“Are you in love with the mafia kid?” Crown asks me, his voice as solid as a steel beam. That’s his problem, that he refuses to bend with the wind, trying to weather every storm with a straight spine. Except … except, no matter how angry I am with him, no matter how much he’s lied, or fucked around, he’s the one who took the biggest risk for me.
He lied for me.
But first, he had to tell Sin. And Beast. And Grainger. Each one of them was a risk, a chink in his armor that could’ve ended with him dying at the hands of the club. The very club that he’s the vice president of.
I finally get the ring off, turning and throwing it at Crown. He manages to catch it in midair which just further pisses me off.
Don’t let anger rule you, Gidge. Didn’t you just tell Grainger that you wouldn’t?
My nostrils flare, but I force myself to close my eyes and let out a long, ragged exhale.
“Why would you ask me that?” I clarify, finally opening my eyes to see Crown staring down at the ring like it’s poisonous. I have never in my life seen a man look at an inanimate object with such hatred. Eventually, he tucks it into his pocket and returns his gaze to me.
“You know why I’m asking.”
We can’t talk freely here, but …
“My humanity means everything to me, Crown,” I explain slowly, trying to parse out my own motives. My emotions are a strange, tangled mess. I’m still getting used to being back here after everything that happened. I was in a different world when I was with Grey, the princess to an entirely different throne.
Since I know that Crown will follow, I shoulder past him and into the hallway, heading back downstairs and outside.
He keeps a healthy distance from me until we’re closer to my grandmother’s house, hidden in the shadows of the woods. Then he gets close. Too close.
His hand grabs my upper arm, squeezing just a bit too hard.
“If you’re in love with him, tell me now,” he whispers. “I’ll do my best to get you out of here.”
That … that does me in.
I’ve been fighting for so long. Against Cat. Against the club. Against the world. I’m tired. So damn tired. When I think about my future—regardless of which path I choose—I see heartache and struggle and pain. But when I look at these men, I see something else alongside all of that.
A dam breaks inside of me, one that I’ve been struggling against for years. It unleashes a great flood, one that even Noah’s ark couldn’t withstand. Those cracks ripple through me and some of the fight leaves. Not much, but a little. I give in.
I give in, not because I’m weak, but because I want to be the sort of person who can feel a spectrum of emotions. I don’t want to leave this world with nothing but the brilliant red of rage painted across my soul. I might not be ready for a rainbow just yet, but the deep blue of sadness is something that I know very well. Instead of shoving that down like I always do, I let it out.
It consumes me.
Tears rip through me, salty and hot. I make no sound, clamping my hand over my mouth, but somehow, Crown knows anyway. Then he hugs me the way he did that night, pulls me in close and envelops me in his warmth. Ahh, that’s why I woke up wanting this from him. He gave me the smallest, most tantalizing taste once upon a time, and I want more.
“It wasn’t about Grey,” I whisper finally, still wrapped in his arms. He’s huge, this man, blanketing me from behind, a wall of muscle and steel and warmth. “I didn’t want to kill someone who didn’t deserve it. Cat was … he was trying to take the very last shred of my humanity.”
I find the strength to pull away from Crown, turning around to look at him. He’s hard to see, considering how dark it is now. Actually, I think dawn is on the horizon, that’s how long I’ve been in Cat’s office. I’m exhausted. And I’m reeling. I have ideas about what I want to do, feelings, intuition.
But concrete plans? Those I do not have.
After what the club did to the mafia, heads are going to roll. War is on its way back into town, and I’m caught firmly in the middle of it.
“You were going to let him. That’s the part I hate the most. You knew what he was doing, and you didn’t stop him.” Crown lets me rant, waiting there in his typical ‘bad boy biker’ pose, the one I like to make fun of the guys for. I guess it really does make them look badass (even if it kills me to admit it). “You let Cat put a gun to my head and pull the trigger. Shoot my …” I choke when I think about my black and white husky, Feminist. He must still be with Reba. It’s in both of their best interests that I don’t contact her. I should let them be, safer without me. “Shoot my dog,” I finish, lifting my chin proudly. “You once basically admitted that if Cat really had intended to kill me, you’d let him. I could see your shame.”
