CHAPTER NINETEEN
Adrienne woke early, feeling chilled and lonely. She rolled to the center of the bed and found Badger’s side empty, the sheets cool. He’d had a bad night, filled with terrors and the subsequent rough need that was the only thing to settle him.
He hadn’t had nightmares that drove him to shouting wakefulness for weeks—since the fire. Her own weakness and need of him seemed to have helped him through the rest of his fight. Though for the past few days he’d seemed a little preoccupied, in general, since she’d been hurt, he’d been calmer, steadier, a strong shoulder for her to lean on. Too strong, sometimes. He’d gotten bossy, too, overprotective and rigid about what she could and couldn’t do. She thought that her silence when she was in so much pain had disturbed him more than he’d admitted, and now he did not fully trust her to convey her needs. So he’d taken it on himself to anticipate them.
They were going to have to talk that through, because she was beginning to chafe at the limits he was trying to build around her.
But that talk was for another day. She knew why last night had been hard for him. Today was the first anniversary of Havoc’s death. And of Badger’s torture. And Show’s. And Len’s.
Badger hadn’t told her, but Lilli had gathered up all the women on the day of the puppies. They’d stood around the butcher-block island in the clubhouse kitchen and talked about what to expect from the men, and how to help them. They’d asked Cory what she and Nolan needed—on the first anniversary of losing Havoc. Adrienne had felt awkward, standing with these women who’d been through so much. She had not experienced that day with them. But Shannon had caught her hand when she’d tried to back out and had given it a squeeze, murmuring. “You stay. You belong here. You’re Badge’s old lady.”
Their little bungalow was silent but for occasional creaks and moans of the building itself—the morning was windy and brisk. Adrienne got out of bed and grabbed the long cardigan she used as a robe on cool mornings and evenings.
As she walked down the short hall, past the bathroom, she pulled her hair out of the collar and let it fluff down her back and over her shoulders. She was lucky, she thought, that she’d clipped her hair up that last evening in the B&B. She had lost none of it. She’d been left the vanity of her hair.
Hector bumbled into the hallway from the kitchen. She reached down and picked him up, then went in. She set him back down when she saw the scene before her.
Badger was sitting with his head and hands on the table, a nearly empty bottle of Jack Daniels a few inches from one slack hand. He didn’t really drink hard liquor, at least not anymore. With few exceptions, he stuck to beer. Especially in the six months that she’d been in Signal Bend, since his detox. She didn’t even know they’d had whiskey in the house. In fact, she was pretty sure they hadn’t. So he’d gone out in the middle of the night? And come back here to drink alone in the kitchen? A bottle of Jack?
She was confused, but she pushed all those questions away. She didn’t like the way he was lying on the table, his mouth open, a puddle of drool under his face. It reminded her much too powerfully of that day in the barn, the day he’d punched her and called her shouted names. Now, with that memory sharp and foremost in mind, she was paralyzed. Worried about him, and afraid for herself, she didn’t know what to do.
They were together. They loved each other, lived together. She was his old lady. She knew exactly what to do. So she swallowed down her anxiety, took a deep breath, wrapped her cardigan tightly around her body, and reached a hand out and laid it on his shoulder, brushing his disheveled ponytail to the side. “Badge?”
Nothing. She gripped his shoulder then and shook. “Badge? Honey, please.” Beginning to really worry and think that she should call Tasha, she shook yet harder and raised her voice. “Badge!”
His eyes flickered open, and then he jumped up, upsetting the chair he’d been sitting on. Adrienne backed off fast, trying to be prepared for him to lash out—she wasn’t prepared, she didn’t think she could ever be prepared for Badger to hurt her, but she tried. He stood there, looking lost, like he’d been dropped into the world fresh right at this moment. Then his body spasmed, and he made a falling leap toward the sink. Hanging on the edge of the basin by his arms, he vomited. And vomited. When he was finally done, he rinsed it down the drain, stuck his mouth under the running tap, and then dropped to the floor, the tap still running.
Adrienne waited until she was sure he would be still, then she turned off the tap and sat down on the floor facing him. Hector climbed into her lap and curled up. She didn’t give the pup much notice, but he was content where he was, insensible to the trouble in the room.
Badger was pale and shaking, the skin under his eyes bruised with weariness and sorrow. He looked a lot like the man who’d punched her—and that man was not the man she lived with. Her worry grew.
“Badge? What can I do?”
