Fuck.

I’d managed to fuck this night right up. I’d thought bringing Monroe to a fucking pub on game night was the worst mistake I could have made. That was during dinner when I saw the disappointment sitting on her face. Turned out I was wrong. The worst mistake I could have made was letting some motherfucker get to me when he couldn’t keep his eyes off her.

Jealousy wasn’t something I was used to. Hell, this was the first time in my life I’d ever experienced it. Seeing another man even glance sideways at Monroe caused a nuclear reaction in my fucking head. I’d fought like fuck not to react to the asshole who mentioned her tits, but when his friend referred to her as a slut, I saw fucking red.

And then I’d lost my shit.

And my woman.

After cleaning myself up, I headed over to her house. She stood in front of me now, at her front door, a bewildered look on her face.

“I don’t want to talk to you tonight,” she said as she pulled her sexy dark-red robe around her. It was distracting as hell because it barely covered her thighs and revealed enough cleavage to get me hard, but now wasn’t the time to be distracted, so I kept my eyes off her body.

“I fucked up, Roe.”

“You think?”

I shoved my fingers through my hair. Fuck. “Let me in so we can talk.”

“I told you that I didn’t want to talk tonight. I need some space to figure out how I’m thinking.”

I didn’t know much about women, but I knew giving her that space would lead nowhere good. “No.”

Her eyes bulged. “You’re kidding me, right? You screw up and then you refuse to give me some space to process what I saw tonight?”

“Fuck, I’m sorry you saw that, sugar. I let that asshole get to me when I should have just told him to fuck off and left it at that.”

“Tell me something, Hyde. Is that standard behaviour for you? Because if fighting is something you do a lot of, I’m not interested in going any further with this.”

I clenched my jaw. “Not usually.” There was no point bringing up my past, because it was exactly that—the past, not the present.

“So does not usually mean you do it sometimes?”

“It means that sometimes it’s called for.”

“Often it’s not. Just so you know.”

I was a fan of Monroe’s attitude but not when it came flying at me like this. This just pissed me off. “There are some things you don’t know about that do require my fists. Let’s just leave it at that. All you need to know is that I don’t usually get them out in this kind of situation.”

She fell silent for a moment. When she crossed her arms over her chest, I knew she was shutting down on me. “I’m getting the drift. You should go. There’s no way you’re getting in my pants tonight.”

Fuck, didn’t she understand? This wasn’t even about getting my dick wet. This was me, trying to make things right.

Frustration filled me, and I tried to force the point. Stepping one foot inside her house, I pushed my way in and had her up against the wall before she could open that pretty mouth of hers and argue with me. “We need to get one thing straight here. I didn’t come over to fuck you. I came to apologise and tell you I would do better next time. I’m far from fucking perfect, though, so if you’re looking for perfection, you’re right—this should end now.”

I’d caged her in with my arms against the wall either side of her, my body flush against hers. I’d expected her to fight me, but she didn’t. Instead, her breathing picked up and she said, “I’m not looking for perfect. I’m just looking for a man who isn’t going to lose his shit like that all the time.” Her voice dropped to almost a whisper when she added, “You scared me tonight, Hyde.”

Regret was a vicious bitch, one I was well acquainted with. Seemed I spent half my fucking life with her on my back. She swooped in and reminded me what a fuck-up I was. The difference this time? I had a reason not to sit with that regret and drink my way through it.

I cupped Monroe’s cheek. “I’m sorry, red. I can’t take it back, but I can sure as fuck vow never to do it again.”

The hesitation I saw in her eyes told me she wasn’t quite sure. Her words confirmed it. “How do you even know you can make that promise? I watched you tonight. You lost yourself in that fight. It was like the violence consumed you. I don’t want you to make promises you can’t keep. That’s even worse than not making a promise.”

She was dead fucking right. How the hell could I promise her that when I couldn’t get a grip on my temper? But fuck, I didn’t want to lose her. I needed her light to help me through my dark. I’d figure this shit out so she never needed to be exposed to it again. “I’ve only got my honesty to give you. I will make this right. You will never be scared of me again.”

“I wasn’t scared of you,” she whispered. “I was scared for you. And for the guy you were fighting. I’ve never felt afraid of you, but I really thought you could have killed that guy tonight. That’s what I was scared of.”

“So what are you telling me here, Roe? Are you walking away from this before we even get it started?” I’d fight her tooth and nail, but first I needed to know where we stood.

