I half expect her to try and scratch out my eyes, but it’s like she’s frozen. The blood drains from her face, and if I didn’t know it was all part of her act I’d—fuck, it doesn’t matter what I’d do. I stand so I don’t have to look at her anymore, but even that doesn’t work. I still glance back at her and then can’t look away.
“No.” Her hands are fisted on her thighs and she’s looking everywhere but at me. “Don’t try twisting this back on me. That’s not how it happened. You’re just—just—”
I crouch down until I’m at eye level, and she finally meets my gaze. I’m not taken in by the threat of tears, or her familiar scent, or the hollow memories mocking me. “Finally seeing you for what you really are.” I finish her sentence for her, loading each word with the contempt that’s gnawing through me like acid. “Be grateful I’m letting you crawl back to your crackhead screw. If I ever see you again, Amy”—Amelia,but I can’t call her that name because she was never that girl—“you’re going to wish you never crossed me. You understand?”
She doesn’t answer. I didn’t expect her to. She knows the game’s over. I walk away and don’t look back, but it doesn’t make any difference. The image of her sitting on that bench, looking as though I just crushed her world, is scored into my brain.
Chapter Eighteen
Amelia
He walks away from me, arrogant, confident,uncaringthat he’s just smashed my heart at his feet. I watch him disappear through a blur of stinging tears, and my throat aches so bad I can hardly breathe.
It’s over.
Dad didn’t kill Axle Reynolds.
The loathing in Gage’s eyes as he glared at me burns through me, eating away everything I ever thought we had together. I was nothing to him but a challenge, and as soon as he got what he wanted, he reverted to type and dumped me without a second thought.
Axle Reynolds murdered my dad. He did. I know it.
My hands slide between my knees, and I rock on the bench, trying to ease the pain consuming me from the inside out, but it doesn’t help. All the stupid hopes I had that we could make it together, that he wouldn’t care who I was, are dead.
Because it was my dad who killed his.
No. I won’t believe it. I squeeze my eyes shut, but it doesn’t stop me from seeing Gage’s face or silence the final words he spat into my face.
Everything he said about me being special, about how I was his girl and he hadn’t been with anyone else, were the usual club lies. And I sucked it all up, because I wanted him to be different.
He’s a Viking Bastard. They’re no different than the Silver Wolves when it comes to closing ranks against the outside world. And women are always outside. It doesn’t matter what I think I remember. Mom’s told me how it really was, and I thought I wasso specialthat it didn’t apply to Gage and me.
But at the first hurdle all he can do is throw accusations and lies in my face. They can’t be faithful, so they always think the worst. Bile burns me that he could imagine, for even a second, that I’d ever been with Rex. That he refused to hear anything I said.
That he’d acted just like I always knew a Bastard would act.
I sniff and roughly swipe the tears leaking from my eyes. I’m not crying over him. It’s a bleak promise. I know I will, but not in public. Never in public. The wind’s gotten cold and I shiver, wrapping my arms around my waist and I stare, unseeing, across the forlorn little park.
Dad was the Wolves enforcer. I’ve always known it, but somehow it’s never been real. Maybe because I was still only a kid when he died, and I was shielded from the reality of what he might’ve done for his club.
An icy chill snakes through me. What if Gage wasn’t talking shit? What if he’s right?
No.That’s not how it happened. Dad was murdered in cold blood while he was inside, and sure, Axle Reynolds was killed soon after by those loyal to the Wolves, but those are thefacts.
Mom told us. It’s why we had to leave the only home I’d known and change our name.
Unease slithers through me. For the first time, things don’t add up or make sense. As kids, we were too devastated by Dad’s death to question anything she said or did, and as the years went by…well, it just hurts too much to talk about.
It still hurts. But we need to talk.
…
She’s already home by the time I arrive, cleaning the goddamn oven of all things. I lean against the counter, and she finally stops what she’s doing to look up at me. “Are you going out again?”
“No.” I can’t get warm, and tug my jacket further across my chest. “Mom, I need to talk.”
She sighs and gets to her feet. “It’s okay, honey. I didn’t mean to shout at you earlier. It was just a shock, that’s all. You know what you’re doing. If you need to get your bad-boy phase out of your system, go ahead. I’ll always be here to pick up the pieces.”
I hunch my shoulders and nearly chicken out. It’d be so much easier to just cry on her shoulder and tell her what a complete jerk Gage is. And heis. It doesn’t matter how much I try and delude myself, he always was, and I was blind to it.
