While he’s reading the label, I shift my legs under myself, trying to take the pressure off my scalp. “You’ve been hanging on to these for a long time … Serenity,” he says, his dark eyes narrowing on my green ones.
“Yeah, um, you know.” I pause to clear my throat. “I was just waiting for a special occasion.”
I’m panting, fighting for each breath while he remains quiet and calm. Eventually he releases me and stands. He walks around my car, looking inside.
“She asked for you by name,” the bartender says, throwing me under the bus.
I wait for his rage to come, but it doesn’t.
“Take her shit over to the Inn. Let her clean up, and then bring her to me,” he says before walking away.
Slowly, I push myself to my feet as he kicks his leg over his bike. When it roars to life, I start to back away.
The bartender looks at the two identical brothers. “Don’t fuck this up,” he warns them, shaking his finger in their faces before heading back inside.
I turn and run, but let’s be honest, I would have to take ten steps to equal one of theirs.
“My name is Cole,” one of them says, snatching me around the waist and lifting my feet from the ground.
“I’m Carson,” the other says. “Do you think you can keep her on your bike? I’ll take her car to town.” He walks over and slides the driver’s seat of my car all the way back before getting in and starting it.
“You can’t just take my car!” I yell, my feet peddling as if I’m still on the ground.
“She won’t be going anywhere,” he says, pulling a pair of handcuffs from his pocket.
His brother laughs. “Always prepared.”
“You know it.”
He drops me on the back of his bike. I wave my arms around wildly, trying to evade his cuffs, but it’s no use. When one end clicks around my wrist, my stomach falls.
My gaze is caught on the cuff around my wrist as he tugs on the other end, locking it to the beltloop on his pants. His mouth turns down in a frown. “I’m not going to hurt you,” he says. “I just can’t risk you jumping off.”
When he settles on the bike in front of me, I push against his back. “I don’t want to do this,” I say, fighting back tears.
“We’re just going to town. It’s not far.” He ignores how upset I am and grabs my free hand, wrapping it around his middle. “Hold on tight.”
As the countryside passes us by, my heart aches to go back to my life on the outskirts of Denver. To my quiet little neighborhood. To my soul soothing job at the oddities shop. To Deb and Mr. Johnson.
As soon as we stop, I jump off the bike, practically ripping my arm off in the process.
Cole doesn’t even bother uncuffing me as we stroll into the huge brick building on the corner of the block. When we step inside, it’s like being transported back in time.
“Hey, Tiff. Rage needs a room for this one.” He tugs at the cuff running between us.
Her gaze narrows on me. “Rage is putting her up here?”
“That’s what I said.”
Her lip turns up on one side in a snarl. “What for?”
“Do you want me to call him over here so you can ask him?” Carson asks, stepping up behind us.
“No,” she scoffs. “She just …” She waves her hand over me.
“What?” I ask, holding my head a little higher.
A tall man in a black cowboy hat joins her behind the counter. “What’s up?”