Total pages in book: 135
Estimated words: 137310 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 687(@200wpm)___ 549(@250wpm)___ 458(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 137310 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 687(@200wpm)___ 549(@250wpm)___ 458(@300wpm)
“They got our girl. She’s all good,” I heard Big Petey say quietly.
“Thanks, brother,” Hugger replied.
The door snicked shut.
I turned in Hugger’s arms, pressed close and let the tears go.
Hugger tangled his fingers in my hair, held me tight with his other arm, and let me.
14
SOLITAIRE
Hugger
An alarm went off that sounded like birds tweeting.
Jesus, Diana woke up to tweeting birds.
Hugger was partly on his stomach, partly on his side.
Diana was tucked to his back.
He felt her shift, the softness of her lips pressed to his back, the softness of her voice ordering the alarm to stop, and then she rolled out of bed.
He opened his eyes and saw his gun on the nightstand.
He moved his gaze and watched her ass in loose shorts covered in daisies disappear behind the closed door in the bathroom.
He rolled to his back and lifted both hands to rub them over his face.
When he was smoothing down his beard, he saw Di’s 3D white flower hanging over the bed, and he felt her soft sheets and perfect-mix-of-firm-and-soft mattress.
“What the fuck am I doing?” he muttered to himself.
He heard the shower go on and his morning wood made itself known.
“Christ, what the fuck am I doing?” he repeated, again on a mutter.
Yesterday, the day they woke up without Maddy, had been a chill day.
Even so, Diana had moped through it, and Hugger found he liked she didn’t try to hide her upset Maddy was gone.
She didn’t make a drama about it, but he and big Petey knew she was suffering. They didn’t have to guess, and they didn’t have to worry she was tamping down shit that would explode at some future time and bite everyone around her in the ass.
Hugger had never had a relationship that lasted over two months. He’d never lived with a woman, outside his mother.
But his mother had moods.
Then again, he did too.
Whenever he’d hear a man bitch about a moody woman, he didn’t get it. Like, that man didn’t have emotions too, and show them? Like a woman was supposed to float through life singing, smiling and twirling like fucking Sleeping Beauty?
Sure, it sucked when his ma got pissy.
Though, she didn’t like it much when he did either.
Also the day before, Hugger felt a weird warmth hit his gut at witnessing how Di let Big Petey look after her.
The man was a brother’s brother. When it came to his Club, Pete was not skimpy with his experience or wisdom.
But he was a woman’s man in the sense he set himself up as dad, uncle or grandpa to every female he met in order to offer them what they needed.
Hugger reckoned that was a father who only had one daughter. If you were a good man, and Big Petey was the best, that’s just what happened when you made a girl.
So Pete was in his element with Di.
In fact, the last few days, Big Petey had seemed more himself, and more content, than he had in a long time.
It went further though, because Hugger knew Di sensed it, and she gave him that.
Because she was Di.
All about giving.
Late in the afternoon, they got news from Scott that Maddy and her family were safe and settled.
Scott also shared Imran, Esad, and Esad’s boys were proving hard to find, and in the raid they conducted on the house where the suspected activity was happening, they discovered it had been cleared out. Though, there was evidence of recent occupancy, and it was not the kind of evidence that pointed at a nuclear family living there.
They believed they also discovered Maddy’s crime scene, and what they found there indicated it was the scene of many other crimes, so they had a lot to process.
All that was moving forward, which was good, just not very fast, which was expected.
The last thing about the day before was Hugger had let Di con him into sleeping beside her again.
Truth, it didn’t take much.
And she copped to what she was doing right away.
All she said was, “Warning, incoming emotional manipulation.” She then made her pretty green eyes all soft and sweet and begged, “Please don’t make me sleep alone tonight.”
Yep, that was it.
Again, it didn’t take much.
Now, Maddy was gone and life was going to go back to normal for Diana. Although they were keeping her covered, with Maddy out of the picture, the Babićs had no beef with Diana, so no reason to fuck with her.
Armitage was a different story. But Hugger guessed you didn’t make it far, even in the criminal world, by wasting your time and resources on someone who mildly inconvenienced you.
That meant they’d likely find out soon there was no reason for Hugger to be in Phoenix anymore, except to be with Diana.
It also meant there was nothing in the way of them exploring what they had either.