Crown is already shaking his head, running his inked fingers through his hair. Rumor has it that the tattoos on his body tell a whole story. That’s what the club-whores say anyway. It occurs to me that for them to know that, Crown would actually have to spend time talking to them—something that many of the men don’t do. Also, it’s clear he never told them what, exactly, that story was or else the gossip would be all over the compound.
I so desperately want to know that I can feel a churning pain in my chest.
“No.” Just that one word. He steps up to me, his boots toe-to-toe with the rubber-soled slippers I put on after Beast told me to head to the clubhouse. When he grabs my chin, I reach up and curl my fingers around his wrist, feeling the throbbing of his pulse. “Like I said, you only think you’re a master strategist, Gidge.” Crown pauses and wets his full lower lip, drawing my attention to his mouth. Amber’s mouth now. Her property. I don’t want to accept that. “The shame you saw that day was because I would never—could never—allow Cat to truly hurt you.”
“Are you in love with Amber?” I blurt, because Crown is telling me something that I’ve always wanted to hear. Yet he’s engaged. After all this time, he’s done it. Found the woman he’s been waiting for. My question echoes his from earlier. We might not be together, but we can’t stand the thought of the other choosing someone else.
“Amber?” Crown asks, releasing my chin and blinking a few times, like he isn’t sure where the question came from. “What does any of this have to do with Amber?” He sounds mystified, like I’ve thrown a glass of cold water on the tenderness between us.
“How can you say these things to me when she’s waiting for you?” I wonder, trying to decipher the look of annoyance that flashes across his face. “She showed me her ring earlier.” I offer that up, so that he’ll know that I know, but I won’t have to hear him say it.
“Did she?” he asks dryly, looking away from me toward the endless darkness of the woods. God forbid we were ever stuck on this compound during a zombie apocalypse; the ground would come alive. Lord only knows how many bodies are buried out here.
I find it peaceful anyway.
“It’s a pretty ring,” I add, and Crown gives me a harsh look. He knows I’m full of shit. There isn’t a single instance in the multiverse where Gidget Kesselring would say something that shallow and stupid, and mean it seriously.
“Prettier than this?” Crown asks, patting the pocket on his vest where he stashed Grey’s ring.
“I don’t know,” I reply glibly, tossing my hair over my shoulder and acting like there aren’t fresh tears drying on my cheeks. That I didn’t cry for the first time in fucking forever. “Did you blow a half-mil on it?”
“That would be silly,” Crown says slowly, sliding his hands into the pockets of his jeans as he stares up at the dark canopy above our heads. “I’m the sentimental type.” He looks back at me. “I wanted to give my wife the ring that my aunt inherited from her great-grandmother—my great-great grandmother.”
His aunt. Interesting. Why would he have his aunt’s ring?
Another story that I want to know all about. I want to know everything there is that Crown could possibly tell me.
“It’s not a v
ery traditional sort of ring,” he continues, circling me slowly. I don’t know much about rings or diamonds or whatever, but a yellow diamond isn’t far outside the norm. “It’s got this deep red ruby, almost six carats.” He pauses in front of me again and lifts his brows. “I had it appraised; it’s worth almost a hundred grand now. But I guess that isn’t much compared to this.” Again, he pats his vest pocket, and I frown.
“A ruby?” I ask, this strange, gross sparkly feeling coming over me. It freaks me out; I won’t lie. It tastes like … hope or something. I almost gag on its sickly-sweet taste. “What do you mean?”
Crown puts his hands on his hips and sighs.
“You are still far too young for any of this,” he says, and that does it. I’m annoyed all over again.
“Amber had a yellow diamond on her hand,” I tell him, like he’s an idiot. Or maybe I am, because I keep saying I want to trust these men, and yet, I won’t allow myself to fully commit.
“I’m sure she did. Big Jack and I spent a lot of time picking it out. Looks nice with her hair, doesn’t it?”
I keep staring at him.
Big Jack. It takes me a minute to place the name. Ah. Big Jack is one of my father’s best … mechanics. In that, he can break down an entire car and have the parts sold in less time than it takes most men to replace a carburetor.
