Total pages in book: 147
Estimated words: 137176 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 686(@200wpm)___ 549(@250wpm)___ 457(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 137176 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 686(@200wpm)___ 549(@250wpm)___ 457(@300wpm)
There was no missing the moment his hatred returned. It happened as fast as a switch being flipped. JJ shoved past me and snatched his gun and phone off the nightstand. He also took the shirt I’d offered him from the table, but he was out the door before he even put it on. I didn’t realize he’d taken something else until I heard my Mustang roar to life.
“Fuck,” I muttered as I realized I’d left the keys on the table next to the clothing. The keys for the rental car were in my pocket.
“JJ, stop!” I called as I grabbed my own gun. He was already racing out of the parking lot before I got outside. I didn’t give a shit that he’d taken my car. What I was worried about was his state of mind. Muscle cars and raw emotion didn’t mix well.
It seemed to take forever to get the rental car on the road. My Mustang was long gone, and I had no hope of catching up to JJ even if I floored it on the rental car. He’d be back in the city long before me.
I reached for my phone so I could warn Sully about JJ, only to realize I’d left the damn thing in the motel room. “Fuck!” I bit out as I slammed my hands down on the steering wheel.
There was no way I was turning around for the phone, so I just had to hope Sully was wherever JJ would end up—their house or Sully’s office.
A sudden, terrible thought invaded my mind like the most painful of parasites.
“No,” I whispered as fear, anger, and pure, unadulterated jealousy consumed me.
The club.
The one JJ went to every night after work. The one where Sully had said JJ let guys—
“No!” I shouted and jammed the gas pedal to the floor. Desperation had me praying to a deity I didn’t really believe in that I was wrong.
There was no way JJ would go to Tank’s after what had happened between us. He’d want to nurse his wounds in private.
Except JJ didn’t do that. Not this version of him. Sully himself had said JJ was trying to lose himself in places like Tank’s… with men who used him like he wasn’t worth more than a broken toy.
It felt like hours before I reached the club that was just south of the city and about five miles from JJ and Sully’s house. I hadn’t even bothered to drive by the home in the hopes of seeing my Mustang parked in the driveway or even somewhere along the block where Sully wouldn’t see it. My gut was screaming at me that JJ was exactly where I didn’t want him to be.
Fuck, how had this gotten so messed up? Two weeks ago, I’d wanted vengeance for something JJ hadn’t even done. I might not have been directly responsible for what had happened to him two years earlier, but I was the one hurting him now. I was the one playing games with his head.
Despair and torment ate away at my insides the second I saw my Mustang parked across the street from the club. I slammed my rental to a stop in the loading zone in front of the building.
I forgot all about my fear of dark, enclosed spaces as I barreled through the front door of the club. “JJ… where is he?” I snarled at the bartender. The huge man looked me over for several painfully long seconds.
I was about to find JJ on my own even if I had to rip the place apart when the bartender, who I could only assume was the Tank the club had been named after because that’s how he was built, said, “Alley out back. Better hurry.”
The last two words nearly killed me on the spot.
My logical side would have argued that JJ was an adult who could make his own decisions, but logic had flown out the window about two minutes after he had stormed out of the motel room. Maybe I could have come to terms with the idea of him fleeing me to go hook up with some stranger, but I knew that wasn’t what he was doing.
I knew it like I knew I hadn’t been the one who’d shot him. I knew it like I knew how helpless it had felt to hold a dying JJ in my arms and not be able to do a damn thing about it.
I could do something this time. I didn’t care if JJ hated me for the rest of his life, even if by some miracle he did someday remember us.
As I worked my way to the back of the club, guys moved out of my way without needing to be physically or verbally warned, so I must have looked like a raging bull. I wanted to vomit when I reached the back of the club and saw the door that presumably led to the alley. There were several men crowded around the inside of the door trying to get a look outside.