Worth The Battle (Heaven Hill Series) (17 page)

“He asked me to seek counseling after what happened with you,” he pushed out from a throat that was thick with emotion.

Her response was careful and slow in coming—she wanted to make sure she didn’t seem too eager. “What did you say?”

“I wanted to tell him a great big ‘fuck you’,” he laughed, although the sound lacked humor.

“I just bet you did.” She couldn’t help the grin that spread across her face.

A real grin answered hers. “I so did, but that wasn’t possible.” His faced sobered. “He threatened to take my patch if I didn’t get help for what’s going on,” his index finger pointed to his forehead, “up here.”

Jessica nodded, not knowing what to say. This was one of those hard times in life where you weren’t sure what the correct response was to the hard decisions. “I don’t know what to say, Layne,” she finally answered.

“You don’t have to say anything. If I want to keep this patch, if I want to keep my family, I’ve got to get my shit together. There’s no if’s, and’s, or but’s about it. I’m fucked up, I’m broken, and I need to be fixed.”

He said those words with such a hollow tone to his voice that it broke her heart.

“Is that really how you see yourself?”

“It’s the only way
to
see myself.” He scratched the back of his neck and sat up straighter. “So, I agreed. I had my first appointment with Doc Jones today. Jagger took me. Apparently he and B both go to see her on the regular.”

That surprised her, but she didn’t let it show. “How did it go?”

“I told her about what happened here last night. I told her what I did to you, but I didn’t tell her everything.”

She didn’t know what to say, didn’t know how to react. Should she touch him? Should she tell him it was okay, that he didn’t have to continue with what he was saying to her? In the end, she didn’t have to say anything, and he kept going.

“I didn’t tell her how ashamed I felt when you came in here instead of staying in my room. I didn’t tell her how scared I was when I realized that both Liam and Tyler had hold of me. Tyler can normally put my ass down by himself. The fact that it took both of them…” he trailed off, having a hard time finishing his sentence.

“You’re not yourself,” she whispered softly.

“You’re right, I’m not, and I don’t know that I’ll ever be that person that you remember again, but I can’t tell you how fuckin’ sorry I am.” The words ripped from his throat, the emotions right along with them. “I don’t know how to tell you how sorry I am, or even what I’m sorry for. There’s so much, Jess, so much that I should be apologizing to you for. There are even things that you don’t even know, that I’m scared you’re going to find out and then you aren’t going to look at me again the way you looked at me before.”

“I’m not perfect either, Layne.” She took his hand and pressed a kiss to his palm. “Both of us have been in many different places and situations since we were last together in any sense of the word.”

“But I’ve been in the pits of hell,” he argued. “I’m not fit to be sitting on this bed with you, much less to be thinking about touching you.”

The honesty in his face got her; he really did believe the words he spoke to her. She had to find a way to show him that while she had been scared the night before, she was willing to help him work to get back to a semblance of the man she had once known, cared for, and slept beside.

“We’ll do this together, Layne,” she told him, clasping their hands together, entwining their fingers.

Out of anything he had imagined would come out of her mouth, this had been the absolute last, but he couldn’t help but be the most grateful bastard in the world.

Chapter Seventeen

“H
ey Liam, we’ve got a problem, and I’m not sure how big it is.”

Those were the last words that Liam wanted to hear out of Travis Steele’s mouth. They could run the gamut of ‘we’re screwed’ to the even worse ‘we’re fucked up the ass without the courtesy of lube’. “Do I need to come down there?” he asked, although he knew the tone of his voice told Steele that he didn’t have time for this.

“Yeah, I need some help here,” the other man said on the other end of the phone. “I’m not exactly sure what we’re facing, and I need you to give me permission to do what I need to.”

Those were also words he didn’t like to hear from Steele, who could usually handle anything that was thrown at him. Even worse was if it was from Steele, it had to do with security, and right now, the baby sleeping over in the bassinette next to Denise in the living room meant that their security had to be top notch. “I’ll be right there, and if Tyler’s not down there, do me a favor and call him.” There was not another person that Liam trusted more in the world than his best friend, and if decisions had to be made, he wanted the quiet but formidable presence of his second in command.

“He just walked in, pres. I’ll grab him, and we’ll meet you at the table.”

Disconnecting the call, Liam sighed, throwing a look at the woman in his life. “I’ve got to take care of some business, and it’s Steele-related business, so make sure you get Mandy and Drew in here and everything’s locked down.

“Are you expecting trouble?” she asked, glancing at Tatum, who slept blissfully unaware. Trouble seemed to follow them around, but now, with the new baby, she wanted to make sure that she knew what she was facing.

“I’m not, but you never know. It’s better to be prepared than to be caught with our thumbs up our asses,” he told her, sitting down as he put his motorcycle boots on.

