“Get out!” I said, calmly, meaning it. I didn’t want her near me or Beast if that was how she was going to be.
Hurt flashed across her face before she pulled her smile back in place. “Fine, I’m sorry, okay. If you want to be with him, then be with him. All I’m saying is you can do better. You’re a beautiful girl, Belle. Maybe you don’t see that, or maybe no one has told you that enough. That’s Jenna’s fault. I thought she would have done a better job with you, but clearly I was wrong.”
She grabbed the tequila from the kitchen counter and unscrewed the lid before taking a long swallow of it and then offering the bottle to me.
“Come on, drink with your momma. We’re celebrating my homecoming, sweetheart.” She shook the bottle, trying to temp me.
“I’m not sure there’s anything to celebrate,” I replied coldly before heading outside to Beast.
The door slammed closed behind me and Beast looked up, his eyes meeting mine. He said something into his phone before hanging up and slipping it into his cut, and then I was in his arms, right where I belonged.
“You good?” he asked.
I listened to his steady heartbeat in his chest, his scent wrapping around me as tight as his arms were, and I nodded.
“I am now,” I replied.
Chapter Twenty-Two
~ BEAST ~
Belle’s mom was a bitch.
A grade A, top-of-her-class, deserved-everything-coming-to-her bitch.
Not because of what she’d said to me; I couldn’t give a shit about that. I was a big boy and I knew how to handle myself. Besides, I knew that everything she said was right—I was a monster, both inside and out, and Belle deserved so much better than me. What I hated about her mom was the way she treated Belle. The way she spoke to her. The way she looked at her. The way she was clearly using her because she needed a place to stay so she could get back on her feet.
She had no desire to get to know Belle, and she wasn’t even trying that hard to hide the fact. She was just selfish to the bone.
Between Belle and I we’d been in and out of the trailer more times than a cat in heat. Every time I thought I could just about stand to be around the bitch without wanting to put a bullet in her head, her mouth opened and something cruel came out.
“What are you cooking for your mama tonight, Belle?” she called from the bedroom where she’d been lying for the past couple of hours watching TV and eating all of Belle’s snacks. We’d gotten in and she’d sunk almost the entire bottle of tequila in an hour before turning the radio on loud and dancing around the trailer until she’d thrown up. I’d carried her to Belle’s bed, where she’d passed out for an hour before waking up and demanding to watchSex and the Cityreruns, more tequila, and food.
Belle glanced over at me before looking away quickly. She was embarrassed, but I couldn’t work out if she was embarrassed because of the way her mom treated her or just because of the way her mom was. Either way, she had nothing to be embarrassed about. I’d had one of these types of moms too and I knew how they thought, how they worked, and I knew that unless you cut them off like a leech, they drained you of everything.
That was what Belle needed to do with her mom—cut her off and kick her out—but she was never going to do that. She was too good and too kind to do that. It was what I both loved and hated about her, because it made her an easy target for people to take advantage of.
I rolled my shoulders as I stood up and Belle looked over again. She was standing in the little kitchenette opening and closing the cupboard doors and trying to figure out what she could make to eat.
“Heading out for a cigarette,” I grumbled. The truth was, being stuck in there with Belle’s mom was like having the air sucked out of your lungs. She was a syphon that sucked all the joy out of a room. “Don’t cook. I’ll order us takeout.”
Belle’s cheeks were flushed. “I don’t mind cooking.”
“And I don’t mind buying somethin’.” I leaned in and kissed her forehead before heading outside, leaving no room for argument.
The air was warm that night—sticky, almost—and my skin was already clammy from being cooped up in her little tin can of a home. I pulled out my cigarettes and lit one before calling Shooter for an update. He didn’t sound too happy about Belle’s mom being there, and I couldn’t blame him, but what could I do?
“We hit the warehouse we had intel on, but they weren’t there,” he said, changing the subject and moving back on to Mateo and Carlos.
I hadn’t thought about either of them in a couple of hours, I’d been so caught up with all the drama going on and making sure that Belle was okay that I’d practically forgotten that the reason I was stuck there was because of those two bastards.
I realized with surprise that this had been the longest I’d gone without thinking of revenge in over a year. The longest without thinking about who had killed Echo and how I was going to make them pay. We were so close to catching them, and yet all I could think about was Belle and her goddamned crappy mom.
I sighed, trying to get my head back in the conversation. “At some point they’ll have to make contact with Belle, and when they do, I’ll be here,” I said, not sure what else I could do right then. “And if they call, she’ll let me know.”
I was walking around the back of the trailer, trying to keep out of sight as much as I could. I lifted the tarp that was covering my bike, checking that it was still there and okay.
“Well, we’ve got her cell tapped now, so if they call her we’ll know about it anyway.
