I hate how weak I feel. Tears well up in my eyes again and I can’t stop them from falling.
“How do I stop the memories?” The question comes out high and tight. “It’s not just his cruel words I can’t forget. It’s the way she fought and her last breaths. I hear them,” I whisper the words.
His eyes race between mine. I don’t know what he sees there. But I’m afraid if he sees me, really sees me, he won’t keep looking at me like I’m everything he was afraid to want.
CHAPTER 7
MAYHEM
This woman. She’s gutting me. Her pain and fear makes the air around us thicken. I want to take it all away from her, but I can’t.
“You won’t forget,” I admit to her, the need to never keep anything from her outweighing the need to protect her. For now. Just for now. Just with words, never with her life. “I wish I could tell you something else, Tempest, but I won’t lie to you.”
A tear crests the edge of her lower lashes, but my thumb is there to wipe it away before a track can leave evidence of what she thinks is a weakness, but I know it is an unrivaled strength.
“It shouldn’t be easy, living with this,” I tell her. “Kendra’s life was taken from her, and she did nothing to warrant her death. Nothing. It was the actions of a man who could have and should have made a different decision. He didn’t have to cheat. He didn’t have to be a shitty husband or cop. He could havebeen clean and taken a different path. What drove him to kill her doesn’t matter when the end result is the loss of an innocent life.”
“I should have connected the dots sooner. It was right there. I poured over every article, and I knew her estranged husband, even though the papers didn’t mention that part, is a cop. Still, it never occurred to me he was the one who killed her.”
“Addyson,” I murmur, my tone heavy with admonishment, “it’s not your job to think like a crooked cop. You did what you were supposed to do in a situation you should have never been in. Still, you couldn’t let it go,” I point out.
She nods, a look of sadness on her beautiful face. “Yeah,” she grumbles, “and look where it’s gotten me. I’ve now brought danger to your clubhouse and it’s not fair. Everything else was out of my control, but if anything happens because I’m here then that’s on me now. I couldn’t live with it.”
Fucking hell.
“Wow, Addy,” my voice cracks and I clear my throat, “you’re not at all what I was prepared for.”
I couldn’t have dreamed up a better woman to stand by my side. It’s wild how I convinced myself that having someone, an Old Lady at my back, wasn’t in the cards for me. Maybe what I was afraid of all along was falling short of the love I’ve grown up seeing between my mom and dad.
That doesn’t mean it was always easy between them. Life takes turns and there are times when you have to fight for each other, and alone. I watched it happen, but when they really needed it, they had each other’s backs. Those are the moments forged in grit, steel, and love.
“What does that mean?” Addy blinks up at me, and I can see how she’s trying to bank some of her hope instead of getting lost in it.
My fingers sweep across the soft skin of her cheeks, and I marvel at how a woman like her, one who is all light, could let a man like me touch her. If only I was capable of letting her go, but I know I’m not. Not now.
“I’m not a good man,” the words, ones I know to be true, slip past my lips. She doesn’t flinch. Almost as if she expected it, as if she could see me. I don’t know how I feel about it, but it changes nothing. “I have blood on my hands. I’m nothing like that piece of shit cop who hides his dirty actions behind a badge. I don’t hide who I am and I’m not going to start now.”
“I might have gotten myself in a pretty stupid situation, but I’m not usually as naïve as the circumstances would suggest. I’m aware there are things I’ll never know. There are things Tallulah will never know. She’s given me the whole rundown on life in a clubhouse. I can handle it for a few days.”
My body stiffens and Addy doesn’t miss it. A few days?
My chest starts to rapidly rise and fall as I try to get myself under control. Her fingers dig into my chest, as if her will is enough to calm me down, and it centers me in a way I need.
“You don’t get it yet, my little Tempest,” I murmur the words, hoping to cover them in honey enough for her to accept them without question. She’s not ready for the answers. But I can’t help but warn her, “I’m not letting you go.”
She narrows her eyes at me and shakes her head like I’m an errant child who simply hasn’t learned how to share. That’s not what is going on at all.
“You don’t know me, Mayhem,” she points out as if it’ll make a difference. It won’t.
“Briggs,” I remind her, my voice pleading because I want to hear my name on her lips.
“Briggs,” she says it so softly, like it’s delicate. Maybe it is. Maybe it’s as close to acceptance as I’m going to get tonight.
It takes everything in me, but I slowly let my hands fall away from her face. They hover over her shoulders waiting to see if she still needs me. Knowing she did, knowing she let me in enough to break in front of me, is a gift.
Fuck if I know whether I’ll be able to honor it. I hope so. I’m going to do my fucking best.
Because she’s worth it and I can’t imagine a life without her in it now.
