“There was no fucking chance I was playing football again. I was no longer that Cash Cunningham. I’d becomeme.”
“No, Cash.” Her delicate fingers traipsed over the tattoos on my chest as she peeked up at me. “Your heart was broken.”
“I didn’t deserve for it to be broken. Not when I was responsible for it.”
Her head barely shook, and her voice turned the softest it’d ever been. “Matthew is the one who was responsible, Cash.”
“I made the conscious choice.”
“You couldn’t have known. Couldn’t have known what Matthew got himself into. Couldn’t have imagined what would happen.”
“But it did.”
“And you left me.” The words tremored off her tongue.
It hit me like a blunt force trauma.
The fact that I was responsible for that, too.
“Guess I broke both of our hearts.”
“You saved me, Cash. And you almost gave your life trying to save the rest of your family.”
“But I wasn’t enough.”
She tucked herself closer.
“You are enough, Cash. Because you’re good and full of love, even though you somehow think that you’re a bad person. But to me, that person you see doesn’t exist. You said I’m blinded, but I think it’s you who can’t see clearly. You who can’t see clearly when it comes to yourself.”
For the first time, I thought maybe she was right. Thought maybe I could see beyond the mistakes that had been committed.
My stomach twisted as I peered down at her gorgeous face. At those trusting, beautiful eyes. The cut of her jaw and the plush of her lips.
“Something you need to know about me, Daisy. Something you need to know about our family.”
She flinched, though her expression was open wide.
I reached out and set my hand on the sharp angle of her cheek, my thumb stroking slowly. “You can never repeat this or share it with anyone else. I’m trusting you with the ones I love most, just like you’ve trusted me with the ones you love most.”
Her nod was jerky. “You can trust me.”
Dread clamored through my being. The confines where I kept everything trapped creaking under the pressure. This was something I never thought I’d give another soul, but it was true that every part of me belonged to Daisy.
This part included.
“You know about LA. About us joining the MC and some of the things we did there.”
She barely dipped her chin, urging me to continue.
“The guys…told you our hearts were all fucked up. Each of us traumatized in our own way. Scared and alone. The MC was an easy affiliation to make when the only thing we were worried about was our own survival. But I don’t think it ever truly sat right for any of us…”
My mind traveled to those days. Disgust eating me up from the inside to think of myself out there on those streets, making them worse than they were before us. Our reign greedy and sick. Proliferating the crimes we’d been so afraid of falling prey to.
“You’re all so…intimidating…” She rolled her lips together as she contemplated. “Scary, even. And it’s really difficult to imagine you…involved in those things.”
She stammered through it, clearly not wanting to say it aloud. Maybe then, it would finally make it too real.
“But it didn’t take much for me to see the goodness underscoring all of you,” she added.