Denise walked over to where he sat and pushed against his chest so that he leaned back against the soft cushion of the chair. She sat in his lap and turned to face him when he wrapped his arms around her waist and put his chin on her shoulder. “I understand what this life is now, Liam. It’s not going to scare me away from you or the family I’ve created here. Let me get Mandy and Drew inside and then lock up as you leave, that way you don’t have to worry about us.”

He breathed easier. Early on in their relationship, she had run, and it hadn’t made anything better, it made it worse. Now that he was a father to not only Tatum but her kids from a previous relationship, he worried, even though she wore his patch, that she would leave again. That maybe this life would get to be too much for her again, and he’d come home one day and find his family gone. “Okay, that sounds like a plan. I’m sorry,” he apologized for his feelings, even though she didn’t know what he was feeling. “I’m just really fuckin’ tired, and this is not something I wanted to hear right this second,” he told her, scrubbing his hand over his face.

“I know, it’s been a long day for you,” she told him, leaning in to place a kiss on his lips. A small smile played across her own lips as he placed his hand behind her neck and deepened it, allowing his tongue to claim her mouth for a moment. “You’ve had to deal with Layne and force him to do something that could ultimately hurt him, and now you have this. We’ll get through it, though. That’s what we do here,” she told him when she pulled back, running her tongue over her swollen lips.

She was right; that was what they did, and that’s what he had decided to deal with when he took this group of men and women under his care. That didn’t mean that he always liked what he had to deal with, but it meant that he had others who would be depending on him, and he had to try to make the right decisions for everyone involved.

“I’ll be back, babe. Hopefully it won’t be real late,” he told her, tapping her hip to let her know that he was getting up.

Denise walked with him to the door and yelled for Mandy and Drew. They came running, both noticing that Liam was leaving.

“Where you goin’, Dad?” Drew asked, taking note that he wasn’t dressed for just a leisurely stroll down to the clubhouse.

Liam put his hand on Drew’s shoulder. “Got some business to take care of, keep things locked down tight here.”

Minutes later he walked into the room that held their meeting table and shut the door, having a seat between Steele and Tyler. He sat there for a minute and composed himself. Sitting at the head of this table was a lot more pressure than he had ever imagined, but he knew that he had to keep these people safe, he had to make tough decisions, and he knew that he couldn’t do that without first taking into account all the details.

“What’s going on?” he asked, running his hand through his hair.

Steele looked at him, his mouth set in a firm line and his eyes traveling between both Liam and Tyler. It was obvious he was nervous, and a nervous Steele wasn’t something anyone liked to see. “I’m not sure, and that’s what scares me.”

“Okay then, tell me what you know. How about that?”

He turned Jessica’s laptop so that it faced his pres and clicked on a few buttons. “Jessica came to me and told me that she had an alert in her email that one of her accounts had been breached. I thought it was a fake one, you know a phishing scheme, trying to get her to put in her information so that someone could potentially steal her identity. That’s how hackers normally do it,” he began.

“But it wasn’t?” Tyler asked from where he sat.

“Not when I got to looking at it, no. Someone has legitimately breached her information, I checked with a contact that I have at the cell phone company. There was a full scale cyber-attack the night before last. Jessica’s wasn’t the only information that was breached, but she’s the only person that Heaven Hill associates with.”

“So what does that mean for us?” Liam asked, trying to wrap his mind around what the other man was telling him. “You’re going to have to break it down in small sentences too, man, ’cause my brain just ain’t firin’ on all cylinders like normal. You got me?”

“We all know that these smart phones, especially iPhones, are a hacker’s dream because if users aren’t smart and turn all that GPS shit off, they can figure out where the fuck you are by remotely putting in a tracking app. I think that’s what has happened with her.”

“I know all about tracking apps, and it does pinpoint roundabout where that person is,” Tyler groaned. “I put one on Meredith’s phone before Steele made his own.”

The three of them sat in silence for a few moments; all mulling over what this had to do with them.

“So what does this mean?” Liam asked. “Who’s doing this?”

“It means that no matter what she puts on her fuckin’ Twitter account about where she is, the hackers
know
where she is. And to answer your other question, I have no fucking clue who they are, these people are good.”

That was the last thing that Liam wanted to hear. They were just coming off of having to deal with Bianca being held hostage, Tatum being born. When would it end?

“I know, brother,” Tyler told him where he sat. “If it ain’t one thing it’s another.”

Liam knew that he had to address this, but he wasn’t sure how. “What do we tell Jessica? Better yet, what do we tell Layne? He’s having a hard time right now; I don’t want him any more twitchy than he already is.”

Steele shrugged. “I wish I had answers for the both of you, but to be honest, this is going to take some time.”

“Take her cell phone, disable the fucker, give her a club issue cell, and transfer her contacts to it for her,” Liam said. “Don’t say a word to Layne. He’ll figure it out, but let’s try to buy ourselves a day or two.” He ran his hand over his face again. “And you,” he pointed at Steele, “you’re on this until you figure it out.”