I grab her by the arm and haul her toward the door, shoving her weight forward. “OUT. Before I do something I’ll regret.”
She grabs the doorway, holding on with a strength I didn’t know she had. “NO!” She turns her head, her eyes wild, fierce—haunted.I’ve never seen that look on her. I don’t recognise her. I don’t recognise us.
“It wasn’t like that,” she cries, voice breaking. “I didn’t want him. I didn’tWANThim.”
“I don’t understand!” I shout back at her, because I don’t. God, I don’t.
“I was raped.” The words are barely audible but they hit me harder than any punch I’ve ever taken. “Liam raped me.”
Her body collapses like the confession ripped her strings free. She hits her knees, shaking, coughing, and sobbing so hard she can’t breathe.
And I just stand there.
Staring.
Because everything inside me, every suspicion, every accusation, every bit of anger, all of it flips, and implodes at once.
She was raped.
By Liam.
My knees nearly give out.
I’m frozen. Completely, utterly frozen.
Images of Eden flash through my mind, one after the other, like some fucked-up film reel I never want to see again. Her stumbling through the clubhouse door, covered in dirt. The cuts on her knees. The bruises she tried to hide. Her pale, empty eyes. Her hands shaking as she lied about being “fine”.
Each image hits me like a punch straight to the face.
Then another memory slams into me so hard I sway;her crying underneath me. Her tears. The panicked voice. Me telling her to relax. Me pushing into her. Me thinking she was being dramatic.Christ.
I stumble back, gripping my chest because the pain blooming there is unbearable. My breath shudders out of me in broken pieces.
“Oh God…” I croak. “Oh God, I made you—we—Christ, you cried.You cried.”
Eden launches forward so fast she nearly falls. She grabs my kutte, her small hands fisting the leather desperately. “No—no,” she says, shaking her head violently. “Kade, listen to me. It was okay. I said I wanted to. Iwantedto with you.”
I can’t get enough air. I gasp and pull at the collar of my shirt, trying to loosen it, trying to breathe through the guilt crushing my ribs like a vice. “I didn’t know,” I rasp, staring at her, but not really seeing anything. “I didn’t see it. I didn’t seeyou.”
“It’s not your fault,” she whispers, eyes glassy with fresh tears. “I didn’t want you to know. I—I was scared you’d get into trouble. That the club would go back to how it was.”
That makes something inside me snap. A raw, broken sound tears out of my chest and I cover my face with both hands. “Oh God…” My voice cracks as the truth claws through me. “You went through all that, and you still protected the fucking club.”
Her breath hitches. She gently touches my arm, like she’s scared I’ll shatter. “Kade,”
But I can’t hear anything except the roaring in my ears. The realisation that she was hurting and injured, broken, andI was angry at her. Suspicious. Wanting sex to make it all go away. Accusing her of cheating. And she was carrying this alone. For me. For us. For the club.
I lower my hands slowly, my face hot with tears I didn’t even realise were falling, and I stare at her like she’s a stranger and my whole world all at once.
“Sweetheart…” The word comes out wrecked, barely a whisper. “What did he do to you?”
CHAPTER TWELVE
EDEN
I’ve never seen a grown man cry. I didn’t know my dad—not really—and Mum, who was basically both my parents rolled into one, never shed a tear, not even when the cancer pain made her scream into pillows. Since joining the club, I’ve only ever seen men smash things, yell, drink, fight, fix, build. They don’t cry.
Until now.