“I was hoping my ring would match my girl’s eyes. Not a lot of girls out in the world with red irises. Seemed like fate or some shit.” Crown runs his hand over his face as my heart hammers, and I feel dizzy on my feet.
“You’re not engaged to Amber,” I correct, looking up and into the shadows of his face. He hesitates for a moment before nodding. Just as I can no longer lie to him, he can’t lie to me either. He’s lying to everyone else, so it’s me that will get the full and complete truth from him.
“How could you think that?” he demands after a few seconds of silence. “I … fuck, I put everything on the line for you. What sort of man do you think I am, that I would run off and get engaged to a groupie that I barely know?”
“You’ve fucked her before,” I breathe, and he laughs. It isn’t a very nice laugh.
“Maybe. If I did, I don’t remember. Do you care? Because I don’t.” He moves close to me, and even though I can’t see him very well, I can feel him. His heat, his anger, his need. “The only girl I’ve ever given any thought to is you. So when you …” Here he grits his teeth for a second. “Tased me. Stole my bike. Took that kid. All I could think about was how to keep you safe. Gidge,” Crown begins as I start to tremble. “I wish I could tell you that I did it for some noble reason.” He laughs, the sound harsh and bitter. “I wish I could tell you there was some plot involving your father, that he’s a traitor to the club, anything to make it sound less desperate than it is.” I wait with bated breath, and the stars in the sky pause their winking, the whole world waiting to hear the truth from Calder’s lips. “But it’s not. It’s just about you.” Crown swallows hard and puts his hand over his mouth for a minute before dropping it by his side. “You know how I feel, don’t you? You voiced it once. You told me you didn’t want to be my old lady.”
There’s a long pause there where neither of us quite knows what to say.
“If I asked for you, Cat would’ve told me no. He doesn’t like when you stand up for me, even just a little.” I think about that time in the kitchen before Gaz beat my ass, when Crown tried to protest. The time at the funeral when he spoke up in my defense, those two times he murmured Boss as a warning before Cat’s stunt with the gun to my forehead. “He wouldn’t like me having that much power.”
Crown exhales sharply, the sound electric in the dark. I can feel it in my blood, in every beat of my heart.
I once equated marrying Crown—or any of the men in the club—to shooting Grey in the head. Two different actions with the same result: I’d be trapped. Bound to the club. Bound to its dark deeds. Bound to my status as a second-class citizen. Bound to danger and bullshit and evil and murder.
I’m starting to rethink that.
Instead of a cage, why couldn’t it be armor? Steel and chrome and leather against the world.
“That doesn’t mean I don’t want …” How did he phrase it again? When he told me he wanted a wife? “Someone to talk to. Someone to start a family with one day. Someone who’s always on my side, no matter what.” Crown hasn’t moved, but he’s listening to me. Intently. So intently that I shift, suddenly uncomfortable beneath his scrutiny. “I just can’t decide who I want that person to be.”
“There are candidates?” Crown asks softly, but then he answers his own question. “Beast. Sin.” He waits for a moment before daring to add, “Grainger,” with a bit of a tired sigh. That man really is exhausting sometimes, I’ll admit. “Mm. You have good taste, Gidge, I’ll give you that. But only because you’re including me.” He almost smiles but it doesn’t quite stick, and then he starts walking. I keep up with him, shoulder to shoulder, as we make our way to my grandmother’s house.
Crown pauses just beyond the pool of light cast by the porch. Meanwhile, I stop half inside of and half out of it. Light and shadow. It cuts me right in half.
“I’m glad you’re not engaged to Amber,” I tell him quietly, even though it’s hypocritical for me to be engaged to Beast in the same breath. Crown doesn’t respond for so long that I almost wonder whether he heard me or not.
“Goodnight, Gidget,” he says finally, reaching into his pocket and pulling out the diamond ring. He studies it for a long moment before putting it back, his eyes meeting mine before he turns and disappears into the shadows of night.
I’m not given a choice on whether I want to go back to school or not.
“Don’t see no sense in that,” Cat tells me during a particularly awkward family dinner. We never had these often, and they’re even weirder now, post Queenie and Posey, post my kidnapping, post my marriage announcement.
