Chapter 13
Snake
I sighed with a groan before I shook my head. Of course, that was all she latched onto. My actions back at the bar. Screw the fact that I’d gotten her out of trouble. Screw the fact that I’d saved her from whatever disgusting bullshit that asshole had in store for her. Fuck the fact that it was obvious she wanted me with the way she was feeling me up on the damn bike ride.
I was the one at fault. Always me.
“I’m not your property anymore, Jace. What the fuck was that?” Laiken asked.
“Are you really upset that I got you away from that asshole?” I asked.
“No!” she said. “I’m pissed because you apparently thought it was your responsibility!”
“Seriously, Laiken? I saved your ass.”
“Because you thought my ass was yours. Admit it.”
I stared into her eyes and saw them dripping with frustration. Years of pent-up anger and forgotten memories were surfacing for her. It was obvious she’d tried to forget me. Tried to move on and was unable to do so. I never tried. I tried to replicate the feeling I had with her, but I never attempted to erase her. She was the best damn thing that had ever happened to me, and I wanted to make sure I held onto that. Held onto that standard, she set in my life.
But it was clear I was not a standard to her, and it only twisted the knife she was plunging into my gut.
“You creep out from the shadows and come over to me in some random fucking bar because a guy is touching me and you expect me to thank you? I would’ve gotten that man off me. You know me better than that. And if I struggled, that bartender would’ve blown the guy’s fucking dick off before he got me out of there. Why the hell were you necessary?” she asked.
Anger was coursing through her veins. She held my helmet underneath her arm as she balled up her fists. Her body was trembling. Shaking with the words she never got to say to me that day.
The day I tossed her out of my fucking house.
“You think you own me, but you don’t,” she said. “You think you loved me, but you didn’t. You lied to me, Jace. You lied to me, you accused me of turning into my mother. You made me fall in love with you before doing fuck-knows-what. I assumed you were probably cheating. Creeping around behind my back. Why the hell else would you have been done for days on end? Getting up in the middle of the night? Lying to me about the ‘boring life’ you told me you had? Huh!?”
I let her yell at me. I let her get it out. It turned my stomach that she thought I could cheat on her. After the perfection, she’d brought into my world. When I was with her, I tried to get her to see what she meant to me. I tried to learn how to treat her. I tried to learn how to spoil her and comfort her and love her in the ways she needed. I stood up for her. Defended her to people in her life that walked all over her and tried to diminish the light she brought into this fucking hellhole.
But she was right. I had lied on multiple occasions to keep her at arm’s length with my own life. Partially because of her aspiring dreams, and partially because I wanted to protect her.
And I would never take those motives back. I would never take back the lies I fed her. Pushing her away was the best thing I did for her because had I introduced her to my life she might have rejected me. Spat at me. Called me pathetic. Possibly even came after us if she had pursued her dreams. But if she hadn’t? If she had accepted my life and kept her mouth shut?
She would’ve been there at the shootout. The night with The Devil Saints that changed all of us forever.
“You know, I could never prove you were cheating,” Laiken said. “I went through your phone. Dialed numbers to see who you fucking pick up. Asked you repeated questions to see if I could get you to trip up in your stories. I would check your body for marks when we made love and smell your clothes after you’d come back in. You made me paranoid. Your lies and your deceit made me lesser of a fucking person. I stooped to doing things I cringe at people for now. But there’s one thing I can prove. One thing you did do that you will never come back from.”
I braced myself for the hurt I knew was going to come with her words. The one thing she could accuse me of that was true.
The one thing that made me physically sick at night.
“You broke my heart,” she said. “You ripped it from my chest, you heel-stomped it into the ground, and you left it to rot.”
I didn’t know what else to do. Her words cut to the bone as she left me to bleed out on the street. Tears were cresting her eyes as she tossed her helmet at my chest. I caught it in my hand without a second thought and propped it up underneath my arm. She had every right to be upset. Every right to say what she was saying. She had every right to accuse me of cheating because what the fuck else was I supposed to be doing? No woman thought her man was involved with a gang. The most common answer was cheating.
And even though it angered me that she could think that about me, I could understand her train of thought.
