We have to talk.

Every step up the stairs was a dreaded one. He tightly gripped the bag of ice within in his fingers. He just left one shit show and he wasn’t looking forward to walking into another.

With gritted teeth, he wondered what was going to be waiting for him behind his bedroom door. Listening carefully, he moved down the hallway and then stopped in front of his room. Footsteps. Constant, rhythmic footsteps.

She was pacing impatiently.

Fuck.

He braced himself as he opened the door and stepped inside. His room was one of the larger ones, luckily, but that still didn’t give her a lot of room to pace.

“Been pacin’ the whole time?”

She stopped short and turned her troubled blue eyes to him. The look she gave him got him in the gut. “What the hell else was I supposed to do? I was sent to your room like a fucking child.”

“Babe,” he sighed, closing the door behind him and locking it. He snagged the keys she had thrown on his dresser and shoved them deep into his pocket. He held up the ice. “Brought you ice.”

“For what?”

“The shiner that asshole gave you.”

Her hand raised to her eye automatically, then she rushed into his tiny bathroom, flicked on the light and inspected her black eye closely in the spotty mirror. “Son of a bitch.”

“Figured it was gonna turn, so brought ice,” he said as he squeezed in behind her, mentally cursing how small his bathroom was. He needed to move the fuck out of church. It was time.

He lifted the ice up and offered it to her. She snagged it out of his hands and pressed it to her eye with a hiss.

They stood quietly for a moment. He wanted to wrap his arms around her, pull her back against him, calm the anger he knew simmered beneath the surface. But he wasn’t sure if she’d let him.

“What are they going to do to him?”

“Strip him of his colors,” Dex answered. Though those words sounded simple, they had a much deeper meaning. However, he wasn’t going to lay out to Brooke what everyone knew would be done to Pierce.

Everyone knew, but didn’t want to know, either. Not actually saying the words was safer for everyone in case questions popped up down the road.

She pinned her gaze to his in the mirror’s reflection. “Dex, what are they going to do to him?”

After a hesitation, he said softly, “Babe, like I said, strip him of his colors.”

She turned and leaned back against the sink, holding his gaze. “That’s not enough. Diamond...” she breathed the last and that also got him right in the gut.

Fucking Diamond. No one had a clue that had happened. No one. She had kept that from everyone, including Slade, her brother, Jag, and most likely Bella, too.

After D and Hawk escorted Pierce out of church, with Z following behind at a slower but determined pace, Crow and Dawg had drilled Slade for more details. Apparently, Diamond admitted to her ol’ man one night that Pierce had cornered and touched her, but that was all she told him.

It was possible she didn’t remember it all. Maybe she had blocked it from her memory. Because, for fuck’s sake, he doubted Pierce would admit to everyone that he took a fifteen-year old’s virginity if it hadn’t happened.

And they all doubted that Diamond would’ve given it up willingly to Pierce. She also wasn’t the type of woman to sit back and let someone abuse her like that.

But then, she had only been fifteen at the time.

Diamond was always one to avoid coming to church and club parties, using the excuse she didn’t like being around the “skanks.” But maybe that was only part of it.

How Slade would handle that devastating discovery with Diamond remained to be seen. That would be between the two of them. Though, Crow was more than agitated at the whole thing. His constant murmur of “baby doll” under his breath was a bit strange.

“Babe... Trust me.” He grabbed Brooke’s chin and met her gaze directly, making sure she was clear on what he was saying but also what he wasn’t saying as well. “It’s gonna be enough. He’s gonna get his due. Ain’t gonna hurt anyone ever again.”

Trust me.

That was just it. She wasn’t sure she could trust him now. It was funny, because somehow and in some way, she had begun to trust Dexter Dougherty during the time they’ve spent together. Hell, she allowed him into her home. She allowed this biker to start slipping into her heart.

And now?

She pushed away from him and out of the bathroom to give them more space, so she didn’t have to be so close to him. She couldn’t bear to be that close. Not right now.

Brooke spun on her heels to stare at the man who followed her out of the bathroom. She should be angry at him. Pissed. But she had a difficult time holding onto even a thread of that anger. Even with everything that went on downstairs. Everything she heard while listening at the top of the steps when she promised to wait in his room. Everything she heard after she came back up, saying she’d once again wait in his room, but didn’t.

She only had gone into his room once the meeting had broken up and Pierce had been removed from their clubhouse. When she knew Dex would come upstairs looking for her.

The man who she’d been sleeping with, who she was beginning to feel something for, whom she trusted, had betrayed that very trust.

She should be really pissed because he had betrayed her. He had gone behind her back and took things she didn’t give permission for him to have. “You took those diary pages against my wishes.”

She needed to be pissed because it might push out the hurt his actions caused.

He dropped his head, ran a hand through his already disheveled dark hair and blew out a long breath as he stared at the floor. “Yeah,” he said so quietly she almost wasn’t sure if she heard him.

“Yeah?” she repeated, trying to encourage her own anger, fury. Anything but the deep ache in the pit of her stomach. “You took something that was mine, Dex, without my permission.”

“Yeah.”

“Can you even look at me?”

He raised his head and met her gaze. “I took ‘em. Had a good reason, though, babe.”

