“Says who?” she snaps. “Have you seen a doctor about it?”
My attention flicks straight back to her.She asked what?Has she got this figured out? “No. Don’t need to.”
“Bullshit.” A storm brews behind her eyes. “You make yourself miserable, Matthew. Push away anyone who cares. Hell, I might not be the first woman you’ve broken the heart of, but I’ll fucking be the last.” She glances away and swallows, calming her shit. “Do something about it. If not for me, for you.”
If not for me.Whether she knows it or not, she cemented the very reason I know this will ruin us. Because if I can’t be fixed, then there’s nothing between us. I can’t keep her happy, and she’ll never be satisfied as long as I keep her trapped with me.
“You want kids, Kyra. I can’t give you that.”
Her jaw tics. “Youchoosenot to give me that.” She huffs before muttering, “I can’t believe we talk about starting a family when you won’t even put in the effort to love me.”
A strange pain flashes through my chest. I lift a hand to the sting and rub it away, but it refuses to leave. “Of course, I love you. I’ve fucking loved you even when you weren’t here, Kyra. Don’t you dare fucking tell me I don’t care enough to love you.”
Her eyebrows shoot skyward. “I’m sitting here, telling you I want this, Jinx. Begging you to set your pride aside and seek help for what is a completely fixable issue, and you’re refusing to change. So yeah, I will tell you that you don’t care enough. Because if you did, you’d fucking kiss me and promise you’ll make a doctor’s appointment before telling me we’re going home.”
I grab the sides of her chair and jerk it around to face me, forcing her legs between mine. She stiffens, yet holds my gaze as I lean in close enough to catch her intoxicating scent of wildflowers in the summer. Close enough that my goddamn tongue remembers how it tastes to kiss her. Begs to do as she said.
“Do you have any idea how it feels to question why you’re not man enough? What the fuck you did to deserve being stripped of something so goddamn basic as the right to give your partner pleasure?” I pause, searching for the best way to make her understand. “It’d be bad enough for any man, but when you’re part of a goddamn one-percent club.” It’s fucking laughable, it’s so ironic. “It’s like admitting you don’t even like bikes.”
“Are you seriously asking me if I know how it feels not to be enough?” She glances over my shoulder, eyes growing glassy with emotion. “I left this morning so I could go straighten things out with my father, and you know what happened? He told me I’m a disappointment and a whore and kicked me out, even though I’m leaving soon anyway, just so that he could remain in control. So yeah, I know how it feels not to be enough and to question why. What the fuck you did in life to deserve such a bad run.” Her gaze returns to mine, Kyra fighting the tears that long to break free. “I don’t want you to seek help purely so we can fuck, Matthew. We can do that without the use of your dick. I have toys. You have fingers and a tongue. I want you to get help so you can stop shutting me out and denying us both the thing we fucking need to survive: love.”
She holds my gaze, despite the pain. Despite the doubt swirling in her darkened irises.
I measure my next words so as not to inflame the situation worse than it already is. “He called you what?”
“A whore, Matthew.” She chuckles, but it’s bitter. Sad. “That’s the fucking irony of it. I always thought wanting you would be the thing that destroyed my relationship with my father, but no, it was choosing myself that did it.”
With every fuck up I made, every stupid decision, there was one thing I could say Mongrel never did, and that was disown me. No matter what I did, no matter how badly he tore strips off me for not using my brain and thinking shit through first, hewas always there to support me. To bail me out. Stand up for me, even when I was wrong.
As shit of a parent he was, he never stopped caring about me, his child.
Fucking Marty.What the fuck goes through that man’s head? How the hell could he think calling his daughter names and belittling her is helpful? Does he not feel the same pain as I do when he looks at her fighting her tears, when he sees the hurt reflected at him in her shimmering eyes?
“I don’t know how this can work,” she whispers, still avoiding eye contact. “But I’ve done everything I can for you. The ball’s in your court now.”
Her chair gently scrapes, but the sound may as well be carving lines across my heart for how it feels.
I know what I should say. That I should promise to get my issues checked out, but that’s only the start of the roadblocks we’ve yet to clear to make it anywhere as a couple.
Sometimes you’ve got to know when you’re beaten.
Sometimes you need to recognize when it’s not the right time to add the complication to your life.
And that’s why I stay silent as she gives me one last look and then walks away, head held high.
Because no matter how many times I tell her I love her—that I’ve always wanted nobody else but her—I’m still a King of Anarchy.
A man facing the realities of life on the other side of the law, hoping that come next year, I’ll still be here to do this again.
And with that comes danger.
Danger, I want her nowhere near.
THIRTY-FOUR
KYRA
“How does it feel?”Mom stalls near the front door while I stand in the center of my new house and stare at the hole over my head.
