Page 159 of I Will Revel in Glory (Death by Daybreak MC 3)
He nods with his chin back in the direction of the clubhouse, and I turn with him, hooking our arms together while we walk. Grainger looks a tad weirded out by that, but he rolls with it anyway.
“Do you see her often?” I ask, because there was a level of familiarity there, but no closeness.
“She comes once a month to get money from me. I can’t give her too much at once or she wastes it all.” He gives me a sharp look. “Alcohol or drugs or shopping. Whatever. She’s always addicted to something. It’s just in her personality apparently.” He turns away from me again, working his jaw as he thinks. “I keep my distance from her for obvious reasons.”
“I see that she isn’t staying in the clubhouse,” I offer up, and he nods.
“No need. She lives about forty-five minutes south of here. She drove up when they got the level two notice.” Grainger keeps walking, guiding us back in the direction of his bike instead of the clubhouse. I assume he’s taking me home now. It’s starting to get dark anyway. “We barely see each other.”
“And your dad …?” I start, wondering if he isn’t going to buck at such an intimate conversation and blow me off the way that he always has. But no. And I’m so damn grateful that I could scream. This man knows so much about me and yet, I know so little about him.
“My dad—not Matthew’s, by the way—was a Daybreaker.”
I lift both brows at that.
“Really?” How had I not known that? Of all my men, Cade was the last to join the club. The thing is, he basically stepped into the roll of sergeant-at-arms right off the bat. I never really thought about it—because I didn’t care—but I’d love to know now. Men don’t just walk into the club and take up a roll as an officer.
“Yep. Right here in Ashbury,” he says, but he doesn’t sound impressed. He stops walking to look at me, removing his arm from mine. “My father knocked my mother up, but he didn’t want her as his old lady. He never even acknowledged me as his son.” He grits his teeth at that and forces a long, slow exhale. “Anyway, he died when I was fourteen. I never got to know him at all. The only thing I knew was that he was in the club.” He shrugs his shoulders and looks past me again, toward the clubhouse. I can see that he’s uncomfortable, but he pushes through it, returning his attention back to my face. “For years, I fucked around, moved around, did whatever the hell I wanted. And then I moved to California and patched-in there. Not sure why since I hated my fucking father. But you know what?” He reaches up to touch the side of my face. “You made it worth it.”
“Whoa,” I say, blinking back at him in surprise. “Stop talking like that or I’ll be convinced you’re a body snatcher. Cade Grainger doesn’t say things like that.”
“Why the hell not?” he snaps, grabbing my wrists and pulling me into him. His dark eyes search my face. “We met because of it, didn’t we?”
“Why did you agree to transfer up here?” I ask, trying to avoid the gleam in his eyes. There’s a primal hunger there that I know we don’t really have time for. Shit, we’re at war. There’s a wildfire burning on our doorstep. Even now, as we stand here together, ash is floating around us in big, fat flakes. It looks like fish food, if I’m being honest. Not quite so funny when you really think about what it is and where it came from though.
“Because I thought that maybe if I came here, I could understand him better. A man who fathered a child and wanted nothing to do with him.” Grainger yanks me even harder against him, and I can see that we’re going to have to release some of this tension whether we have time for it or not. Those base urges connect us. It’s a way for us to show with our bodies what we’re feeling in our hearts.
Even for him, my consummate asshole.
“Do you?” I ask, and Grainger shakes his head.
“Not at all. Not even a little.” He exhales and then leans down, resting his forehead against mine and making my entire body warm then hot then scalding. I burn for him. I burn so badly that I’m turning to ash, just like the flakes on the wind. “Knowing that you’re pregnant, I’m already too attached to let go. I wouldn’t. I won’t.”
“What if it’s not yours?” I ask, and he scoffs at me.
“It’s mine,” he says for the millionth time and then, like a lightbulb going off in the darkness of my skull, I see it. I see it just like I did when he kept saying ‘I hate you’ to me. When he says ‘it’s mine’, what he means is … no matter what.
