Chapter 22
Laiken
The entire ride over made me more and more pissed. Who the fuck did this man think he was? Was he leading some sort of double life? Did he just lure me into his fucking web of deceit and bullshit when I was younger? I fell in love with this asshole. I wanted to spend my life with this mangy little fucker. Just knowing I’d slept with him and allowed him to have my body made me want to deep fry my vagina just to get my mind off the disgusting shit I’d let him to do me. With my own fucking permission.
I fell in love with him. Hell, I still loved him. But he wasn’t Jace. Or maybe he wasn’t Snake. I didn’t even know which one was him, but I knew one thing for sure. If he lived the life of a criminal, the only fucking thing I could do was put him in jail. In my world, there wasn’t another option. If someone did a crime and I could prove it, then they did their fucking time for it. I believed in the prison system, and I believed in our justice system. I believed in the way things worked. Had I seen it fail? Yes. No institution is perfect. Hell, our fucking education system was fucked beyond belief. But I’d also seen our prison system churn out good men and women who did their time and got their acts cleaned up, and I had faith that it would get better.
With every road I passed, I threw up another wall. It was time for me to tuck away my emotional disposition and go in with a centered head. Logical Laiken needed to take over. Not emotional, needy, clingy-as-hell Laiken. No matter how much he looked like Jace or talked like Jace or smelled like Jace… this man wasn’t fucking Jace.
My fear was… maybe he never was.
Maybe Jace never really existed. Maybe ‘Jace’ was just his way of keeping me at arm’s length. Maybe I never really stood a long-term shot with the man I’d fallen in love with. I started questioning everything. Who he was. What he liked. What he enjoyed and the things he did in his spare time. Did he really like that one movie we went to go see where he wasn’t all over me? Did he actually hate sushi? Was his favorite color really orange and did he really have better-than-perfect vision? There were so many things I attributed to Jace. So many things that were so innately him. There were memories ingrained into my psyche whose foundation had been shaken. Memories I lost myself in at night and never admitted to myself were things I still craved.
Holy fuck… did he ever love me?
That was the truth that would destroy me. Whoever this man was, if he had lied to me about that, I would be over. Done for. There would never be another man I would trust or open up to. There would never be another man I would ever give myself over to. If this man had come into my life, manipulated me, and faked his love for me… it would end me.
He might as well stick a fucking fork in my ass… because I’d be done.
I built up thick walls around my heart as I hit the open stretch of road. Jace-- or Snake-- had lived on the side of a fairly deserted road. A highway that connected one town to the next. It was lined with red clay mountains, cacti, and dry land. Dust storms were imminent in this area and could choke the life out of anyone who attempted to settle there.
And yet, their family had.
When I saw his bike sitting in the driveway, all emotional baggage went under lock-and-key. One thing I always prided myself on was my ability to emotionally lock myself away. This was one of those times where I needed to be in control of myself. This was one of those moments where I needed to be completely guarded. The man I had just given myself to twice was not who I thought he was all of these years, and I was determined to get all of my fucking answers.
Whether he talked with me or whether I tased them out of him.
I knew better than to think I could take on Jace. Or Snake. Or whatever his fucking name was. He had me by at least ten inches and eighty fucking pounds. He was a big man with a big temper and a voice that could fill a room even when he whispered. It was one of the things I fell in love with. How even in my size, he cradled me like a thin little twig.
But now his size was something I was painfully aware of now that he was frisking me down.
He was making a game of it. He saw my walls, and he saw how guarded I was, and he was trying to get me to crack. Just as I was using my emotional connection to him, he was trying to use his sexual connection to me. But it wasn’t gonna work. His bullshit wasn’t gonna fly. I came here with one goal, and that goal was to put all these fucking pieces in place. I braced myself for the fact that he might interrogate me back. For the fact that he might ask ‘answers for answers.’ And I was ready to lie straight to his fucking face.
Just like he had to me all those years ago, and just like he fucking was now.
As his hands meandered along my body, disarming me at every turn, that was when I realized this was real. He knew where I kept my weapons by simply looking at me, and there were only two kinds of people who could do that.
Cops… and criminals.
Jace was part of a motorcycle gang. Jace was part of the fucking Road Rebels.
It made my stomach turn. Every time his hands caressed my body with that damn smirk on his face, I wanted to vomit. He thought this was a game. He thought he could be cute about it. But I was ready to slug him. I was ready to rip his fucking throat out. If he thought he could pull the wool over my damn eyes and make me forget about it, then he didn’t fucking know me at all. I was going to make this man’s life a living nightmare. I was going to make sure that when he closed his eyes at night, he didn’t see my body.
