36. TIFFANY
Iwoke up to beeps and pain. That was all I heard, all I recognized.
Then a hand tightened around mine, and a mouth brushed over my knuckles. When the stubble rasped over my fingers, I whispered, “Sin?” When he tensed up, I mumbled, “S’that? Where…I?” My tongue didn’t seem to want to work, and I figured that was because of how dry my mouth was.
“You’re in the hospital, baby.” His voice was raspy. “Everything’s going to be okay.”
“Is?”
“Yeah. It is.”
I pried my eyes open at his words, grimacing as pain ricocheted through me as I did so.
“Hurt.”
He winced, but he surged onto his feet, then twisted around to grab the jug. It rattled, and he pressed an ice chip to my lips.
The cold liquid sank into dry tissue, and I almost moaned at the relief. He fed me some more, graduating from the ice chips to a small cup that he pressed to my lips.
When I could swallow, I downed as much as I could until my mouth felt some semblance of normal again.
Only when I was done did he sit down, and though I shielded my eyes by letting the lids hood, I followed the move, and when I did, I saw the pain in his face.
For a second, I wondered if he’d been hurt too, then I remembered, and I knew.
I just knew.
Tears clogged my eyes, easing the pain of opening them, and I tipped my head back against the pillows as grief swirled inside me, amassing power like a hurricane.
When the whimper escaped me, when it morphed into sobs, he grunted before he carefully climbed onto the bed beside me.
Burrowing my face into his cut, I whispered, “Gone?” I knew. I didn’t need him to answer for his eyes to have already told me the truth, but when he nodded, I released a keening cry.
Before things had derailed, I’d been worried about how things would change. How nothing would stay as it was now. Fuck. Had I wished this on myself? Was this my fault? Karma?—
“I’m so sorry, angel,” he rasped, and that last word was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
My entire body ached. Every part of me, from the top of my head to my toes, but what hurt the most?
The emptiness inside me.
I’d never felt the baby. Hadn’t felt it move. Hadn’t even seen a difference in my breasts—aside from the hypersensitivity in my nipples—or in my belly, but I’d known it was there.
The food, the cravings, the nausea…
I sobbed hard into his cut, and even though it should have been alien, the leather hit my nostrils, filling me with a comfort I couldn’t deny.
He was here.
He hadn’t left me.
The baby…
It wasn’t our glue.
I’d never been scared that it was, but feeling him here, feeling his distress, I knew what we had was real. I felt him shake. Felt the moisture from his eyes on the side of my face and knew, even though Sin had told me he’d never wanted kids, he mourned our baby too.
He grieved with me.
I wasn’t alone in this.
I huddled into him as much as he huddled into me, and even though I knew what was wrong with me, knew why it had happened, I rasped, “You’re going to deal with him, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
One word.
I knew not to press.
Knew not to say anything in the hospital ward, but relief swirled inside me.
It didn’t outweigh the grief. Didn’t take it away. If anything, it just made a deeper, rawer ache grow—a rage so pure, I’d never felt the like before.
“Make him hurt.”
“I will.”
That was a vow.
A promise.
And I knew he wouldn’t break it.
“Is Lily okay?”
“Bad concussion. Broken arm, dislocated shoulder.” He blew out a breath. “Badly scraped up and severe whiplash, but she’s alive.”
“What about me?”
“Broken wrist, whiplash, concussion.”
“Did they…” I trailed off and turned my face into his cut again, and into the leather, mumbled, “Was there surgery?”
“No. Well, you had a DC, sweetheart. There was no damage other than…” He cleared his throat. “I’m sorry, angel.”
“You keep saying that?—”
“Our fault. My fault. We should have had more guards on Lily. More experienced ones. We don’t know who the threat is yet, not precisely. Still, two Prospects weren’t enough—fuck, I’m so sorry, angel.”
“Maybe I should have fought more—” I rasped, ignoring his explanation, avoiding his apology, focusing instead on how docile I’d been when I was never docile.
Fight or flight? I’d done neither. I’d just frozen.
Weak. Goddamn weak.
“Lily said the guy had guns. No way you can fight a bullet.”
My mouth trembled again. “She’s awake?”
“Yeah, woke up a few hours before you.”
“He had two. He appeared out of nowhere. I just thought he was someone on the street. Then he had guns in our backs, and I froze up.” I gulped. “I’ve never done that before in my life.”
“You’re a fighter, but you knew you had something to protect.” He pressed a kiss to my temple. “You did right.”
“I should have hurt him.”
“And maybe have been shot?” He shook his head, but his face burrowed deeper into my hair. “Worst case scenario wasn’t you losing the baby, Tiff. Worst case was me losing you.”
“You mean that?”
“I mean it.” He released a breath. “I never wanted kids, but I wanted this one because the baby was yours. I want you, therefore I want anything that’s yours. Does that make sense?”
I blinked back tears. “No, but I’m glad you feel that way.”
He snorted out a soft, sad laugh. “I’ve learned along the way not to want that much, Tiff. I should have figured life would bite me in the ass again.”
“You can’t think that way—I won’t let you.”