He didn’t answer. She put her hand on his; it shook as she reached for him. But when she touched him, he jerked away as if she were fire itself.
“Just leave me alone.” His voice was rough with bile.
Maybe once, she would have done as he’d said. But a lot had happened to Adrienne in the six months she’d lived in Signal Bend, with Badger, and she had changed. She had a hard edge on her heart now, and a strong steel in her spine. It didn’t even occur to her to back off—and it was that moment when she realized how much she had changed. Her hand, which had been shaking with the fear of being hurt, steadied. And she got angry.
“No. I’m not leaving you alone. You’re not alone. You shouldn’t be alone today. And you don’t get to push me away anymore. You don’t get to sit on your butt in the middle of our kitchen and tell me to leave you alone. What kind of jerk would I be if I walked away right now and left you hurting? Is that who you think I am?”
His gorgeous eyes were bleak and bleary, shot with red, but they met hers. “You never cuss.”
“What?” The statement derailed her ire.
“I don’t think I’ve ever heard you cuss—‘cept one time, when we were fucking. Why don’t you?” His words were slow, as if he was too tired to be really interested in the topic, but his eyes had sharpened as they held hers.
“I don’t know.” She really didn’t know why she didn’t swear. She never got offended when other people did—and she was surrounded by people who swore liberally. But those words just didn’t come to her when she was putting words together. Her parents hadn’t sworn, either, come to think of it. And she realized she’d never thought of it before. “Is it important?”
He shrugged stiffly. “I guess not. It’s you. It’s just different. Guess I wonder if it makes you think I’m less because I do.”
“What? That’s crazy. You need me to cuss? Fuck, cunt, shit, asshole, cocksucker, pussy, cock, dick, bullshit, cunt—”
With a low laugh, he put his hand up. “You said that one already. Okay, sorry. I don’t need you to cuss. Sounds weird. But it was pretty hot when you said ‘fuck’ when you were coming. Only did it that once, though.”
“I’ll try to throw one in there every now and then.”
He smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. He took her hand, linking their fingers together. “I love you, Adrienne. I’m sorry I’m so fucked up. I really am, too. I need to shut my brain down. I need it so bad, I’m going crazy. I haven’t wanted to score like this in months.”
She scooted closer. “I’m here, Badge. I’m always here for you. You don’t need that stuff. You don’t. You’re strong, and you’re not alone.”
“Can we just go back to bed? I feel like shit.”
“Absolutely. You go on. I’ll take Hector out and get him fed. Then I’ll be with you. Okay?”
“Yeah. Thank you.”
She’d expected him to need sex, but he was too tired and ill, so when she came to bed, he only pulled her tightly to him, wrapping her up in his body. She could feel his tension slowly easing, and when he was asleep, she let herself drift off, too. When Hector fussed from the floor next to the bed, she reached down, careful not to disturb Badger, and brought the pup up. He immediately settled in her arms, and they three slept until the sun was high in the windows.
~oOo~
Later that day, Adrienne sat on a stool at Dragonfire Ink and watched Badger have his Horde ink restored—or replaced, really. He’d still been badly hung over when they’d woken up, but he had the appointment on this important day, and he would not think of rescheduling. And he wanted her with him. So they dropped Hector and his new crate off at the clubhouse for the Prospects to watch over, had a big, greasy late breakfast at Marie’s, and drove to Millview.
There was almost nothing left of his original ink. Tony, the tattooist who did most of the club’s ink, was starting from scratch. Despite Tony’s protests that he should wait until his scars were older, that the ink might not take as well and he would probably need retouching soon, at least, Badger wanted it done on this day, exactly one year after he’d been so badly hurt, and he wanted the same ink he’d had—the word HORDE in large letters arcing over the top of his chest, and the rampant horse down the center. This time, though, he wanted the words Never Say Die inked under the horse.
Because his chest was so badly scarred, and the scars were still fairly new, the ink was more complicated. Though he’d been unable to convince Badger to wait, Tony had gotten him to revise the design, incorporating more intricate detail rather than so much solid black, which apparently would have done poorly on the scarring. They’d blocked the whole day, with a one-hour break for supper. Badger had so few pain receptors left on his chest that he’d been comfortable for the four hours Tony had so far been working, and there was no reason to think he would not be comfortable for the entire sitting.
