Kitt
Taking Tansy home would no doubt get me in trouble with the
club but Hastie had instructed that I get her to safety and
there wasn’t a place in Ward Four safer than this.
I may have left out the part about taking her to my home
until there was no way she could back out on purpose. If
Tansy knew beforehand, she wouldn’t let me get her out of
Neptune’s.
Tansy’s eyes were wide with surprise as I looked back up at
her. I tried to fight the grin on my lips, but she looked
so f**king adorable when she was caught off guard like
that. “Your house?” she echoed, deadpanned.
“Yeah.” I made sure to set the locks in case Tansy got any
crazy ideas about a prison break. “Come on, you’re probably
tired. Take your choice of any of the rooms upstairs. Only
one is occupied and that’s my room. I’ll bring your stuff
up after.”
The big, beady eyes had yet to soften and I wondered for a
minute if I had made the brutal mistake of pissing her off
again. “I can’t stay here,” she said.
“Why not?”
“Because I can’t.”
Ah, yes. I’d forgotten about how Tansy loved to avoid me at
all costs. That would be impossible now that we would be
staying together. “Tansy, this is the safest place in Ward
Four. No one knows you’re here. Not even Glory MC yet.”
Tansy rushed towards her bags in a panic, tossing one over
her shoulder and hefting up the last two before she turned
and snapped at me. “Open the door.”
“Why?”
“I told you I’m not staying here.”
“And I repeat, why not? You’ve already seen the security.
You’re not in danger here.” She muttered something under
her breath but it was so low, I didn’t catch it. “Look,” I
said, moving towards her. “The situation is shit. I know
you’ve become comfortable staying at Neptune’s but it isn’t
safe there right now. The only other option is to take you
back to your father and you already stated you didn’t want
that.”
Tansy opened her mouth to say something but bit down on her
lip instead. For a moment, she looked like she was going to
cry.
Shit. Now you’ve done it, idiot.
Her voice trembled with a sudden fragility. “Where’s the
bathroom?”
“Over there.” As soon as I pointed it out to her, Tansy’s
feet were moving, gliding over the cold floors. The door
slammed closed, shutting me out.
“Fuck.” Great work, shithead. You pushed her too hard, too
fast. Now what? Did I go talk to her? No! She was afraid of
me already. Doing so would only make things worse. I pulled
out my phone, scrolling down to Lucky’s number all the
while cursing my idiocy.
“I need to speak with Seven,” I told the sec and trez as
soon as he picked up. She would know how to fix this.
“Hello to you to, asshole. And what do you want with my
girlfriend?” By his hostile tone, it was clear that Lucky
was still angry about me taking Seven’s side a while back.
“I just have a question.”
“So ask me.”
Lucky was usually very charming but I wasn’t in the mood
for banter right now. “Come on, Lucky. Just give Seven the
phone.”
“Well, if you insist.” I was on the verge of asking what
that meant when there were sounds of struggle on the other
end of the line.
“Where did you take her?” Seven yelled.
Oh shit. Was she pissed at me too?
“If you took her back to her father, you ratfink bastard,
I’m going to—”
Yup. She was.
“She’s here,” I assured her. “With me. She’s fine.” That
last bit was clearly a lie though. “Listen, uh—” How did I
go about explaining this?
“Let me speak to her!” Seven demanded.
I ran a hand through my hair. “That’s a little hard to do
considering that she probably doesn’t want to talk to me
right now.”
“Why? What did you do to her?”
“Nothing! Hastie asked that I take her someplace safe. He
wanted me to take her back to her father but when I ran
that idea by her, she freaked. I brought her to my place
instead.”
“Why didn’t you ask her if she wanted to stay with me?
Haven’t you noticed that you scare the shit out of her?”
What? I didn’t scare her. At least not more than any of the
other guys in the club. “You did ask her where she wanted
to stay, right?” Seven asked.
“No, because I knew that she would—”
“You tricked her into staying with you?” The words were
screeched so loud, my ears rang. “Are you crazy?”
Shit. Seven definitely wasn’t making me feel better about
myself.
Lucky’s voice sounded farther off in the distance, but his
playful tone still came across the line. “Is this going to
be the same thing like when Seven begged me to stay with
her just so she could seduce me?”
“Seduced you?” Seven echoed in disbelief. “If I recall
correctly, I wanted nothing more than to get rid of you as
soon as you walked through the door. And I might add, you
were the one on your knees, begging for me to accept you,
remember?”
I could hear Lucky’s laughter over the line.
“You bikers think you can just demand something and expect
others to follow. I hope she gives you shit for it.”
“She’s in the bathroom right now.”
“You don’t get it, do you?” Seven continued. “For her, it’s
different. You didn’t ask her. You took away her consent.
Do you know what you’ve done?”
At the revelation, my blood turned to ice. “Fuck, I never
thought of that.”
“She must think you’re the biggest asshole right now.”
I couldn’t blame her. In my haste to get Tansy to safety
during this emergency, I had done to her what the Phantoms
had done. I had simply towed her along without consulting
her on what she wanted to do. “I f**ked up. How do I fix
it?”
“Well, you can start by saying sorry.”
“Groveling usually works,” Lucky offered helpfully.
“Slip a note under the door.”
“No.” Seven knew how bad I was at writing. Because I’d
never gone to school, I never learned the basics. And now,
more than ever, I wished I had, if only to communicate how
sorry I was to Tansy. “That’s what you’d do. I’d just ruin
things further.” I ran a hand over my face, peering at the
door where she had locked herself in. “I’ll talk to her.”
“You better,” Seven threatened. “Fix it, Kitt.”
“I will.” I just didn’t know how.
“Call me later,” Lucky said, taking the phone from his
girlfriend. “We’ll need to regroup as soon as Knuckle’s
surgery is over. I’ll update you if I’ve got any news. For
now, get some rest, man.”
“Will do.” And with that, I clicked off, tossing the phone
away as I made my way to the bathroom door. I knocked once
softly. “Tansy?” I could hear the soft sounds of sniffles
inside and a hiccup that tore my heart wide open. “Tansy,
will you open the door? I’d like to apologize.”
A long minute spanned between us, making me feel worse with
each passing second. It had never been my intention to hurt
her this way. I’d been so preoccupied on getting her out of
harm’s way that I hadn’t realized the damage I’d made until
it was too late.
My name was called, so soft that I barely heard it. But
when I looked up, the bathroom door remained shut. “I’d
like to be alone right now,” Tansy whispered.
That was the killer. The way her voice broke, the
loneliness in her tone, it made me want to grab my pistol
and shoot myself in the head for being the one to make her
feel this way.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. But it was hard to tell if she
heard it or not through the barrier between us.
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