Club business. Only people who get to know what the Sinners do in the dark are the men who wear the patch.
“I already have one woman furious with me. Maybe I don’t want to add another to the list.”
I quirk a brow. “Yeah, right. What are you up to, Grave Man?”
He rolls his eyes. “All right. Fine. Maybe it would be nice if you passed along that message to my woman. Help her understand why I did this. That the club needed it.”
“Club first, family second.”
He shakes his head. “It’s not like that with her. Triss will always be first, if it comes down to it. But she’d never ask me to make the choice. She understands the life.”
“Yeah? Then why didn’t you tell her what you were doing?”
Brows lowered, he falls silent. Just like the men, the women who step into this life are expected to make sacrifices. They don’t get to argue, they don’t get to question it. Whether they like it or not, they will always play second fiddle to the club.
That knowledge doesn’t make it any easier to weather the look painted on my brother’s face, though. A bit like the look Decker gave me a few nights ago when he woke from his nightmare. It’s one of desperation. A plea, maybe. My brother is dressed in head-to-toe orange, sitting in jail, but it’s not the prospect of his imprisonment that’s got him wound up. It’s the fact that his girl is giving him the silent treatment.
I sigh. “I’ll talk to her. I got your back, big brother.”
The grin he gives me is a real one. The kind that hits the eyes, that brings warmth to my chest. None of that hollow awkwardness that’s been sitting between us this last month. It’s nagging at me, though. The feeling that he still doesn’t really want me here.
I clear my throat. “Can we talk about us? About whatever I did that’s pissed you off?”
He drops his head a little, and the silence stretches between us a beat too long. But then he sighs and says, “I’m not pissed off at you, Grace. I’m just having a hell of a time looking you in the eye after what I did. After I—” His breath leaves in a rush, his fists clenching, anger burning at the surface.
“After you… what?”
“Our father?—”
“Yourfather,” I correct.
He sighs. “Yeah. Right.Myfather. He hurt you, and I let him live. Everything that happened after—to Mom, Jimmy taking you away, Axe being thrown in jail. It was all on me. If I’d have been man enough to fuckin’ put him in the ground the first time I saw those marks on you. First time I saw those marks on our mother. None of this would have happened.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” I angle forward. “You stopped it. Got him away from us. What happened after that had nothing to do with you.”
“I didn’t stop it, Grace.Lincdid. I was barely paying attention. Too fuckin’ busy playing gangster with Axe to even notice. Buthenoticed. He’s the one who told me, who ended it, not me.”
My spine goes straight, and my heart gets lodged in my throat.Linc? “I… I didn’t know that. He never said anything.”
“Who do you think helped me chase him out of town? My father was a big man, Gracie. Beating him the way I did required an extra set of hands.”
My chest tightens. Decker. He was my shelter when I needed somewhere to run, to hide. The treehouse on the other side of the fence. My safe haven. Turns out it was more than that. Maybe Linc has always been this man. One willing to get his hands bloody to do what’s right, to protect the ones who need protecting.
“It was my fault. If I’d have just?—”
“Stop, Jack. Just…stop.” I release a long breath. “None of that was your fault. None of that was…” Realization dawns on me, and the empathy I’ve been feeling for my brother suddenly evaporates. “Wait. This is why you don’t want me here? Why you’ve barely fucking spoken to me since I left? Because you feel responsible?”
He opens his mouth, but he only makes a strangled noise before clamping his lips shut, his mouth pulling into a thin line.
“Ten fucking years,” I say, the volume of my voice ratcheting up.
A nearby guard clears his throat, and I have to work extra hard to calm the thrashing in my chest. “Ten years, Jack. Ten years I’ve been alone. Ten years I’ve been without you. My family. And this is why? Because you didn’t know how to look me in the eye? You didn’t know how to talk about your damn feelings?”
He huffs out a breath. “It was for the best, Grace. You didn’t need a man like me in your life. A man who couldn’t protect you.”
Emotion tears at my throat and tears prick at the backs of my eyes, but I force it all down and instead let the anger take over. “The best for who?” I snap. “Not me.”
“Grace—”