All of the Horde who were experiencing this anniversary had recently begun renewing, replacing, and adding to their ink, though Show had not started work on his back yet. Badger hadn’t told Adrienne absolutely everything about that day or about the business that made it happen—and she thought she was glad not to have the details he left out—but as she sat and listened to Tony and Badger talk about the scar and the ink, she filled in some blanks. The bad guys—the cartel—had intentionally destroyed their ink, especially their Horde ink, but not only that. Now that she was listening to Tony and Badger discuss the work Tony had been doing on Len and Show, too, she understood the damage to their bodies better. All their scars. Show’s Daisy tattoo torn from over his heart. She’d seen the damage; she had just never understood the intention before. Knowing the intention made it even more horrible.
The act of replacing his ink seemed to be pulling Badger out of the morning’s dark thicket. As the day went on, he strengthened and became more talkative, and by the time Tony called for a break and had his shop girl run for sandwiches and drinks for everybody, the mood in the shop had gotten lighthearted.
Adrienne had never before been inside a tattoo shop. When she got bored or uncomfortable sitting on the simple stool at Badger’s side, she wandered around, looking at the art and doodads on the walls and shelves. There were two other tattooists in the shop, one of whom, Red, had several appointments for smaller work during the day, and the other, Karen, seemed to be either having a day where she had intended to focus on other things—sketching, deep-cleaning her station—or just didn’t have any appointments. She did a drop-in tattoo for somebody, but otherwise she appeared to be both busy and not working.
The drop-in had selected an image from a hinged contraption on one wall, sort of like a giant book, the pages poster-size sheets in metal frames. Each ‘page’ was full of simple images—cartoon characters, small tribal designs, hearts, flowers, anchors, animals. Adrienne learned that those were ‘flash’ tattoos, and that none of the people in the shop had much respect for people who’d put flash on their skin. Adrienne thought some of the images were pretty and aesthetically pleasing, with nice lines. She might have chosen one for her first tattoo, before she heard the snarky things Red and Karen said about the drop-in who’d gotten a small tiger cub over the top of her right breast. Tony hadn’t said much, but he’d nodded in agreement while Red and Karen riffed.
Karen had just finished the flash when they broke for supper, so they were still talking about it while they were eating. Curious, Adrienne asked. “Is it the tiger that you don’t like?”
Karen gave her a look that said she wasn’t so sure Adrienne had business talking to her, but she answered, “It’s not the tiger. I don’t mind at all doing a really badass beast, with lots of detail. It’s that tiger, which is the same damn tiger that every fucking tattoo shop in the entire world has in their flash book. Why the fuck put something on your skin that hundreds, maybe thousands of other people have exactly the same?”
“But why have the…flash at all, then, if you don’t want to do them?”
Now Karen just glared. Adrienne decided that she didn’t like her much at all. Tony laughed, choking a little on his roast beef on rye. “Quick money, darlin’.” He turned to Karen. “And who are we to judge how people want to express themselves, right?”
Red, a tall, skinny guy with a long, red beard, a red buzz cut, and far more freckles than Adrienne—so many, in fact, that from a distance, his skin simply looked tan under his own ink—asked, “You got ink, girlie?”
Adrienne shook her head.
“No? Not even his ink?”
“Careful, asshole,” Badger muttered.
“Sorry, man. Didn’t mean to overstep.”
She knew what they were talking about—Lilli had Isaac’s ink, Tasha had Len’s, Cory had Havoc’s. Shannon didn’t have any ink; Adrienne didn’t know why she wasn’t wearing Show’s. She knew what it meant, but she and Badger had never talked about it. They hadn’t really talked about the future, though she felt sure that they were both thinking long term. The word ‘forever’ had been murmured or whispered more than a few times. She looked at Badger, who was eating a sandwich and drinking a Coke, sitting on the table he’d been lying on while Tony worked. He was bare-chested, his new, half-finished ink dark and shiny. He looked back at her, swallowing a bite and bringing his soda can to his mouth. They didn’t speak.
When Badger didn’t respond to him, Red shifted uncomfortably and then addressed Adrienne again. “Well, if you get ink, don’t get flash. Flowers, animals, whatever—all that’s fine, but put some thought into it. Ask your artist to draw it for you. You’ll get better work, something unique.”
She nodded, but she hadn’t really heard his advice. She was too preoccupied with the question of her and Badger. It felt important that they were living a life that they had not defined yet in any way.
~oOo~
When she woke the next morning, she was not alone in bed. Badger had gotten quiet again after they’d left the tattoo shop, and he’d dropped her at home and gone to the clubhouse alone. She was asleep, Hector curled on her pillow, before he got home. But he was with her now, awake, trailing his fingers through her hair, over her shoulder, down the new skin on her right arm. It made her feel a little self-conscious when he touched her scars, even lovingly like this, but she was getting used to it. He touched them a lot.
He noticed that she’d woken. “Morning, beautiful.”
“Morning.” She rolled to her back, and he shifted a little to make way for her without moving out of contact with her. “How’re you feeling?”
“Okay. I’m sorry about yesterday.”
“Don’t be. I understand. I’m glad you’re better. How’s your chest?”
“Fine. Don’t really feel it.” He brushed his hand over his t-shirt—it was a gesture he made often, a swipe from his shoulder to the bottom of ribs and back. He’d worn a t-shirt to bed, and the white cotton had taken on a faint Rorschach impression of his new tattoo.
She caught his hand and brought it to her lips. “Are you spending the day at the B&B today, or do you have club stuff?” Even though the B&B was only in the planning stages of the rebuild, the barn had not been burned, and Badger was still taking care of the horses and goats.
“I want to run over for a couple of hours, deal with some paperwork, work with Spirit a little, and check in on Weasel.”
“I wish you’d let him stay with us at night.”
“He’s a working dog, babe. Not a pet. He lives there, where his work is. Anyway, he’d go crazy in a house.”
She was still sad to think of him sleeping alone in the barn every night. “Well, Hector is a pet.”
The pup was still on the bed with them. Badger ruffled his ears. “Yeah, that’s clear. You know, he’s gonna get too big to sleep with us.”
Adrienne shrugged, unwilling to contemplate her sweet little pup becoming a giant dog, and Badger laughed.
“Okay. Anyway, Kenny’s on all day today, and there’s not much to do with the B&B closed, so I can be free before lunch, if nothing comes up with the club. You have plans?”
“Just the usual—hanging out with Shannon and the twins, under Double A’s watchful eye.”
“It’s supposed to be nice today. How about I pick you up and we go for a ride? Maybe go car shopping?”
Still mourning the loss of her little Beetle, Adrienne had not yet wanted to replace her. She hadn’t felt a pressing need for a new car. She wasn’t working yet, and she had a bodyguard. It wasn’t like Badger was going to let her wander off for a joy ride on her own.
“A ride would be nice. But I don’t want to look at cars yet.”
His brow wrinkled, but he didn’t reply, except to lean down and kiss her—a claiming kiss, loving but not gentle, his lips firm on hers, his tongue filling her mouth. She was breathless by the time he pulled back.
He brushed his thumb over her wet mouth. “Okay, then. Just a ride.”
~oOo~
When he came to Show and Shannon’s to pick her up, just before noon, he had a smallish box, wrapped in solid blue paper.
“What’s that?”
“For you.” His grin wide and proud, he handed her the box. She opened it, sliding her finger under the tape.
A new Nikon digital SLR camera. A step up from the one she’d lost in the fire. Adrienne stared at the box in her hands.
“That okay? I got the receipt and everything if you don’t like it. There’s a camera shop in Springfield. They have lenses and filters and all that, but I didn’t understand most of what the guy was trying to sell me, so we can go back, and you can get a camera you like better, or different lenses, or whatever. I just…you always have a camera with you. As long as I’ve known you.”
She stared at the box, entirely overwhelmed, so much that she couldn’t even lift her head.
“Adrienne? Babe? Did I fuck it up?” He put his hand around her left arm and squeezed lightly.
The concern in his voice broke her trance, and she looked up. “I love you.”
His brow smoothed out, and he grinned again. “I love you, too. I did okay?”
“Better than okay. Perfect.” She stepped into his embrace, clutching her new camera between them.
~oOo~
Leaving Hector at Show and Shannon’s to play with his brother, Max, Badger took Adrienne and her new camera for a ride. He took them far out, riding over an hour, before she tugged on the front of his kutte to get his attention. He leaned his head back a little so she could tell him she had to pee. He nodded and made the next turn. About ten minutes later, he pulled up at a little market that seemed to be entirely isolated from any other human life.
The building could have come off the lot at a movie studio, straight out of a John Wayne movie or something. Bare wood boards, aligned vertically, weathered to grey. A covered porch, low to the ground, with split logs for a railing. Hanging from the porch eaves, swinging gently in the light fall breeze, was a simply-lettered sign in black and white that read Malone’s Market.
There was an actual horse actually tied to the porch by the reins of her bridle.
A weathered picnic table sat out front, near a huge old elm with a tire swing hanging from a thick branch.
“What is this place?” She took her helmet off and handed it to him.
“Malone’s. It’s cool, you’ll see.”
“How did you even know it was here?”
“I ride a lot, babe. Riding helps me think things out. I probably know every road and building for more than fifty miles around home.” He held his hand out to her. “Bring your camera in. I don’t think Buck’ll mind if you want to take pictures.”
She got her knew camera out of his saddlebag and let him lead her into the market. As they stepped onto the porch—three old rocking chairs on one side, a rough-hewn table and two chairs on the other—their feet made the distinctive clop of walking over old boards. A sound common to every western she’d ever seen. And she’d thought Signal Bend had been caught in a time warp. Adrienne felt like they’d lost almost two hundred years when Badger had pulled onto the skimpy gravel of the Malone’s lot.
The wooden screen door squealed when Badger pulled it open. With a hand on the small of her back, he led her into the store.
“Oh. My. God.” On instinct, she lifted her camera.
“Hey, Buck. How’s it goin’?”
A tall, deeply wrinkled old man with darkly ruddy skin and a short shock of snow-white hair looked up from behind the counter, where he was pulling something from the case. “Badger. Good to see you. It’s goin’ like it always goes.”
“You mind if my lady takes some pictures of the store?”
“Reckon that’s okay. Not sellin’ ‘em or nothin’, though, yeah?”
Badger looked at Adrienne. She shook her head. She had no one to sell them to. She just wanted to remember what she was seeing.
“No sir. She just likes the place. This is Adrienne, by the way. Adrienne Renard, Buck Malone.”
“Hi, Buck.”
Buck dropped his head in a courtly nod. “Young lady. Let me know if you need somethin’.”
“I will, thanks.”
The first thing that greeted them was an ancient soda cooler—a big, red chest with the Coca-Cola label emblazoned across the front and a bottle opener built into the side. She lifted the lid—it was operating, and cold steam wafted into the air. “There are actual bottles of soda in here!”
Badger laughed. “Yeah. It’s a soda chest.”
“I didn’t even know you could still get bottles like this!”
Adrienne closed the lid and looked around. The store was dimly lit, a few bare bulbs in the ceiling augmenting the natural light from the windows across the front and along one side. The floors and walls were the same rough-hewn wood of the exterior. The other side wall was shelving from floor to ceiling, and the center of the space was taken up by rows of tables with shelving built on top. And barrels. There were barrels clustered in one front corner. Full of…nails? Wow.
The shelves along the wall and in the center were stacked with jeans, plaid and chambray shirts, bandanas, and other kinds of fabric goods, and then canned goods and boxed foods. There were shelves of identical work boots. A topper in the center was stacked with cowboy hats and trucker caps. Another was paper—stationery, envelopes, old-fashioned ledger books, greeting cards and postcards.
The sales counter was a long, framed-glass case, filled with brightly colored candies and cheap plastic toys—and an array of tobacco products. A man in a brown twill shirt and faded jeans, sagging in the butt, wearing a dirty and misshapen straw cowboy hat, was paying for a new bag of chewing tobacco. He handed his money to Buck, who rang the sale into an ornately cast brass cash register.
Seriously. This place could not possibly exist in the twenty-first century. They had to have crossed through some kind of portal.
She pulled on Badger’s arm. “How does this place stay in business?”
Badger laughed. “Low overhead, I guess. And a lot of the stock’s been here for a while. Everybody around knows about Malone’s, though, so he does okay. I’ve never been in here when there wasn’t somebody else here, too. Look down to the back of the store.”
She did. “Is that an ice cream counter?”
“Yeah. Buck’s old lady, Opal, runs it. Makes the ice cream. Lotta people come for that. You want a root beer float for lunch?”
It was all she could do to refrain from happy dancing right there in the middle of this time capsule of a shop. “That would be awesome! I want to take pictures first—and could we have our floats outside, under that tree?”
“I don’t see why not.” He kissed her cheek. “I’m gonna go talk to Buck. You take all the pictures you want. You need to pee, right? There’s a little john back by the ice cream.”
With a squeeze of her hand, he walked over to the sales counter and left her to play. She went back and took care of her business in a small but clean and modern-enough bathroom, and then hurried back up front.