“I’m saying what I said when you first got here—I don’t want to talk about it tonight. I want you to give me the space to think it over.”

Out of everything that had gone on, I realised that if I didn’t give her that space, the rest wouldn’t matter. She needed to know up-front that I’d not force myself on her when she needed time out.

I nodded and dropped my arms. “You’ve got tonight. After that, you let me back in here,”—I placed my hand against her chest—“so we can talk this out.”

On the way home, I grasped how important this thing with Monroe was to me. I’d never looked for another woman after Tenille. Had never wanted the complication again. Had never wanted to put a woman’s life at risk like Tenille’s had been just by being married to me. But leaving Monroe’s house that night, without knowing where we stood, caused my chest to constrict in ways it never had. This wasn’t love—not yet—but it meant something to me. Something I wanted to fight for.

* * *

I spent the next day taking care of club business. King and I had managed to move past our issues. I’d been making an effort not to lose my temper with any club members, and he’d been distracted by shit going on with Jen. He’d also been walking around in a mood due to Bronze finding no dirt on Ryland yet. He also hadn’t found anything useful on the guy whose head had been delivered as a warning.

King sent me out early to clean up a mess one of our clients had gotten themselves in. The cleaning side of our business had ticked along quietly over the years, but King had ramped it up over the last month due to our drug income dropping. The club was bleeding cash, so he took on almost any cleaning job sent our way these days. He’d been more picky until recently, which concerned me. Who the fuck knew whether these new clients could keep their mouths closed about what we did for them? The last fucking thing we needed was one of them singing to the cops.

I arrived back at the club around four that afternoon to find King in his office having a heated discussion with Bronze. Something about an attack King planned that Bronze was against.

“You do that and you’ll have the feds crawling over you like you never imagined they could,” Bronze warned.

The vein in King’s neck pulsed. He was worked up more than usual. “I’m sick of sitting here doing fucking nothing, Bronze. Ryland’s had my hands tied for far too long, and Marx has evaded me because of it. I need to get out there and slit throats and cut some fucking balls off. Anything to make people talk and tell me where the hell Marx is and who’s behind it all.”

“Jesus, King, stop fucking talking,” Bronze muttered. “I don’t want to fucking know this shit.” He was exhausted. The dark circles under his eyes and the way his shoulders slumped told that story.

I stepped in. “Whose throats are we slitting?”

Bronze held up his hands. “I’m leaving. Don’t call me when the feds throw you in jail.” He didn’t wait for King’s response, just simply walked away from the conversation. King didn’t try to stop him either, which told me he was serious about his plans.

“Bronze ruled out one of the three Italians we’ve been looking at. That leaves two. I’m done with quietly investigating them. I want you to take one team of members to one of them, while I take another team to the other one. If we have to slit their men’s throats in order to make them talk, so fucking be it. This happens tomorrow. By the end of the day we’ll know which one it is.”

“And Marx?”

“He’ll be out of business once we know who’s controlling him.”

I rubbed the back of my neck as the tension crept in. “Fuck, King, I’m not sure that Bronze isn’t right about this.”

King scowled. “Last week you would have been all over this plan. What’s changed?”

“Last week I let my mood dictate my actions. This week I’m trying like fuck not to do that.” I’d failed so far, but a man could only try. And this shit King suggested could fuck the club right up if we weren’t careful. “We go out there and cause a blood bath like you’re suggesting, that’s a lot of potential enemies we’re creating. Those crazy fucking Italians have some loyal supporters.”

“You think we can’t handle ourselves, brother?” King had a god complex some days. On others, he managed to lock it down. Today was not one of those days.

“Have we been handling ourselves, King? You tell me. From my perspective, it feels like we’ve lost some of our edge because of Ryland. He’s too close to us for you to even consider this attack. Bronze isn’t shitting you when he says the feds will be all over us if we do this.”

“So we just sit with our hands tied, holding our balls, and allow one man to decide what we can and can’t fucking do? Fuck that. We’re in the middle of a fucking war here, Hyde. We don’t run from war. We stand and we fucking fight to the bitter end.”

I pushed my anger away. I needed to get my point across without my temper getting in the way. “We stand this time? It might be the bitter end.”

King stood with his hands clenched by his side, with an expression on his face I knew to mean he’d already made up his mind. “Tomorrow, Hyde. We get this done.”