Unfiltered & Unlawful (The Unfiltered Series) (17 page)

“The first punch was a freebie,” Adam said, raising his fists.

“Your cousin stole something my employer would like returned to him,” the suit said. “Either you or Miss Kovac have our property.”

“I don’t know where Sugar is, and I don’t have anything.”

They exchanged blows for several minutes, and Adam was reluctantly impressed by the man’s skill. He fought with enough restraint to make clear that this was not his all. Each punch was a statement, a notice that he was intimidating.

“I’m sorry you lost something, but that doesn’t have shit to do with me,” Adam said as his fist made contact with the suit’s jaw.

The man shook his head slightly, like he had to shake off the hit. “We retrieved the cocaine. All we need is the cash.”

“If you’ve snooped around as much as I think, you know I don’t fuck with drugs, and I live simply.” Adam didn’t take his attention off the suit. “Maybe Tommy got mixed up with someone else.”

“But you and Miss Kovac left town,” the suit said.

“I identified my cousin’s corpse,” Adam said coldly. “I was only in town as long as I was because of him. Why would I stay after he was stupid enough to get killed?”

“And your cousin’s girlfriend?”

“I saw her around, but I wasn’t her best fucking girlfriend or something,” Adam scoffed. “She and Tommy had a thing. He’d dead. She’s probably holed up at some girl’s house weeping, or her new guy’s place too fucked up to let her tears out.”

The suit lowered his fists. The idiot believed Adam. Whether it was because of the way Adam had lived or his well known disapproval of drugs or some other reason, it didn’t matter. The suit accepted Adam’s lies.

A few minutes later, the suit left, and Dave looked at Adam. “I can call my buddy Eli over at the garage. They’ll delay the boy’s car long enough for you to get to her without him following you.”

Adam nodded. “Do you think he already knows where I’m staying?”

“Doubt it. Hector’s about ten seconds from a conspiracy nut. Why else did you think I had to vouch for you to get him to rent you the house? The man’s straight-up paranoid. He doesn’t even tell himself half of what he knows. That one”—Dave nodded toward the door the suit had exited through—“wouldn’t get anything other than nonsense out of Hector.”

Adam felt a little terror recede. “How fast can Eli help?”

Dave didn’t answer; he just picked up the phone and made arrangements. When he hung up, he said, “Give him twenty, maybe thirty minutes tops, and then you go get her and get out of town.”

Being with Adam finally was a lot like it had been before we admitted our feelings, but with the addition of great sex. We hadn’t turned into one of those obnoxious cute couples or anything. We were still
us.
We were just naked a lot more… which meant that I was exhausted. Simultaneous with getting together with him, I’d drawn the breakfast shift at the cafe. I was still trying not to spend the cash in the bag, so I worked my shift without bitching. Then, I napped while Adam worked. It was probably for the best because we were either talking or naked when we were both in the house. Somehow, we were insatiable with conversations and orgasms. It was unlike anything I could have dreamed to have, better than my imaginings of what it would be like to be with Adam.

I didn’t mean to compare it to being with Tommy, but he was my longest—and most recent—relationship. Being with him had always made me feel like I was walking on a lake that had only just frozen. At any moment, I’d slip or crash. There was nothing I could do to avoid the shock and pain. It would come. I just didn’t know when. I got jealous, mostly because I was pretty sure he cheated when we fought, and he got possessive.

I curled into the bed thinking about Adam instead of napping like I needed to be doing. Even the thought of him made me lose sleep. Being with Adam was different. With him, I felt like I was… special. I started to see myself more like the person he saw. I suspect that had been happening for months, and it was a lot of why I couldn’t really be content with Tommy. In Adam’s eyes, I was strong and brave. I wanted to be that way, to be the girl he saw when he looked at me. When I talked, he listened. When I was nervous, he asked questions.

Of course, I also believed him when he said we were going to last. He reminded me of how much I’d overcome. He encouraged me now as he had been for well over a year. Now, though, he wasn’t subtle at all.