“You mean what you thought was a good reason. I told you that you could read them, but no one else. No one else, Dex. Your word should have been enough proof for them.” She swallowed down the lump that rose in her throat. “You didn’t need to show it to everyone. You didn’t need to let them read my mother’s private words. The demons she spilled on paper in an attempt to wash them from her soul. That wasn’t for their eyes, Dex. It wasn’t. You knew I didn’t want anyone reading them.” Her breath hitched but she pushed onward. “You took them anyway. And you didn’t say a fucking word.”

She felt it then. A flicker of anger. But with that hollow feeling in her heart, in her chest, a flicker wasn’t enough.

He inhaled a deep breath but said nothing. Which was smart on his part, because she wasn’t done yet. Not nearly done.

She needed to rid herself of that ache. That bone-deep disappointment in a man who came into her life when she least expected it, then flipped it and pinned it to the mat like a professional wrestler. “How’d you get my DNA?”

His eyes widened slightly, but he quickly hid it by rubbing a hand over them. “Fuck,” he muttered.

She tried to keep that clawing disappointment from her voice. “Think I wasn’t going to find that out? Your first mistake was assuming I’d go upstairs and wait. That was never going to fucking happen. What happened downstairs affected me also, Dex. I had every right to know what was going on, what would happen to the man who raped my mother.” Her voice cracked. “To the man whose demented genes created me.”

“Babe.”

She lifted a palm and shook her head. “No, Dex. Don’t babe me. I’m not your babe. I’m no one’s babe. Not now. Not ever.” She stepped up to him until they were toe to toe. “I’m going to ask you again and I want an answer. I want the truth. How did you get my DNA and when?”

“It was just some hair.”

“Hair,” she repeated. “How did you get my hair? Did you pull it from my head when I slept by your side? Did you take it from my brush when I wasn’t looking? Like the diary pages?” She couldn’t control her voice shooting up a few octaves. She hated losing control but right now, she needed that indignation to embrace her, protect her. Fill that hollow.

“How?”

“One of your hairbands.”

“When?” Her breath hissed from her as she thought about when he had access to them since she rarely wore her hair up. “When you pulled it from my hair at the gun range?”

He didn’t say anything, just avoided her eyes.

“Dex, answer me. At the gun range?”

“Yeah.”

“When you fucked me? Is that why you did it? To distract me from what you were doing? Are you that fucking sneaky?”

She spun around and stepped away from him. Her chest was tight, her stomach in knots. She was so disappointed. Everyone around her had disappointed her. Her mother for keeping that secret. Her brother and sister for not caring enough to help with her mother’s illness and estate. The man who she thought was her real father, for going along with her mother’s lie. And now, Dex. “You violated my trust.”

“Know it. Had to be done. Didn’t have a choice, babe.”

Babe!

Just throw a babe on the end of a sentence and that made everything A-Okay in his book.

“I’m going back to the motel tonight. Alone. And then I’m going back home tomorrow morning. Alone. Do you hear that, Dex? Alone.”

He reached out but she stepped out of his reach. “Babe, you can’t. It’s too risky.”

“You don’t get to tell me what to do, Dex. You don’t. You don’t have that right.”

His head dropped back and he stared at the ceiling for a few seconds before his body heaved when he barked out a loud, “Fuck!”

When he dropped his eyes to her, a sharp pain shot through her. He was hurting, too.

Everything that went down tonight, it did affect her. But it affected him as well. It affected every one of the members of his club family. Every single one.

Not one of those bikers didn’t hurt from what they heard tonight. Not fucking one was left unscathed.

But they would get over it. Move on. Like she needed to do.

She needed to put all this behind her. And she couldn’t do it by continuing to spend time with the man before her.

She needed to get out of Shadow Valley, get away from the DAMC and get her life back on track.

And she needed to get away from Dex that second, because she didn’t want to do anything but hide under the covers and cry. She wasn’t going to do that in front of anyone. Not even him.

So she needed to get back to her motel room, close the door, turn off the lights and just allow herself to purge her tears, her sadness, her disappointment.

Then she needed to pick herself back up and head home to Harrisburg and forget Shadow Valley even existed. Forget Pierce. Forget the DAMC.

And, once again, she knew that would be impossible if Dex remained in her life.

She grabbed her jacket she had thrown on a chair, made sure she had her car’s key fob, then moved to the door.

She stopped and stared at it for a moment. However, that gave Dex just enough time to move up behind her. He planted his palms against the door on either side of her, caging her in. “Babe,” he murmured into her ear. “Brooke...”

His warm breath made her hair flutter against her ear and neck, causing her to fight back a shiver.

She had this crazy desire to turn around. To kiss him, to shove him onto his bed, make him submit to her and fuck him until she forgot everything that was said downstairs. Everything that happened with the Warriors back at her house. Everything she read in her mother’s diary. And for even a moment, forget the suffering her mother went through, not only thirty years ago at the hand of the man she faced earlier, but her suffering during her long battle with cancer.

She should allow herself to simply enjoy the man who was pressed to her back right now. The one not saying much of anything, just waiting to see what she would do. Probably hoping that she’d stay and do the same thing she desired.

But she didn’t do any of that.

Instead, with tears burning in her eyes, she shoved the lock bolt open and twisted the lock on the knob. “I need time to think, Dex. Some time to process. Just give me that, please.”

She yanked opened the door, and he let her shut it behind her. As she moved down the quiet hallway, she heard him scream “fuck” behind the door.

She forced her feet to keep moving forward and not stop until she got to her car.