“Coffee?” Adam whispered to Dakota. He could feel himself drifting off again and he needed to be awake.

 

“Yes, please,” she whispered. Her eyes were closed, too, and he knew she was just as tired as he was.

 

“Don’t move,” Adam whispered. He pulled on sweatpants and a shirt and went downstairs to brew a pot of coffee, returning a few minutes later with two steaming cups. Dakota was sitting up, resting against the headboard. She was still undressed, with a blanket covering her chest. Adam smiled as he handed her the cup and sat down in bed next to her, her head falling on his shoulder.

 

“You know, you’ve never actually asked me out.” Dakota said. “And, yet, here I am lying in your bed.”

 

“I supposed I did forget what with all the chaos and murder attempts,” Adam said. “So, hey...you doing anything later this week? Maybe we could meet up at his club I own.”

 

“Ugh,” Dakota said with a laugh. “I would never have agreed to that.”

 

“Good to know,” Adam said.

 

A silence fell between them, a silence Adam knew he had to fill. There was a weight on his shoulders and his heart, the weight of everything not said to Dakota. She had some idea of what he was and what he had done, but she deserved the truth. After everything that had happened, she was owed that. But the thought of saying it, of speaking it out loud, was too much.

 

“I want to tell you something, something very few people know,” Adam said, unable to look at her. “It’s not something I like to talk about, but there’s a lot I want to tell you, and this is the first thing.” But then he stopped. The words wouldn’t come.

 

“You can tell me anything,” Dakota said, taking his hand and looking into his eyes.

 

“When I was seven, my parents were arrested for making and selling meth,” Adam started, letting the words tumble from his mouth. “I was taken from them and placed in the Kane Home for Young Boys.” Adam heard Dakota gasped and her hand squeezed his. “I lived there for a year and a half. Uncle Bill was still in jail, but he promised when he got out he would get a job and would take custody of me. I lived at the house until his parole was approved.”

 

“Oh, Adam, I’m so sorry.”

 

“It’s okay. It really wasn’t that bad of a place. The people were nice, the food was good, and you never had to worry about the heat being turned off in the winter. It’s a good thing you do there. It probably saved my life. I didn’t have to be put into foster care, I didn’t get moved around, and I got to wait in one place for my uncle to get out. I’ll always be grateful for that.”

 

Dakota looked at him and smiled, nodding, but saying nothing else. Just letting him speak.

 

“We used to talk about you, about the Kanes. We used to joke about mansions and ponies. How one day we were gonna go and take it over. We were gonna knock out all the windows and turn your mansion into one giant fort. It was strange how mad we were at your family. It was just...we couldn’t blame our own parents. We were too young, you know? We still thought they were the sun and the moon, so we hated the people who saved us instead. No one knows about the Kane Home for Young Boys. No one in the club, not even Joey. Only Uncle Bill knows.”

 

“You know you don’t have anything to be embarrassed about, right? It wasn’t your fault.”

 

“I know, but I can’t be viewed as weak.”

 

“You’re not weak. You’re the strongest person I’ve ever met. You were a child when it happened. You were allowed to be weak then, and you're allowed to show weakness now.”

 

Adam nodded, and kept talking. His words were unstoppable. He told her everything. His work moving drugs, his work finding people and turning them over to the men they had angered or betrayed. He told her about watching men being beaten nearly to death, to helping bad people do bad things.

 

It had hurt him, having to do those things. But for the longest time he thought it was the only way. Scarred Angels was a biker gang; that was what biker gangs did. For years he had nightmares about the cost of what he did, the collateral damages of his actions. It was killing him, destroying his soul. It was Adam who had pushed for Scarred Angels to go legit, who had spent years searching for the avenue that would pull them out of the world of guns and drugs and violence.

 

At the end of everything, when Adam had said all that he could at that moment, he looked at Dakota, afraid of what her response would be. When he turned to look at her, all he saw were her large brown eyes looking up at him.

 

She put her hand on his shoulder and said, “It’s okay,” and then she kissed him lightly. “I still love you, and I always will.”

 

And now here he was, in the house he owned, with a beautiful woman in his bed. Everything that had ever happened to him was all meant for this, all led to this. Everything he had seen and done had brought him inch-by-inch closer to Dakota Kane. She was a woman who was kind and gentle and generous, a woman who could see past what he had done to the man he had become. She had seen all of his flaws and told him she loved him just the same. Everything he had ever done had turned him into a man she could love. And now that he had said it all out loud, he knew he wouldn’t go back and change it for anything. It was his life. It had started out badly, but he had turned it into something good. He had taken every bad thing he had ever done and used it to himself into someone who did good. He was finally who he always wanted to be.