He only saw the handcuffs I was gonna slap on his fucking wrists as he ran for his life.
I had fallen for a criminal. Straight up. The Road Rebels were doing something to keep the DEA interested, and I was going to figure out what it was. If it kept them interested, then it wasn’t fucking good. If it kept the DEA on their trail, then it was only a matter of time before my connection to Jace-- or Snake-- was found out. Then, my police department would use it to exploit me or paint me as a sympathizer depending on how far I was willing to go with my connection.
Unless I could get out in front of the shitstorm, Jace had painted for me.
I was in full interrogation mode. I had my emotions shut down, I had my emotional disposition under control, and I had my face blank. I was hiding behind a wall I refused to come out behind, and there was nothing Jace could do to coax me out of it.
Not until I got some fucking answers.
“Are you wired?” Jace asked.
“Fuck no,” I said.
“Then you won’t mind if I check.”
He was playing more games, and as his hands slid up my body, I cursed myself for caving. My eye twitched, and my pussy was growing warm. Holy hell, this man had the hands of Jace. His eyes were Jace’s. His mouth was Jace’s. His breath was Jace’s, and his cologne was Jace’s. But he wasn’t Jace.
He was Snake.
“Enough of the games,” I said as I shoved him away. “Is that why they call you ‘Snake’?”
“Is that the question you want to start with?” Jace asked.
“No,” she said. “But this one is. Why the fuck is your picture posted at the police department under the name ‘Snake’?”
“Do you think I’m going to hurt you?” he asked.
Yes, I did. He was a criminal. An outlaw. If the chatter was right-- which was all I fucking had to go on right now-- he ran drugs. He was one tick shy of being just as disgusting as The Devil Saints themselves. It was insane how this group thought they were better than their counterparts when they were all the fucking same. Outlaws who thought they could exist above and beyond the law.
I felt my strength slipping. For a while, I didn't say anything, and neither did Jace. He was looming over me, putting me on my guard. I clenched my fists and hunched myself over, proving to him that I was prepared for a fight. I was prepared to take him if he got angry or out of control. I wasn’t a stranger to his anger. I wasn’t a stranger to his outbursts. He had only geared it towards me one time, but one time was all it took for me to learn.
“You don’t get to be cryptic, and you don’t get to ask me questions. For months, I tried to get the truth out of you. For months, I tried to figure out what the fuck was going on. My obsession with you and what you were doing bordered on clinical, and now you’re going to give me the one thing I’ve been asking you for,” I said.
“Answers,” Jace said.
“You’re damn fucking straight.”
“I actually think your prior question’s a good one to start with,” he said.
“I’m not playing games with you anymore, Jace.”
“And neither am I. Now, are you ready for your answers or not?” he asked.
I unclenched my fists and rose my body back up into a relaxed position. Was this asshole serious? Was he just going to roll over and give me answers? I took a step towards him and saw his eyes rake down my body, and for a moment I could see a twinge of the Jace I knew. The soft, kind, understanding Jace that had the tendency to appear at the oddest moments.
And if there were ever an odd and awkward moment, it would be this.
His features were softening up as the darkness slid from behind his eyes. Now, he didn’t seem as tall nor did he seem as angry. His twisted sense of humor had drained from his face, and in its place was a man struggling between two parts of himself. The part that wanted to come clean and the part that wanted to keep up his ruse. It was like watching lightness and darkness flash within the eyes of one person.
Whatever plan Jace had prior to my arrival, I could see it slowly slipping from his mind.
I took a few deep breaths to get my anger under control before I took another step towards him. I wanted to reach out to him. To root him to the ground as a battle raged within him. Silence filled his home as he started to pace, his hands twitching as he drew in deep breaths.
“Jace?” I asked.
His movements completely ceased and his shot his eyes up to mine. His beautiful brown eyes with the hunter green specks dove into my depths, banging on the walls of my soul. I watched him take a step towards me, his body fully centered and rooted to the ground.
It was as if my voice had given him the stability he needed.
I could feel myself crumbling underneath his gaze. The walls I had built up were slowly coming down, brick by brick. I could feel my knees growing weak. This man couldn’t be Snake. This man couldn’t be an outlaw. He had my heart and my soul. He penetrated my mind and was slowly chiseling away at my walls. I was weak to him. My heart beat for him. My mind reached out for him, and my heart fluttered for him in my chest.
This man couldn’t be part of a gang. I could never love someone like that.
Could I?
He stood in front of me, looming over me as my chest heaved. His eyes looked straight down into mine as I craned my neck back up to see him.
I couldn’t take it any longer.
“Why do they call you ‘Snake’?” I asked softly.