He had a short shift at the shop today, and then we were going to spend the rest of the day together. I wasn’t sure what we were doing, but at the end, it didn’t matter. I was with him. The rest was just details.

When I heard the Harley pull up, I had just started drifting off to sleep. Either Dave sent him home early or I’d fallen asleep and not realized it. I hopped out of bed, paused to run my hands through my hair to try and make it look presentable, and then I started toward the door, but it slammed open before I reached it.

“Adam?” I gasped. His shirt was torn, and a bruise was forming on his cheek.

“Pack up.”

“What happened?”

“The reason Sinners was trying to reach me was a guy claiming to be my cousin, mine and Tommy’s actually.” Adam’s expression grew darker. “Claimed he was in town to check on me after Tommy’s death. Lying fucker. They knew where to look for me because you left them a message.”

“I’m so
so
sorry,” I started.

He glanced outside, and I wondered if he was expecting to be followed. “No calls home, Sash. We can’t talk to anyone there until this shit is resolved…
if
it ever gets resolved.”

I nodded. Adam was hurt because of me, because I called and left a message at the tattoo shop in Rio Verde. “I screwed up. I shouldn’t have called them.”

He sighed, pulled me to him and hugged me so tightly that I thought I was going to have to hold my breath for a moment. “I shouldn’t have walked out and gotten drunk that night either. I shouldn’t have come to a shop where I used to work. They’d have looked at the shops I’d been at sooner or later.”

We stood in a tight embrace for another minute.

“I was terrified that they’d found out where I was staying and come here too. He said he was alone, but I don’t know if he was lying.” Adam let go of me then. “We need to pack and get gone. Leave the groceries.”

“How long?”

“I’m going to hook up the bike trailer, load the Harley, and grab the things we stored in the garage. When that’s done, we’re on the move.”

It didn’t take long to gather up the bits of things I’d left scattered around the house. Aside from a shirt still draped over the arm of the sofa, I’d put everything away already. I scooped everything out the drawers, dumped it into suitcases, and did a quick check under the bed and throughout the three rooms of the house.

Glancing down, I realized that my clothes were entangled with some of Adam’s things in my suitcases, and despite everything, that made me smile. I started to carry all of the bags to the side of the truck.

“We didn’t have a lot of things to pack. I gathered all of our clothes—clean and dirty—and our toiletries.”

“Almost ready,” he said.

Since Adam was still packing the Explorer, I snatched up a few grocery bags and shoved what I could of the food into them too. I couldn’t stand around waiting and wringing my hands, and if we had time, I could salvage some of the food.

By then, Adam was in the doorway. “We’re loaded.”

“All that we’ve left is some of the stuff in the fridge,” I said. I held up the bag in my hand. “This and that one on the left can go in the cooler though.”

“Leave the key on the table. Drunk Dave is going to tell them we left early.”

A couple of minutes later, we’d tossed the few bags into the back, shoved the one with the ice packs and cold goods in the cooler, and were headed further west.

“We’re good together,” Adam said.

“I thought we figured that out about a week ago.”

He flashed me a smile. “In a crisis we do well too. Teamwork or whatever.”

“Figured that out in Rio Verde when we overturned Tommy’s place,” I pointed out. “And before that when I was trying to get clean.”

“I like it.” He reached over and caught my hand in his. “Whatever we find out there, we can handle it together.”

And that was something I’d never really felt before, the way he treated me like someone he could trust and talk to. My parents had always acted like I was the biggest disappointment in the world. I hadn’t talked to them in years. My friends were the casual sort, so there were no great secrets or adventures there. Tommy had alternated between deciding I was a possession and treating me like a child who would get into trouble without supervision. Only Adam had treated me like a partner.

“I love you,” I told him. “I’m sorry I screwed up—”

He cut me off, saying, “We both did.”

