I Fled After Catching My Boyfriend With My Best Friend and Stepbrother, Only to Take a Bullet for a Biker Who Swore I Belonged Under His Protection novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Home Early
Laney is sent home early, finds Trent, her best friend Winona and her stepbrother Carl in her bed with Carl filming, walks out, and sees a car slow outside the bar with a gun at the window.
"Laney, you're free to go. The float nurse finally showed up."
My supervisor leaned out of the nurses' station with her phone pressed to her ear.
"I could kiss you, Boss," I said.
I was in the locker room before she could change her mind.
It was Thursday, a quarter to six, and I had worked eleven hours on my feet.
My phone buzzed against the metal door.
It was Winona, my best friend since eighth grade.
She wrote: "Heard you're off early! Come home through the FRONT door tonight, the alley's blocked on Thursdays. Dinner's at 7:30, don't be late! Trent says hi."
I smiled at the screen.
Winona had been planning something for weeks. A late dinner for the three of us, she had said, to celebrate my three years with Trent.
I texted back a row of hearts and caught the bus.
By the time I climbed our third-floor stairs, I had a bag of Trent's favorite takeout and a speech about how lucky I was.
I unlocked the door quietly, because I wanted to surprise him.
The living room was dark.
There was a sound from the bedroom, a low laugh I knew better than my own.
I set the bag down on the counter.
I opened the bedroom door.
Trent was in my bed with Winona.
Winona wore the locket I had given her for her birthday. Nothing else.
My stepbrother Carl was standing at the foot of the bed, in his boxers, holding his phone up on a little tripod.
The red recording light was on.
"Laney," Trent said, and he sat up and pulled the sheet over his lap. "You're early. This isn't what it looks like."
"It looks like my boyfriend, my best friend and my stepbrother," I said.
My voice came out flat. I had used it on families in the waiting room.
"Babe, listen," Trent said.
"Carl is filming," I said.
Carl lowered the phone and grinned.
"Just a keepsake," he said. "You walked into a good one, Lane."
Winona was crying already.
She pulled her knees up and wiped her face with the back of her hand.
"I didn't want you to find out like this," she said. "It just happened. I'm so sorry."
I looked at her for a long moment.
She had held my hair back at sixteen and sat with me at my father's funeral.
I had given her my spare key.
"How long?" I asked.
"Since spring," Trent said. "It's not a big deal."
"Since spring," I said.
"We all live here," Carl said. "We were never going to hurt you."
I took my work bag off my shoulder.
I walked to the dresser and opened the top drawer.
My mother's ring was in the little dish where I always left it.
I put it on the chain around my neck, and I did not look at any of them.
"Laney, don't be dramatic," Trent said. "Sit down. We can talk."
"I'm done," I said.
I turned around and went to the door.
Trent got out of bed and caught up with me in the hall, still holding the sheet.
"Where are you going? You can't leave. The lease is in your name."
"Then I'll cancel it," I said.
"Laney." Carl's voice came from the bedroom, easy and pleased. "I already sent it to the hospital group chat. Tagged you and everything."
My phone buzzed in my pocket.
Then it buzzed again, and again, in a long row.
I pulled it out on the landing.
The staff group chat had two hundred and twelve people in it.
The first thing at the top was a video thumbnail of my own bedroom.
There were already seventeen comments under it.
I stood on the landing with my thumb over the screen and read my supervisor's name.
She had written: "Is this real?"
I put the phone in my pocket.
I went down three flights of stairs without touching the railing and pushed through the front door, the way Winona had told me to.
The street was loud and wet, and the sky had gone dark.
Across from my building, a row of motorcycles stood angled against the curb outside Rooster's.
A big man in a black leather vest stood in front of them with a cigarette, talking to two others.
He had a short dark beard and a scar through one eyebrow.
I did not know him.
He looked up and saw me standing on the step, crying, in my navy scrubs.
He looked at me a second longer than a stranger would.
Behind him, a grey sedan was rolling slowly along the curb with its lights off.
Its back window slid down.
I saw the gun before he did.
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