Greatest Height (New Adult Biker Gang Romance) (Night Horses MC Book 6) (2 page)

I went into the main room, my eyes only darting around a little. I found my phone.

I texted Merle - “I need you. Really bad day. Dinner?”

Nothing.

I played a few rounds of a silly game, waiting and waiting for him to reply. He usually did right away.

Maybe something happened to him.

Maybe he was dead somewhere, or in prison.

Maybe he’d gotten in a fight with some asshole like Bill again and was in a ditch, or a hospital.

Maybe he’d crashed his bike.

Fuck, why did I have to date someone like Merle? There were way too many bad things that could have happened to him.

“Come on,” I groaned, shaking my phone, as if that would magically make a text appear.

One finally did, but only after twenty minutes.

“Sorry. Talk 2mr.”

What the fuck? He never used shortcuts in his texting, he was super proud about writing properly even though, in his words, “he wasn’t educated worth a tinker’s damn.”

More than that, he never put me off.

This was…

Was he mad at me? Was there someone else?

I pictured a beautiful blonde girl, tough and busty and everything I wasn’t, grabbing his phone from him as they kissed.

“Who’s that?” she’d ask, holding it up and showing him my text.

“No one, baby,” he’d say. “No one as special as you.”

He’d laugh as she sent back “Sorry. Talk 2mr.”

“Now, where were we?” she’d ask him, and they’d laugh and laugh and go back to what they were doing. In his bed.

Okay, I was just being ridiculous.

I had no reason to think that Merle was cheating on me.

I mean, he had been a little distracted lately.

He’d not talked about what he was doing outside of hanging out with me.

He hadn’t really tried to kiss me.

Oh my God, there was someone else.

He was sick of me and he felt too bad for me to tell me, so the asshole was just stringing me along.

I couldn’t believe it.

Merle had never been anything but kind and wonderful to me until this week. What had I done to make him hate me?

No, he didn’t hate me. Okay.

He was bored with me, though. I was a silly little girl who wouldn’t have sex, who caused him nothing but trouble.

He wanted someone who could take care of themselves. Someone who could have escaped from el Jefe on her own.

Someone who wouldn’t have let William get her on the floor.

Someone who wouldn’t be so fucking stupid and keep getting fucking trapped and locked in.

I mean, I didn’t have any patience for myself. How could he have patience with me?

I’d ruined everything.

I didn’t know how I was ever going to go back to school.

How could I even stay in my apartment?

My job was through Merle. Hell, my apartment was through Merle.

Even if he let me keep them… it would be pity.

That’s not a real relationship.

It dawned on me then.

Even if this was some sort of misunderstanding…

I couldn’t go on being dependant on the Night Horses.

It was just not right.

I had to stand on my own two feet.

I was still anxious, my eyes still flicking around the room. I still jumped half out of my skin when I heard a loud noise outside…

But I had a sense of purpose.

I needed to support myself.

I didn’t have a shift at the laundrymat that night.

I did, however, live walking distance from a library.

The next day I skipped school.

Partly, it was to work on my project.

Partly, it was because I couldn’t face the thought of seeing their stupid faces. I couldn’t bear the idea of looking at Chad and William, being in the same classroom as either of them without fucking punching them in the throat.

Or bursting into tears.

You know, whichever. Maybe both.

I didn’t text Merle.

He didn’t text me.

Normally, by now, he would have. I tried not to wonder if the imaginary blonde girl was with him.

I did have Alex’s number, so by the time school was supposed to let out and I still hadn’t heard from him, I sent Alex a text.

“Merle okay?”

I got one back almost immediately.

“He is fine. We had an… incident.”

“Everyone okay?!” I replied.

“No. Merle is, and Jackson and I are. No losses but a few stupid new pledges.”

“Can I do anything?” I asked.

I got a quick negative text, and then nothing.

So.

Gang stuff.

Unless… unless Alex was in on it? Unless I was just one in a string of girls Merle dated and then suddenly got tired of, and Alex was used to picking up the pieces?

