“I plan to go further,” she said. “I need to see him.”
“Shy,” he warned. “It’s crazy. No one walks up to Burl McDade. No one.”
“Then I’ll talk to Razer or Play. Someone must be able to get a message to him.”
“No,” he said. “That’s it. You don’t need his permission.”
“To be with you? Maybe not. But I need it to…”
She needed it to live. That seemed like the relevant thing to say. If Shyla planned for their relationship to go longer than a month, it was up to her to prove her lack of fear. One way to do that was to show up and declare she had no intention of causing trouble for the McDade family.
“This your big plan? You walk away without a word and think you can stir up the hornets’ nest then just waltz on back.”
“I don’t know what else to do,” she said. At the end of the day, the McDade family were his. If going to them would end their relationship then it was doomed either way. “I don’t want to be weak. If we’re living in fear of them all the time, all I am is a liability. We can’t be together like that.”
“No matter what, you will always be a liability.”
Nice. Her optimism faded again. “Then I shouldn’t come back. This should be goodbye.”
Though even thinking about where to go or what to do without him was beyond her. The prospect of him gave her strength and purpose. Even with the uncertainty of how it would play out, Shyla realized in that moment that her aim had always been to return to him. Women didn’t leave McDades, not because they were dangerous, though they were, but because they had their own gravitational pull.
“You’re coming home,” he said.
“If I’m a liability, you should want rid of me. You should cut ties and get—”
“You’re a liability because I love you,” he snapped. “That’s never gonna change. Doesn’t matter if you’re here or on the other side of the planet. Doesn’t matter if I train you to fight or arm you with weapons, I will always do whatever it takes to keep you safe. Whatever it takes.”
On picking up the phone, and listening to the ring, she’d feared talking to him would be a mistake. His last words erased those doubts. Shyla couldn’t have predicted such a revelation.
Walking away wouldn’t make a difference to his feelings. It hadn’t made a difference to hers. They were tethered to each other, whether they wanted to be or not.
“I missed you this week,” she whispered. “I’m so lost.”
“Come home,” he said. “You can pack up, walk out of that motel room, and get your ass back down here, or you can stay exactly where you are and I’ll be there before the sun rises. But you are coming home, Shyla Bellamy.”
All the things that she wanted to say and wanted to ask tangled together to form a ball of trepidation deep in her gut.
“Nothing will be different if I come back now,” she said. “If I’m a liability, if they’ll want to hurt me—”
“We can’t talk about that on the phone,” he said. “Come home and we’ll talk.”
Would they? Maybe. Maybe not. Shyla had promised to follow his commands and he was giving her one. If she was honest, she didn’t want to face the McDades alone. If for no other reason than she’d embarrass Score. Proving her naivety and ineptitude wouldn’t impress Burl McDade. It could actually make their situation worse.
“I need answers,” she said. “I can’t just wait for the axe to fall.”
“I promised to take care of you, didn’t I?”
“It shouldn’t all be on you. If I am the one causing the problem—”
“You’re causing it now,” he said, both impatient and tense. “Get yourself back here and that problem goes away. Seeing your brother opened you up to more enemies, now they know what you look like.”
“I don’t think Wyatt has enemies like that.”
“Not his enemies, mine,” he said. “Anyone who knows we’re together, knows who your brother is, you just gave them a face to go with the name.”
Shyla shook her head. “No one knows we’re together, not anyone in the prison. Wyatt didn’t even know it.”
“Maybe they didn’t before you filed your paperwork. What you wrote on that page put you on a whole bunch of radars.”
“I wrote that I was unemployed,” she said. “I didn’t want to assume that…” She had wandered off and left him without someone to take care of the day to day things that were usually her duties. “I didn’t put your name on it, I swear.”
“You put our address on it.”
Because she’d had no other choice. She didn’t think they’d accept a motel as a fixed abode. “No one would know that was your address. How would anyone know that? How would the McDades know to monitor—”
“You think I don’t have eyes everywhere? You think I haven’t known exactly where you are all week? You really think I’d let you walk into a prison, any prison without greasing the guards? Anything goes down, you’ve gotta be a priority. I’ve had people watching your brother for weeks.”
Shyla didn’t know what to say. Early in the call, he’d asked for her location like he didn’t know it. “Phoenix…”
“I kept my distance,” he said. “Didn‘t crowd you, let you breathe. But, baby, if you go to Burl now, I’ll be right behind you and we won’t ever get out. No one can defend you against him except me. I wouldn’t trust anyone else to do what needed to be done.”
Yet, Score always spoke as though his father’s orders were gospel. That implied he wouldn’t hurt his father… But even in her state of confusion, Shyla couldn’t be
