Kitt

Taking Tansy home would no doubt get me in trouble with the club but Hastie had instructed that I get her to safety and there wasn’t a place in Ward Four safer than this.

I may have left out the part about taking her to my home until there was no way she could back out on purpose. If Tansy knew beforehand, she wouldn’t let me get her out of Neptune’s.

Tansy’s eyes were wide with surprise as I looked back up at her. I tried to fight the grin on my lips, but she looked so f**king adorable when she was caught off guard like that. “Your house?” she echoed, deadpanned.

“Yeah.” I made sure to set the locks in case Tansy got any crazy ideas about a prison break. “Come on, you’re probably tired. Take your choice of any of the rooms upstairs. Only one is occupied and that’s my room. I’ll bring your stuff up after.”

The big, beady eyes had yet to soften and I wondered for a minute if I had made the brutal mistake of pissing her off again. “I can’t stay here,” she said.

“Why not?”

“Because I can’t.”

Ah, yes. I’d forgotten about how Tansy loved to avoid me at all costs. That would be impossible now that we would be staying together. “Tansy, this is the safest place in Ward Four. No one knows you’re here. Not even Glory MC yet.”

Tansy rushed towards her bags in a panic, tossing one over her shoulder and hefting up the last two before she turned and snapped at me. “Open the door.”

“Why?”

“I told you I’m not staying here.”

“And I repeat, why not? You’ve already seen the security. You’re not in danger here.” She muttered something under her breath but it was so low, I didn’t catch it. “Look,” I said, moving towards her. “The situation is shit. I know you’ve become comfortable staying at Neptune’s but it isn’t safe there right now. The only other option is to take you back to your father and you already stated you didn’t want that.”

Tansy opened her mouth to say something but bit down on her lip instead. For a moment, she looked like she was going to cry.

Shit. Now you’ve done it, idiot.

Her voice trembled with a sudden fragility. “Where’s the bathroom?”

“Over there.” As soon as I pointed it out to her, Tansy’s feet were moving, gliding over the cold floors. The door slammed closed, shutting me out.

“Fuck.” Great work, shithead. You pushed her too hard, too fast. Now what? Did I go talk to her? No! She was afraid of me already. Doing so would only make things worse. I pulled out my phone, scrolling down to Lucky’s number all the while cursing my idiocy.

“I need to speak with Seven,” I told the sec and trez as soon as he picked up. She would know how to fix this.

“Hello to you to, asshole. And what do you want with my girlfriend?” By his hostile tone, it was clear that Lucky was still angry about me taking Seven’s side a while back.

“I just have a question.”

“So ask me.”

Lucky was usually very charming but I wasn’t in the mood for banter right now. “Come on, Lucky. Just give Seven the phone.”

“Well, if you insist.” I was on the verge of asking what that meant when there were sounds of struggle on the other end of the line.

“Where did you take her?” Seven yelled.

Oh shit. Was she pissed at me too?

“If you took her back to her father, you ratfink bastard, I’m going to—”

Yup. She was.

“She’s here,” I assured her. “With me. She’s fine.” That last bit was clearly a lie though. “Listen, uh—” How did I go about explaining this?

“Let me speak to her!” Seven demanded.

I ran a hand through my hair. “That’s a little hard to do considering that she probably doesn’t want to talk to me right now.”

“Why? What did you do to her?”

“Nothing! Hastie asked that I take her someplace safe. He wanted me to take her back to her father but when I ran that idea by her, she freaked. I brought her to my place instead.”

“Why didn’t you ask her if she wanted to stay with me? Haven’t you noticed that you scare the shit out of her?” What? I didn’t scare her. At least not more than any of the other guys in the club. “You did ask her where she wanted to stay, right?” Seven asked.

“No, because I knew that she would—”

“You tricked her into staying with you?” The words were screeched so loud, my ears rang. “Are you crazy?”

Shit. Seven definitely wasn’t making me feel better about myself.

Lucky’s voice sounded farther off in the distance, but his playful tone still came across the line. “Is this going to be the same thing like when Seven begged me to stay with her just so she could seduce me?”

“Seduced you?” Seven echoed in disbelief. “If I recall correctly, I wanted nothing more than to get rid of you as soon as you walked through the door. And I might add, you were the one on your knees, begging for me to accept you, remember?”

I could hear Lucky’s laughter over the line.

“You bikers think you can just demand something and expect others to follow. I hope she gives you shit for it.”

“She’s in the bathroom right now.”

“You don’t get it, do you?” Seven continued. “For her, it’s different. You didn’t ask her. You took away her consent. Do you know what you’ve done?”

At the revelation, my blood turned to ice. “Fuck, I never thought of that.”

“She must think you’re the biggest asshole right now.”

I couldn’t blame her. In my haste to get Tansy to safety during this emergency, I had done to her what the Phantoms had done. I had simply towed her along without consulting her on what she wanted to do. “I f**ked up. How do I fix it?”

“Well, you can start by saying sorry.”

“Groveling usually works,” Lucky offered helpfully.

“Slip a note under the door.”

“No.” Seven knew how bad I was at writing. Because I’d never gone to school, I never learned the basics. And now, more than ever, I wished I had, if only to communicate how sorry I was to Tansy. “That’s what you’d do. I’d just ruin things further.” I ran a hand over my face, peering at the door where she had locked herself in. “I’ll talk to her.”

“You better,” Seven threatened. “Fix it, Kitt.”

“I will.” I just didn’t know how.

“Call me later,” Lucky said, taking the phone from his girlfriend. “We’ll need to regroup as soon as Knuckle’s surgery is over. I’ll update you if I’ve got any news. For now, get some rest, man.”

“Will do.” And with that, I clicked off, tossing the phone away as I made my way to the bathroom door. I knocked once softly. “Tansy?” I could hear the soft sounds of sniffles inside and a hiccup that tore my heart wide open. “Tansy, will you open the door? I’d like to apologize.”

A long minute spanned between us, making me feel worse with each passing second. It had never been my intention to hurt her this way. I’d been so preoccupied on getting her out of harm’s way that I hadn’t realized the damage I’d made until it was too late.

My name was called, so soft that I barely heard it. But when I looked up, the bathroom door remained shut. “I’d like to be alone right now,” Tansy whispered.

That was the killer. The way her voice broke, the loneliness in her tone, it made me want to grab my pistol and shoot myself in the head for being the one to make her feel this way.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. But it was hard to tell if she heard it or not through the barrier between us.