TORTURE ME_ The Bandits MC(12)

Fiona took the train into the city. She’d told Carl that she was taking a cab, but there was no way she could justify spending that much money when it wasn’t necessary. Carl was different that way. He’d grown up with money, or at least, that was what she assumed going off of his childhood pictures. It was very different for Fiona. She never spent money on anything that wasn’t absolutely crucial.



She watched from the windows of the train as the trees and bushes and open plains transformed into low, flat buildings, which then transformed into tall, long ones. Fiona felt a huge lump form in her throat as the minutes ticked by, growing larger and larger as the city overwhelmed the landscape. The city was a big black cave of dangers as far as Fiona was concerned, and it seemed darker, even though it was still midday by the time she arrived.



When the train slid to a stop, she waited until all the other passengers in her car moved out before she got to her feet, reaching up into the overhead compartment above the seats to grab her stuffed suitcase. She didn’t know how long this case was going to last, so she’d packed for about two weeks. If it stretched longer than that (God forbid, Fiona thought), she’d just go to a laundromat.



Before she could head for the exit, her phone’s notification went off, signaling a new text message. She pulled out her cell and saw it was from Gage. “At train stop. Are you there?” So he was waiting on her. Great. Just great. There was no possibility of any extra time preparing herself to deal with him, then.



Fiona sighed deeply, clutching hard at the handle of her suitcase as if it were an anchor, and headed off the train into the crowd of people bustling around in search for their families and friends on the platform.



She could feel him before she saw him. That’s the way it always was with Gage. He had an aura about him, a force-field of energy unlike anybody else she’d ever met. She turned around, looking for him, but then a second later, a pair of familiar, broad hands landed on her shoulders, squeezing lightly before pulling away. Gage.



Fiona turned back around to face him, plastering on a fake, overly polite smile in the process. “Hey, how are you?” she said brightly, as if he were an old acquaintance from high school she hadn’t seen in years rather than an ex she’d spoken with very recently.



“Good,” Gage said. “Really good. How was your train ride?”



“Eh, it was fine,” Fiona said with a shrug, her face muscles already starting to ache from the effort of maintaining her smile.



“Let’s go home,” Gage said a moment later, taking the suitcase out of her arms, ridding her of her anchor just when she needed it the most.

Fiona felt her face screw up in confusion, hurrying to follow along after Gabe, whose long legs were hard to keep up with. “Home? I called a motel near downtown. They have vacancies. I figured I’d just…”



“No, no, no, no,” Gage said, shaking his head. “That’s no good. Why do you want to waste money on that when I’ve got a place right here where you can stay for free?”



“It’s not about the money,” Fiona said tersely, feeling her irritation level rise already, even just two minutes into an interaction with Gage.



Gage stopped walking, turning to face her. Fiona felt her face heat up. They were standing so close to each other, much closer than she liked to stand next to anybody, honestly. But she tried not to show any of her discomfort on her face, keeping her expression bland and blank.



“I have a spare bedroom. You’d be a lot more comfortable and able to focus, and besides, this way we can work on the case day and night,” Gage said with a shrug, as if that automatically canceled out any of the other reasons they shouldn’t sleep in the same place.



“It’s…it’s inappropriate,” Fiona said in response, averting her eyes to stare over Gage’s shoulder, looking at anything other than his eyes. “I have a fiancé now, you know.”



Gage was silent, but out of the corner of her eye she could see him swallow forcefully, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down in his throat.



“Congratulations,” he murmured in response, clapping her on the shoulder as if they were old baseball buddies. “That’s…I’m really happy for you, good for you.”



Fiona nodded back at him, but somehow she couldn’t manage to force another smile. It felt too…wrong. She knew what Gage was thinking. All those years together, and he had never proposed. They hadn’t even talked about marriage, but here she was a little over a year after they’d broken up, and she was already planning a wedding. She felt a little guilty about it, thinking that maybe Gage even felt a little hurt by the rapidity of her actions, but goddammit, she deserved to have a life, didn’t she?