“We don’t even know who the fucker is,” he whispered in my ear. “I can’t even tell you why he did this to us?—”
“You don’t have to,” I rasped, surprised he was talking about this when it was club business.
“Yeah. I do. I owe you the truth, and the truth comes with so much shit…”
I grabbed his hand, knotted our fingers together, and whispered, “I’m not going anywhere.”
“You don’t need to hear this shit now. Fuck, not ever.”
“Maybe I do. I know you keep stuff to yourself, Sin. Maybe that’s why, sometimes, I never know if this is real or not. I feel like it is, but when I’m at the clubhouse, all this stupid stuff comes into my head, and it’s dumb, so dumb, because I trust you, but maybe you holding back on some stuff makes me think you’re holding back on other things as well.”
“That’s not fair.”
“Never said it was,” I admitted rawly. “But you know me. You know everything there is to know, and what you don’t know, you can ask. I kept things from you while you were away, and I regret that. I won’t do it again, and I don’t want you to hold things back from me. Not the things that matter. The things that make you you.”
“I lived a different life than you,” he whispered. “A completely different life, one you’ll never be able to understand, and I’m ashamed of it. It’s so fucking abnormal in comparison?—”
“What’s normal? Lily was rich, Lily was raped by her father. I was rich, my father was some kind of front for the mafia. He just killed himself. What about that is normal?”
“I have to go soon,” he rasped, “but I can talk until then.”
I knew what he meant, and I said, “You can go then with my blessing.” I squeezed his fingers. “Just tell me one thing.”
And he did.
It settled on him uneasily, his body was stiff at my side, and I knew opening up was hard for him, but I needed it.
At that moment, I needed him. The real him. I needed not to feel like there was a wall up between us, something that I’d never be able to cross because he’d never let me in all the way.
I didn’t want to find out tidbits from his brothers, shit that he should have told me himself.
I wanted to hear it straight from him.
“Told you Mom abused me. I ran to the Sinners, but my dad was as much of a deadbeat as she was. I used to fight a lot in school, got a rep for it. Got in with some rough crowds that were basically setting kids against each other.” He released a shaky breath. “Used to win because I knew if I didn’t, I’d have no food. It gave me—” Another breath gusted from him, and he admitted softly, “I have anger issues. One day, I lost. Got beat up real bad. Mom refused to take me to the charity hospital, and the second I was on my feet, I hitchhiked to West Orange.”
Talk about the Cliff Notes version, but I’d take it. I’d accept anything he had to share and take it for the huge step forward it was. Sure, this topic wasn’t something I wanted to be dealing with now, but hell, it took my mind off the pain I was in, because Christ, everything hurt.
But two things stuck with me.
Anger issues?
Sin?
I’d never seen him lose his temper ever.
“Is that why you’re always calm?” He was too. He rarely, if ever, got mad. That was why it was hard for me to accept that he had anger issues.
“Yeah. I had to teach myself to be that way.”
When he wasn’t any more forthcoming than usual, I sighed, and questioned, “Who took you in?”
“Rene. No one knew why. Bear didn’t tell anyone, neither did Grizzly. They just took me in, and that was that.”
“Who’s Rene?”
“Rex’s mom.”
I pressed my hand to his stomach, felt the tension in him that was practically making him vibrate. “You stayed there for a long time?”
“Until I enlisted.”
“You didn’t go straight into the club?”
“No. I Prospected from the start. Got patched in as a brother when I was nineteen, but it wasn’t…” He grunted. “Working with Grizzly was hard. He never told no one I was his kid, but as a Prospect and as a brother, he used to treat me like shit. He was Road Captain, so I had no choice but to take it.
“Only way out of the MC is death or jail or?—”
“Enlisting?”
“Yeah. They accept that.” He cleared his throat. “Laws are meant to be broken, you know that.”
“But they can be patriotic when they choose?”
He turned into me, and I felt his smile against my temple. “Never said we had to make sense.”
“Figures, especially considering how many ex-military you have in the club.”
He shrugged. “Most of the time, they Prospect after they get home. Servicemen…it’s hard. Getting out, then going back into civilian life. MCs, though it might seem crazy, have structure.”
“Not crazy. There’s a rank and file system. It makes sense.”
He hummed. “Knew I loved how fucking smart you are.”
Despite myself, and even though it was a little soggy, I teased. “He loves me for my brain.”
“And other things,” he rumbled, warming my heart enough for me to curl onto my side.
“Thank you for telling me that.”
“Pretty short story,” he rasped. “There isn’t that much to tell.”
“I want to know everything and nothing…but only what you want to share. I guess, what I mean is I want you to want to share it with me. Been thinking about Daddy. How much he kept from us. I don’t want that for me.”
“That makes sense. Angel, you need to sleep.”
I squeezed his hand. “Has Mom been?”
“No.”
“What the hell is with her right now?” I growled, hurting enough at her absence that my eyes pricked with more tears.
“Want me to bring her?”
“No. I don’t want her to be forced to visit.”
“I’ll see what’s going on with her. After.”
I nodded, knowing what he meant. “Make them pay?”
“You didn’t even have to ask, angel.”
And I knew I didn’t, but a girl had to make sure, didn’t she?