‡

I finally got my nap as he drove, but I woke when we stopped along the I-5 somewhere a few hours later. The drive from Joshua Tree over to Los Angeles isn’t that long, and we thought about staying there. The city is huge, so losing ourselves there would be easy. It would also be expensive… and in L.A. A lot of people seemed to love it, but I wasn’t a fan of Southern California. It had the sun we had in the desert, but it had smog and noise and traffic. I hated all of those things.

“You dozed through L.A.,” Adam said when we stopped. He shook his head. “It’s not that late in the day, Sash. How are you even tired?”

I lifted both brows as I stared at him silently for a moment. “Are you seriously asking that? Did you miss the fact that we’ve been spending a lot of the night having sex—”

“Making love,” he interjected.

“Right, but whether you call it making love or having sex, we’ve been doing that, and I’ve worked the breakfast shift the past three days.”

“I get up,” he said.

“And then drive back to the house and crawl into bed to sleep,” I pointed out. “I nap when you work in the afternoon or evening, but today… no nap.”

“You napped.”

“I did,” I agreed, looking out at the chain coffee shop where he had stopped. “And I got to miss L.A. because of it. Win, win.”

Adam shook his head. “It’s not an awful place.”

“I’ve never been to the Pacific Northwest,” I reminded him.

“Me either.”

“So?”

“We already passed L.A., Sash. Let me get some coffee and stretch, and then we’ll keep going.” He held out a hand to me, as if I needed help getting out of the Explorer. He did that a lot, chivalrous hand-taking and door opening. It was an oddly sweet gesture he’d made from time to time when we were going somewhere, and now that we were an “us,” he did it constantly.

He was silent as we went inside and ordered, but he was smiling. That smile made everything in my life better. I’d already admitted to myself that I’d do a lot to keep getting those smiles from him, and luckily, he seemed to want to give them all to me.

A little while later, we were on the road again. I didn’t know how far we’d drive tonight. I wasn’t even sure where we were going.

“Do we have a plan?” I asked finally when we were somewhere near a little town called Coalinga. We’d left Joshua Tree about six hours ago, and although I knew California was a big state, it seemed crazy that we were still in it after that many hours of driving.

“Follow the interstate until we decide to stop,” Adam said with a shrug.

“In Oregon or Washington?” I asked.

“Unless you want to keep going up into Canada. Vancouver’s supposed to be amazing.”

I laughed and pointed out, “So are Portland and Seattle. Do you have any preference?”

“Not yet.” He reached over and took my hand in his. “Wherever you’re safe and in my arms sounds perfect to me. We can pick which city once we’re there.”

I squeezed his hand. “That works for me.”

“I have almost everything I’ve made the past six years saved up. Once we’re sure we’re clear all of the trouble back in Rio Verde, I was thinking of opening up a shop of my own, settling down somewhere,” he said in a voice that was lighter than his words. “For now though, we could just travel. You said you wanted to do that.”

“I love you,” I said.

He lifted my hand to his lips and kissed my knuckles. “I love you too, Sash.”

“So can we stop at a hotel for the night, get a room for you, me, and the Harley?” I said, remembering what he’d told me last month about keeping his bike in the house with us.

He grinned. “Definitely.”

All I’d wanted was a good man, a little house, and some travel. In the past few weeks, I’d found two of them, and once we were able to settle down somewhere, I knew I could have the third one. Everything might have started with ugliness, but it had changed.

In the beginning was death and drugs, but in the end was love and adventure.

—◊—

Dear Reader,

Thank you so much for reading
Unfiltered & Unlawful
! I hope you love what you’ve seen so far. There’s so much more to come! Next is
Unfiltered & Unknown
on February 14, 2014 followed quickly by
Unfiltered & Unsaved
on March 14, 2014.

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Thanks Again!

Payge

—◊—

Keep reading for a preview of
Unfiltered & Unknown
by Payge Galvin & Lynne Jaymes, the second installment of the UNFILTERED series. For more on the Unfiltered Books, the rest of the series authors, or on Payge Galvin and Ronnie Douglas, please visit us online: