Spencer

 

 

It had been two days since Alissa walked out of my life. I wasn’t sure if she was gone for good, but I wanted to at least give her a couple of days to calm down, before I went and bothered her some more.

I also wanted to talk to her about everything and get to the bottom of it. I really cared about this woman. She needed to know that, and I needed her to know that.

I’d even called Isobel the night before.

“What am I supposed to do?” I’d asked her. I knew I sounded like a whiny boyfriend, but I couldn’t help it. There was just something so amazing about Alissa that made me a completely different person.

“Go to her house,” she suggested. “Confront her? Ask her to love you back?” I knew her last response had been a joke, but she had a point. If I didn’t even try, I was never going to find out the truth. And that was exactly what I needed. The truth.

“I don’t want her to think I’m stalking her,” I said to her.

“She wouldn’t think that,” Isobel said. “Quit being a pussy, and go get your girl. I’ve never seen you act this way with another woman before. Obviously, she means something to you.”

She had a point again. I had never behaved this way. I knew it was love, but I had never felt this way before. I had never felt the need to chase a girl down. I also had never been rejected before, and so far, she’d rejected me twice.

“Don’t tell her I called you,” I’d said to her and hung up the phone.

Then, I made a plan that as soon as I woke up this morning, I would head to her house. The thought of going to see her actually made me a little nervous. The stakes were too high. If Alissa was truly a woman that I could fall in love with, I couldn’t fuck this up. And this was a problem I couldn’t solve the way I handled most of my problems. I couldn’t use violence or intimidation to get Alissa back. I had to be gentle, honest, and vulnerable. Those weren’t exactly my strongest traits.

I didn’t know what to expect when I showed up to talk to her. All I could hope for was that she would open the door and agree to talk to me. Just open the door and let me say what I needed to say. That was all I wanted. Once I said my piece, the ball would be in her court, and she’d hold my future in her delicate little hands.

I had a meeting set up with the Viper’s president the next day. We were going to sit down to get this shit figured out. I should have been focusing on that, but before I could even think about that meeting, I had to get Alissa back.

I knocked on her door and braced myself for what she was going to do when she opened it and saw that it was me. The door opened slowly, and her beautiful face peeked out at me, looking gorgeous in the morning light.

“Hi,” she said. “What are you doing here?”

“Hey, can we talk?” I asked her.

She nodded, moved to the side, and let me inside. She shut the door behind me, and I grabbed her hand and led her over to her couch. This was the first time I’d ever been in her apartment, but I didn’t have time to worry about where I could and couldn’t sit. She sat down next to me, and I took both of her hands in my own.

“I’m so sorry for everything that happened,” I said to her. “I swear that things like this usually don’t happen.”

She made a doubting sound and looked decidedly unconvinced.

“You don’t believe me,” I said, shaking my head. “I promise you, Alissa. Nothing like this ever happens with the club. There’s never any violence.”

She still looked skeptical. Part of me wondered what I was doing there, trying to convince a random chick to be with me. I’d never behaved like that before. Usually, I couldn’t give a shit if a woman wanted me or not. Once I got what I wanted from them, I was done with them, and I was more than happy to never hear from them again.

But there was something about Alissa that drew me in. It was like nothing I had ever felt before. She had turned my world upside down, and I wasn’t ready to let her go. I opened my mouth to speak again, and she held up a hand to stop me.

“Don’t,” she said, her eyes flashing with anger. “Just save it. I’ve asked around. Your club is really dangerous, and so are the people you associate with and that you do deals with. I don’t even know what those deals are, and I don’t think I want to know.” She was talking fast and didn’t even give herself a chance to breathe.

“Will you please just listen to me?” I asked her. I was practically begging. Hell, I’d been begging her for the last few days whenever I talked to her. But fuck it, I just wanted her to listen to me. I needed her to hear me out.

I leaned forward intently. “Are we dangerous? Yes. But the violence hardly ever blows back into town. We’re really good about keeping our business away from town and the community. This is the first time anything like this has ever happened. I’ve done a damn good job at controlling things that are going on. As of right now, I have a meeting set up with the president of our rival club. And I’m going to get this all sorted out. For real, this time. I promise you. It’s not going to happen again.”

I stared at her and waited for a response, but it was clear that she wasn’t even going to respond to me.

“You are so frustrating,” I said to her. I stood up and started pacing around her living room.

“I’m frustrating?” she asked. “You’re not really convincing me to stick around. Like, telling me I’m frustrating is not going to make me run into your arms.”

She really was infuriating. She wouldn’t even give me a chance to explain things to her. She wouldn’t believe me when I told her that things like this hardly ever happened. I needed her to believe me. She didn’t think we would ever work out, and I didn’t want her thinking that.

I sat back down on the couch and grabbed her hand again. “Tell me, how do you feel about me?” I asked her.

She shrugged.

I groaned. “Please, just answer me,” I said to her. I did my best to keep my voice gentle. I didn’t want to scare her off by sounding too harsh. I wanted her to know that I wanted to have a serious conversation with her.

“I don’t know, okay? I don’t know how I feel.”

“I think you know,” I said. “Maybe you’re a little confused, and maybe you’re afraid to admit how you really feel about me, but I think that deep down, you know exactly how you feel about me.”

She didn’t respond to that.

I shook my head. “You need to figure out whether you want to be my old lady or not. I want an answer by Friday. And if I don’t get an answer by Friday, I’m going to assume that you don’t want to be with me, and we’ll cut ties. I’ll never contact you again if that’s what you really want. But if it’s not, I need to know by Friday.”

I stood up.

“I want the violence to end first,” she said.

“I’ve already got it figured out,” I said to her. I didn’t know how else to word it to convince her that I did, in fact, have a handle on things.

“I’m serious, Spencer,” she said. “I can’t be doing this. I’ve barely even been around for a week, and there’s already been bad violence. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do if it gets even worse.”

“It’s not going to get worse, all right?” I said. “Everything is going to be just fine. I’ve got it figured out. You’ve got to trust me, and you need to listen to me. I need you to understand that I would do anything to protect those that I care about. Trust me. This will be the last time anything like this ever happens.”

She didn’t say anything. She just looked down at her fingers. I wanted so badly to comfort her more. I wanted to make her feel better. I wanted to kiss her again, but I also didn’t want to press my luck. I didn’t want to push her away even more, when all I wanted to do was pull her in closer.

“Friday,” I said, and then I walked out of her apartment.

I had nothing else to say to her. If she wasn’t going to talk with me, there was no reason for me to even be there. And I found myself really hoping that she was going to make the right decision.