Page 99 of I am Dressed in Sin (Death by Daybreak MC 2)
“You what?” I ask, hearing my voice get tense. Sin must notice, too, but he doesn’t stop. Somehow, as he speaks, it feels like he’s still trying to give me one, last chance to run.
“The four of us decided that you were too young, that you deserved a chance to leave. If you were going to pick this life, we wanted you to pick it for yourself. We didn’t want to be responsible for …” And here he curls up the edge of his lip. “Grooming you.” Sin turns back to me, but my heart is stuttering a bit in my chest.
“You … the four of you made some sort of pact to stay away from me?” I whisper, trying to make sense of that, trying to decide if it bothers me, if it makes me feel better, if … fuck, I don’t know.
“We promised each other that we’d leave you alone until after you graduated. It wasn’t easy, Gidget. It never was. It won’t be in the future.”
I give him another dark look.
“What do you mean in the future? Because of the wedding?” I lean away from him like he’s a crazy person. How are they not getting this? How are they not understanding what I want?
Because I have to tell them. Because they’re hot-headed outlaws who can’t get shit through those thick skulls of theirs.
“Because of the wedding,” Sin agrees, and then he pushes me back enough that I’m forced to stand up or fall. “Trust that Beast will find your friend. If she’s alive, he’ll do it. Meanwhile, I have to plan for the arrival of an army.”
He leans over his desk like he’s going to start working again.
I slam a palm down on it, and he glances up at me.
“You made one huge, colossal decision without me once upon a time. I won’t allow you to do it again.” Then I turn and leave, slamming his office door behind me. Several of the wives glance my way with confused expressions, and a few even smirk and exchange looks. “Yeah, I’m fucking the road captain, too. My husband knows.” I start walking down the hall toward the front entrance, pausing once more before I head back outside. “The VP and the sergeant-at-arms are also mine. Spread the word around so all the girls know. So help me, if one of the club-whores even approaches one of those four, it’ll be trouble.”
I step into the sun and slam the front door behind me, only to run straight into Crown. He has his arms crossed over his chest.
“You thought to, what, spread the word so that Cat will know?” Crown asks dryly, but I shake my head.
“The women keep most of their gossip to themselves the same way the men do. Nellie will bully anyone who tries to do otherwise because I’m her kid. Anyway, who cares if Cat knows? What business of it is his?”
Only … he will care. He won’t like it. And it’ll cast more suspicion my way.
Still, I couldn’t help myself.
“We cannot always get what we want,” Crown tells me, once again getting that lecturer’s voice of his on. He sighs desperately as he looks me over, sliding his hand over his face and cursing into his palm. I know what he wants. He wants a partner, a confidante, someone who’s his and only his.
Even were I to marry him instead of Beast, he still wouldn’t get what he wants because I will never be the sort of girl who loves only one man. There’s too much of me. I’m too volatile. I’m a white-hot star in a distant galaxy, and I need people in my orbit.
“That might be true,” I tell him, looking up and into his moss green eyes. “I can’t have my sisters back. No matter how hard I wish and want. But you know what I can do? I can tell you that I’m pissed off at the four of you.”
“Pissed off at us?” Crown queries back in surprise, and a hint of anger darkens his eyes. “Pissed off at us for what, exactly? For shifting our entire lives to suit a whim of yours?”
“Saving Grey was not a whim,” I whisper at him, stepping close so that he can hear but nobody else will. “You knew that. You know that, or else you wouldn’t have helped me.” I exhale and turn my head aside, caught up on the rather sudden revelation Sin just dumped in my lap. “Sin told me the four of you had some sort of caucus after that night?”
I don’t have to specify which night I’m talking about. We all know. We always know.
It’s a night that became a pinnacle of the first sixteen years of my life, defined it for two more, and then led me straight back here. Full circle.