What else was I supposed to do, though? Just… let her in to that life? I tried to protect my sister from it, and look at what it fucking got her. She spread her legs for a guy I tried to keep her away from, and now she was holed up in the fucking main lodge of our compound trying to outlive an impending war. She got sucked right into the middle of shit that didn’t even concern her because Talon got selfish and couldn’t control his dick.
“You broke my fucking heart, Jace. And I don’t think I ever touched yours.”
Her words echoed off the recesses of my mind, and I lost it. Even though I knew I needed to keep my mouth shut, that was not a lie I was going to allow her to convince herself of.
“Never touched mine? Laiken, are you fucking serious!? You don’t think, for one measly second, that you broke mine in the process?” I asked.
“Oh. And what is it that I did to hurt your fragile little ego?” she asked.
“You called me a manipulator! You just accused me of cheating when that wasn’t what I was doing! You blamed your paranoia on me when I could not just put you in danger! I lived a hard life back in those days. I still fucking do. And I wasn’t going to allow you to get wrapped up in that shit. Not with my sister, or my mother, or my father, or my fucking friends, Laiken!”
“But couldn’t you see that’s all I wanted from you?! I didn’t want your money or your idiotic idea of romance or for you to fuck my brains out all the damn time. I wanted your life, Jace. I wanted your world. I wanted to be a part of it. Not an escape from it,” she said.
“Only you would call being someone’s escape a shitty thing,” I said, snickering.
“And either way, you’re the one who fucking threw me out. Who grabbed my arm, tossed me out onto the porch, and slammed the door closed in my fucking face. What the hell was I supposed to do? Knock on the door and ask for your forgiveness? I wasn’t your princess, Jace. I wasn’t your shy little girl that would come crawling back to you when I made you angry.”
“And I never assumed you were!” I exclaimed.
“Then how the fuck did I break your heart!?” she asked.
“Because you were just fucking gone after that!” I yelled.
“Of course I was! You literally threw me out!”
“There was nothing! No phone calls. No text messages. You weren’t at school, and you fucking weren’t at home. I traveled everywhere to find you after that damn fight. Everywhere! I drove to every damn city we ever traveled to and went into every damn bar I ever took you to! I was desperate to find you! I even attended your fucking graduation ceremony just so I could corner you so we could talk.”
My chest was panting as Laiken stared at me with wide eyes. Her anger was cracking. Her strong body was crumbling. Her shoulders settled back into her body, and she settled back onto her feet. Her fists unfurled, and her fiery eyes extinguished into burning embers. I could see the shock rolling over her face as she turned my words over in her head.
“You… did what?” Laiken asked.
“You might not have given a shit about me over these past few years, but I never forgot you. I never forgot the beauty of your eyes and the feel of your skin against mine. I never forgot how your laughter washed over my body whenever I got a chance to pull it from you. I never forgot how wonderful it had been to feel your body pressed into mine as we rode my bike. And I sure as hell never forgot what your lips felt like on mine. You think I didn’t let you in? Laiken, I let you in and never fucking let go.”
Her hazel eyes locked on mine as her entire body relaxed. A tear slowly made its way down her cheek, and I had to fight the urge to wipe it away. I was looking at Laiken for the first time in years, and I was witnessing her cry for the third time ever. She hurt. She was in pain. She had been carrying around all this anger, trying to stuff it down while she led her own life. It was obvious she had left. It was the only explanation I had to not being able to find her after the fight.
“I searched for days, Laiken,” I said. “Weeks, even. Every memory I could conjure of us, I went there. Hoping to find you. Hoping to get you to myself so I could talk to you about that fight. I wanted to apologize to you, for fuck’s sake. For grabbing you the way I did. It was disgusting of me. It made me feel like… like my father.”
I watched another tear fall from her dimly lit eyes. I took a step closer to her before I set the helmets on my bike. No woman should ever cry alone. Especially when she was in the presence of someone. I took another step towards Laiken and hoped she wouldn’t run from me.
But the reaction I got was very different from the one I expected.
Before I could reach out to dry her tears, her hands reached out for my body. They gripped my leather jacket, fisting the material as she pulled me closer. She closed the gap between us as she stood up onto her toes, tears freely flowing down her face as she crashed her lips up into mine.
And for the first time in years, I felt whole again.