.”

I snorted at the same time that familiar figure came into my peripheral vision. “Let me think about it.”

Dex stopped and eyed our placement critically through narrowed eyes before I yanked my shirt back down and shot him an innocent smile.

“Ready?” I asked.

He nodded his reply.

I called out a goodbye to Blue and Slim when we were out of the shop. All of us except Dex were used to walking toward the lot together each night. Dex always parked in front of the shop. Every single time. It was like the universe and all of its inhabitants knew that spot in front of Pins was his and only his.

Dex had barely gotten on his bike, having passed me the helmet when he said, “I
got
somewhere to go tonight. I'm taking you to your car, and you can drive back to my place from there.”

I pretty much knew how to get to his house, and while I wasn’t crazy about the idea of staying there alone when he lived in the middle of nowhere, I couldn’t really argue or be a baby about it. “Okay,” came out of my mouth but it was reluctant.

He parked in front of the driveway again when we stopped at Sonny’s place. It was eerie how quiet the house seemed. Usually by the time I came home from work, Sonny had already turned on the porch light, and another light inside of the house would be on as a welcoming beacon for me. But there were no lights anymore, his SUV was gone, an
d his bike, along with Trip’s, were under the carport.
I
t hit me how mad th
e sight of it
made me.

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 ide
a.

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. Th
at 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?"