Nellie’s made spaghetti, but I can barely look at it. Eating it makes me think of Queenie. Watching Gaz eat it makes me think of the night Nellie used Queenie’s cookbook and then he beat me up over my reaction to the whole thing.
“No sense in education?” I query, my tone mocking. Cat gives me a warning look, and I realize I’m tiptoeing far too close to that dangerous edge. I just … sitting here like nothing’s changed, I can’t do that. I reject the idea of a cage, I remind myself. Claim your armor, Gidget. “Maybe that’s a question my fiancé and I should think about together?”
Cat looks up and grins at something—or someone—from over my shoulder. I pause with a bite of noodles halfway to my mouth, turning to find Beast waiting in the doorway.
“Sorry I’m late,” he drawls, and I very carefully set my fork down.
“Join us,” Cat says with a grunt, gesturing to the chair beside me.
I can barely look at Beast as he takes his seat, but our legs touch, memories of his words to me the other day ringing in my head. “I’m not touchin’ you until our wedding night.” This fucker over here.
“We were just discussing the merits of Gidget returning to school,” Cat says, talking over my head as Nellie simpers at me, and Gaz sneers. He doesn’t trust me. Never did. But now? I would hate to find myself alone in a room with him. My brother has never made his distaste for me private. This time, I really believe he’ll cross right over the officers’ and Cat’s good sides and take his revenge whether they like it or not. Revenge for what slight, exactly, I’m not sure. I hate that his suspicions are probably at least partially correct.
“I’m still here,” I grind out, giving my father a look. Gaz bristles. Nellie smiles in a much less simpering way that makes me realize I don’t completely and utterly hate her. Cat looks like he wants to slap me. I make my voice quiet but strong, the way Nellie taught me once. Nellie … or Mom, I guess. “Our marriage isn’t going to be like yours or anyone else’s.”
I sit up straight as Cat stares at me with raging disbelief in his gaze.
Th
at’s when I know it for certain: he doesn’t trust me either. He suspects something. The thought chills me to my core, bringing goose bumps up along my spine.
“Is that so?” Cat quips back, leaning his hairy forearm on the table. He lifts his gaze to Beast.
Here’s what I figure: the guys care enough about me that they’ll either step up or let me go. Crown implied as much last night, offering to spirit me away. So, I’m going to forge ahead with what I want. The club is home, even if I never wanted to admit that to myself.
Another thing I don’t much care to admit: going back to school isn’t a great option for me.
To begin with, I poisoned my classmates with fentanyl-laced cocaine. Also, I got a girl—Carol Briggs—murdered. On top of all that, I’m going to be number one on the mafia’s most wanted list. If I were to attend class at the school, I’d be a sitting duck. Someone—probably several someones—would have to come and watch over me, diverting resources from the compound.
It’s an impossibility.
My breath hitches as I realize exactly how far this has gone.
No longer am I Cat’s high school age daughter. I’m something else. I’m becoming something else.
“Online school,” I say, which sucks serious ass. It’s not the same; everyone knows that. “I’ll get my diploma that way.” I stab my fork into my noodles and twist them around the tines, pausing as Beast’s large hand lands on my thigh.
Heat ratchets through me, and I’m forced to grit my teeth to ignore the pulsing between my thighs. One touch shouldn’t be able to do that, spark flames inside of someone, turn them to ash, make them bargain with everything they have for just one more caress, one more kiss, one more fuck.
“You think you have time for online school?” Cat queries back at me. “You’re on your way to becoming a wife.” He twirls his spaghetti on his fork in the exact same way that I’m doing, and the move just infuriates me. We’re too alike, me and my father. “What do you think, Beast?”
There’s a long moment of silence before he answers which isn’t unusual. I take my bite of noodles and lean back, glancing over at him as I chew. He’s already watching me, sending chills through me in a completely different way than Cat did. Not touching me until our wedding night, this bastard. Does he think he’s being cute or something?
I Am Dressed in Sin: A Reverse Harem Age Gap Romance (Death By Daybreak Motorcycle Club Book 2) Page 13