She took lots of photos. Her eye still trained to unsettling juxtapositions, like the old and new she’d found everywhere in Signal Bend, she saw similar kinds of connections all over the shop. Her favorite photo, though, and she knew it when she saw it through the viewfinder: Buck and Badger, leaning on opposite sides of the glass counter, talking. She caught them both looking down into the case—she didn’t think they were actually looking into the case; they were, instead, simply talking quietly. Old Buck, with his short, bright white hair and sun-darkened, deeply lined face, his chambray shirt faded around the imprint of bib overalls, and young Badger, his full beard covering his young, smooth cheeks, his long, auburn ponytail lying straight down his back, over the patch on his kutte. Standing so that she had them slightly backlit by the windows, Adrienne pulled the image in as close as she could and set only those two men in focus, most tightly on their faces.
~oOo~
When she’d taken all the pictures she could, they got their root beer floats, in tall, old-fashioned soda-fountain glasses with striped paper straws and tall spoons, and took them out to the picnic table under the tree. The horse was gone; Adrienne guessed that the man buying chewing tobacco had arrived on horseback.
They sat together on the same side of the bench, hip to hip, but they didn’t talk much. Adrienne felt sated by the day, full and content. The weather was perfect—a bright, early fall day, a light breeze and a warm sun, the leaves on the trees right at the beginning of their end, a few yellows among the greens. Birds sang, bees buzzed. And she was sitting with the one person she loved above all others. All others. She’d had made the right choice. This life—she was still trying to understand it, but she knew it was where she belonged. At Badger’s side.
She thought about that strange moment at the tattoo shop the day before, when Red had asked if she had Badger’s ink. Did it mean something that he hadn’t asked her to take his ink? Was that something she should expect him to do, if he meant them to be really serious? Shannon didn’t have any—or, at least, none that she knew of.
“I need to talk to you about something, babe.”
With a shake of her head, Adrienne brought herself back to the moment she was in, sitting next to Badger. She ran his words back through her head; they chilled her.
“What’s wrong?”
He pushed his half-finished float away and did the same with hers, lifting it gently from her hands. Then he turned toward her and took her hands in his.
“I love you.”
Guarded, she smiled. “I know. I love you, too.”
“I don’t ever want to be with anybody else. I know I couldn’t ever feel like this about anybody else.”
Her brain leaped out ahead, trying to see where he was going. She stayed quiet, waiting for him to get there and show her. She thought of the night she’d arrived in town, seeing that girl’s head in his lap. He wasn’t telling her that stuff like that was still going on, was he?
Looking down at their linked hands, he sighed. “Things with the club are about to get bad, I think. Maybe real bad. Like last year. Maybe even worse. So I shouldn’t ask this now. I know that. I’ve been trying not to say anything, because I know it’s not fair. But I have to. If you say no, then I understand. I really do. But Adrienne, you make me strong. You make me feel like I mean something.”
“Badge, what?”
He looked up. “I want to put ink on you. My ink. It doesn’t have to be my name. But I want it to be something that everybody knows means you’re mine. Before everything goes to hell, I want that.”
Because she’d just been wondering about this very thing, and because his roundabout way of getting there had her about two steps from certifiably insane, she laughed. Relief and irony impelled the laughter, but Badger couldn’t know that, and his face went dark with hurt. He tried to pull his hands away, but she tightened her grip.
“I’m not laughing because I think what you said is funny, Badge. I’m laughing with relief. Yes. I’ll get your ink. I don’t know what you want, and I’d like a say in what it is, but yes.”
Grabbing her hard and laying her back, his arms supporting her, he kissed her fiercely.
The rest of what he’d been saying finally caught up and got through. She pushed his head back and looked into his eyes. “Are you saying you might get hurt again? Or worse?”
He brought a hand forward and cupped her cheek. “Yeah. That’s what I’m saying. We’re going to push back against the guys who killed Hav—the ones who fucked up my chest.
“What? Why? That’s nuts!”
Badger shook his head. “I can’t tell you that, babe. It’s important. It’s necessary. We’ll keep you safe. That’s why you’ve been with Double A. But I gotta do this. We all do.”
“Badge…”
“This is the life, Adrienne. I can’t change that. If it’s too much, I understand. But before you wear my ink, you need to be sure. Think on it first.”
She didn’t need to think. She’d done plenty of thinking already. She leaned in and rested her head on his chest. “I am sure. I am. I’m scared, though.”
“Me, too. Me, too.” He folded her snugly in his strong arms.