I wasn’t sure what was happening out in the courtyard with High.

What I was sure of was that I was freaking out.

Snapper owned this crazy-awesome little house.

He’d also apparently fixed it up before he’d had it painted prior to moving me in.

Further, he’d bought me a bed.

But my furniture looked awesome there, like it was bought to be just there.

Not to mention his family had not only moved me in, they got me groceries and a Sephora bag full of happy surprises.

After my father died, I had been looking for something that he’d given me all my life and it wasn’t just the stability of his love and pride.

It was his capacity to judge a person’s character and his utter refusal to allow anyone in his life, or his girls’ lives, who he didn’t deem deserved their place there.

He’d been devastated when, back in the day, Chaos had gone from running a garage and growing and selling (then illegal) pot to transporting drugs and firearms through town and pimping women.

He’d been thrilled when the Club had ousted Crank, someone Dad had always hated (and he wasn’t a hater, if he didn’t like you, he just didn’t like you, he didn’t detest you—but he’d detested Crank) and Tack had taken his place and cleaned up the Club.

And now here this all was, in my new house where I hadn’t even sat my ass down on the couch. Goodness, the kind that Dad had always given me, and more, Dad would always want for me.

Goodness that it was now Snapper who was giving it to me.

“Rosalie,” High called my attention to him.

“Yeah?” I asked absently.

He was watching me closely. “You good?”

I shook my head, not in the negative, to pull myself together. “Yes, yeah. I…it’s just that a lot is happening.”

“Then I’ll get this over with, get you inside so you can have a drink, get warm and start settlin’ in.”

Okay, now I was focused on why High and I were weirdly out in the courtyard for privacy.

“Uh…” I mumbled.

“It was me,” he stated. “Snap wanted on you. He wanted to meet face to face. I fucked up. Made a piss-poor call. I was worried that he was meetin’ face to face with you because he was into you, which he was and is, but you had a man so I thought he’d get his heart broke. I also worried that Bounty was entering territory they weren’t used to dealin’ with. I provided security back in the day when Chaos did stupid shit, and when I did, I’d keep an eye on everything. Even old ladies. I thought he’d get caught with you or someone would see you together and inform on you, and I thought you’d be safer, communications were not in person, but he’d also be safer, not fallin’ deeper into it spending time with you.”

I had to admit, it was good to know why that had happened.

And I didn’t want to admit, but I had to do it, that having High confirm what Snapper had already made very clear, that he’d been into me a long time, was more than good.

But now that I knew why, and the why was that why, it didn’t matter.

More, I didn’t like the idea that these guys were kicking themselves about something that, bottom line, wasn’t their fault.

Yes, they’d promised to protect me.

But I had to pull my head out of my ass and get over the fact that what happened was not about them not doing that.

It was about the choices I made, the choices Beck made, and the choices Bounty made.

The Chaos brothers did the best they could do.

The rest was not on them.

“It wasn’t you who beat the hell out of me, High. You didn’t fuck up.”

“Snap woulda kept a closer eye on you if I hadn’t warned him off.”

“He couldn’t be with me twenty-four, seven and have the job get done,” I pointed out. “None of you could.”

“We fucked up,” he reiterated.

“You didn’t fuck up.”

“You were at work and Speck was on you and we covered you in transit or when you were at your ma’s or shoppin’ or shit like that. We also kept an eye on Bounty to be sure they weren’t making you. We couldn’t be on you when you were with Throttle because eventually, he’d see. But Speck was supposed to do drive-bys of the restaurant and since the bust went down and you didn’t get outed, he thought you were safe so he went and got himself some tail from a girl he’s seein’ and didn’t stay on you or alternately keep tabs on Throttle. He thought you were at the restaurant, you’d be safe, and he knew when your shift ended and he’d see you home. We also had no warning Bounty clued in on what you’d been doin’.”

“High, seriously, this isn’t on you. It’s not on Speck. It’s not on Roscoe. It’s not on Snap. Being with Throttle, you couldn’t keep an eye on me every second of every day and I knew that. I also knew the risks I was taking and I got caught. I informed on an MC to what is now a rival MC. The cops were involved. This is not okay in the world I was living in and I knew that. I still did it, I understood what I was doing, and I knew if I was found out I’d have to deal with some unhappy bikers.”

“We were supposed to have you covered.”

“That was an impossible task.”

I barely got that out before the door opened and we both looked that way, me with my heart shooting straight up in my throat and lodging there because I thought it would be Snapper.