Merle had said a few times that Alex made things run smoothly.

Maybe that was more than gang stuff. Maybe that was Merle’s relationships, too.

Now I was just being silly.

(Probably.)

I had no proof of that. Honestly, Alex didn’t seem like the kind of guy to have the patience to deal with that sort of thing.

Alex had enough relationship stuff to deal with with him and Jackson.

He had said several times that he was not interested in anyone else’s.

Maybe he was protesting too much? Maybe he was trying to lull me into a false sense of security?

ENOUGH.

I was going round and round with this bullshit.

It was all in my head. Or, at least, even if it wasn’t all in my head, I had NO proof right now, and I needed to work.

I had a job to do.

The next day was Saturday. No school. No need to decide whether or not I was going to face those assholes.

So.

I had to face Merle.

I sent him a text. “We need to talk. Meet at diner today?”

I let out a breath that I didn’t know that I was holding when he replied almost instantly.

“Yes! Miss you. When? Now?”

A smile tugged my lips, the first one since my disastrous locker room visit on Thursday.

Yeah.

I could do this.

“Sure.” I sent back.

We met at the diner not immediately, but in only half an hour. I didn’t have as far to go, so I had plenty of time to pace in a circle.

Just seeing him was wonderful.

When he walked through the door of the place, my heart melted. He was who I needed, who I loved.

If he didn’t want me any more… I’d… I’d…

I’d cross that bridge when I came to it, I told myself firmly. I wouldn’t go borrowing trouble.

I’d speak in sayings, apparently.

As my giddy thoughts chased each other around, Merle got to the table and leaned over to brush a kiss against my cheek.

I flinched.

He’s not William,
I told myself.
He’s not William, he’s not Chad, he’s not el Jefe. He’s just Merle.

He frowned.

“Are you okay?” he asked. “I’m sorry, I was busy on Thursday.”

There was a couple sitting in the next booth. His eyes flickered to them before he continued.

“You know. Work stuff.”

I nodded. “I figured it was something like that,” I said.

I managed a weak smile.

“I mean, I hoped. It wasn’t like you found someone else, right?”

Apparently I didn’t do a good job keeping the worry off my face.

He frowned harder and reached out to take my hand.

“Megan, no,” he said. “Nobody else. I’ve just been… work. Work has really been beating me up.”

I looked at him more closely and saw a shadow of a bruise on his cheekbone.

What could I not see? I found myself wanting to strip him down in the restaurant to check him for injuries. Probably not the best idea.

“You’re okay, though, right?” I repeated, trying to keep my voice causal.

“Yes,” he said, with a slight smile. “I’m okay. Tired, but okay. There’s no one else. I missed you. I’m so glad to see you.”

I nodded.

I did a lot of that around Merle. Just nodding, just… being satisfied. He was a good guy.

He would never cheat on me.

I did realize how silly I was being, but it was really hard to stop. I knew that I needed to calm down, so I took a few deep breaths.

All I wanted was to feel loved and safe. Why was that so hard to ask?

No one was willing to help me, to protect me. I had to make my peace with that. I had to learn to protect myself.

"We need to talk, " I told Merle.

He sighed, a great exhalation of breath and frustration.

"Does it have to be right now?" he asked. "I've had a long week."

I almost gasped out loud with anger. Did he really think he had a monopoly on lousy weeks?

I needed support and this is what I got?

"You know what? " I asked. I threw my napkin in a wadded up ball onto the table. "I'm done with this. I don't need this right now. I had important stuff to talk about, and all you wanted to do was blow me off?"

Before he could say anything else or answer my question, I was storming out of the restaurant.

The tears running down my cheeks made it hard to see where I was going.

I heard him call after me from the sidewalk behind me, but I kept running.

I ended up walking farther than I had in my life except on a hike.

Turns out, it took me over two hours to get to my old house from downtown.

I'd have thought that a walk that long would have cooled my temper some, but the sight of that fucking house cut through my exhaustion and sent me marching in a righteous fury to the front door.