Chapter 17
“Shhhh,” a deep timbre hisses as my lids flutter open for a moment before slamming shut.
When my eyes open again, I’m moving with my head tucked against a muscled shoulder. A scruffy jaw that I’d know anywhere is the first sign Dark is carrying me. His familiar scent of bergamot, lavender, and man curls into my nose, setting me at ease when it should do anything but.
“I’ve got you, babe,” he whispers as his boot heels scrape across the ground in a steady rhythm that lulls me back to Lala land.
When I awake again, we’re no longer moving, but I’m curled in a lap with arms wrapped around me in a protective cocoon. I nuzzle my nose to the side of a throat, not of my ex’s but Sunshine’s. A soothing rumble percolates there as I inhale a lungful of comfort, of safety, of home, of him.
“Go back to sleep, Sweets. I’ve got you.” Sunshine rocks me and hums a song to lull me back to dreamland.
Toying with the front of his cotton t-shirt and rolling it between my fingers, I yawn and rub the crusties from my eyes with my fist. “I can’t sleep anymore.”
A small chuckle rings through the space, not from Sunshine but Dark. “Babe, we’re in a hotel room for the night if you wanna sleep on a bed.”
The comfy body holding me hostage snuggles me tighter. “She’s fine right here.” He kisses the top of my head.
“Just put her on the bed. She’ll sleep better there.”
Sunshine grumbles as if he doesn’t like the idea, then sighs once he realizes me sleeping on something I can stretch out on is better than me curled in his lap. Either place is fine, as long as he’s sleeping with me, not Dark. I can’t do that again.
“How long have I been out?” I whisper to Sunshine.
“Six hours or so.”
“Oh.” That’s longer than I thought. Then again, the boat ride took a while. But I don’t remember getting off the sea, much less here. Weird.
Sunshine kisses my hair again. “Sleep all you need. We’re not goin’ home ‘til you’re rested up.”
“How are we gettin’ home?”
“Driving.”
I nod. “Thought so.” That’d been the plan since the beginning, though the details were murky. The less of a digital trail, like flight logs, the better. We don’t need any of Remy’s men sniffing around and pinning this on the club. After everything that popped off at the Mother Chapter, the clubhouses are already on lockdown.
“But I’ll drive,” Sunshine adds. “And you can play with the radio.”
So, exactly what we do whenever we’re in the car together. Not that I don’t consider his tastes. Our music, our movies, and most things we like are similar. They always have been, except beer. Beer is vile.
“Then you need sleep, too.” I poke him in the stomach.
Getting from California to home is a three-day trip unless he plans to drive a day and a half without stopping.
“I’m good, Sweets. Just need to get ya home.”
This man is far too sweet for his own good. He calls me sweets when he’s the sweet one. Maybe I should be the one calling him that.
Not moving from my cozy spot, I address Dark. “What are you doing?”
“Going home with you.”
Right. So I won’t get all the radio play time unless Sunshine forces him to sit in the back seat. Sticking Dark in the back of a car, where his legs are cramped, for days on end isn’t… polite. Then again, neither is lying, cheating, or all the other shit he does. He can suffer with leg cramps. See if I care. Well, I do. Because I’m an idiot. But I’ll pretend not to.
“You don’t need to tidy up any Maxim Drake loose ends?” Keeping my hands busy, I lift the hem of Sunshine’s shirt to touch his stomach. Just a sliver. Nothing inappropriate.
He shivers.
“No. I need to get my wife home,” Dark replies.
Doing my best not to roll my eyes, even though he couldn’t see them if I did, I heave a sigh. When will this man stop with the wife stuff? That part of us isn’t real anymore. It’s a label. One I’ve repeatedly asked him to stop using. Yet here we are, in a hotel room, God knows where, and I’m having to hear it all over again.
Twisting in Sunshine’s embrace, I swing my legs off his lap and set my feet on the floor. My butt nestles against his lower part, but I don’t bother moving as I stare at Dark across the room, where he lounges on the other bed, his back against the old wooden headboard, ankles crossed, wearing nothing but a pair of boxer shorts. No shirt. Nothing more than muscles, ink, and our wedding band on his finger, where it doesn’t belong. His hair’s wet as if he just showered.
Those gray eyes bore into me from across the space.
I open my mouth to comment on the wife part, but that’s not what comes out. “Did you feel bad when you cheated on me with Abby?” I ask instead, shocking the hell out of us both, and also Sunshine if his body stiffening beneath me is any indication.
“What?” Dark’s jaw all but falls into his lap.
“You heard me.” I didn’t stutter.
“Kali.” He crosses his arms beneath his pecs.
“Answer the question, Dark.”
“Abby was a…” Dark drags a palm down his face and expels a pained groan as if he’d rather die than answer the question. “Listen…”
“I am listening. You’re stalling.”
“Why the question?” he volleys, half smug, half about to shit his pants.
Why the stalling? I want to retort but think of a better response instead. “Because you fucked me and stuck your dick in my mouth this week, and you didn’t seem to care you were cheating on your woman with your ex. That’s why I want to know.”
Sunshine wraps his arms protectively around my middle, but I’m undeterred. Before anything else, I need to know. We can’t move on from this. I can’t move on from this without the truth. The real truth. Not some fabricated bullshit I’ve been fed for fucking years.
“Kali.” My ex’s eyes squeeze shut as if he’s in physical pain. The gall of this man. Him in pain. He cheated on us both—me and Abby. He doesn’t get to be in pain.
“Answer the question,” I snip.
“Abby was a job, okay?” He throws his hands into the air with far more dramatics than necessary, then re-tucks them beneath his pecs and harrumphs as if I’m the asshole for asking.
“What do you mean, Abby was a job?” I press.
“You know how we had to have sex for this job?”
“Yesss.” My eyes widen in horror as a light bulb clicks on in my head. “Abby was a… job. Oh. Ohhhh.” He was assigned to her. To fuck her. To do whatever… ick. Just… ick.
Dark stares at the wall, refusing to look directly at me. “I was ordered to do some shit I can’t tell you about. She was part of it.”
“For how long?”
“Months.”
This piece of shit.
“You fucked her for months?” I seethe. Months. Not days. Not weeks. Months.
My ex nods twice. “It was part of the job, so yes.”
“Was getting her pregnant part of the job?” I sass back.
“No.” He scowls like I’ve somehow offended him. “Of course not. That was an accident. That’s the only reason I didn’t come home sooner.”
Hold up.
Am I hearing this right?
Are you hearing this right?
Did he say what I think he just said?
“You fucked this woman for months, and had she not gotten pregnant, you would have come home sooner?!” I shrill and try to stand, but Sunshine’s there, forcing me to remain on his lap with his iron grip digging into my hips so I can’t launch myself across the room and punch my ex-husband in the jaw or, worse, castrate him with a knife. His knife. I’m sure he has one in his bag. I’ll put them in a jar on my nightstand as a morbid trophy. Or maybe I’ll bury them in my garden. They’ll make the perfect fertilizer. Hell, let’s bury him in the garden. Daisies will look extra pretty, blooming out of his eye sockets.
Closing his eyes, Dark shakes his head. “Of course, I would have come home sooner. You’re my wife. I wanted to be with my wife. I didn’t want to be there. But that’s what I was ordered to do.”
Oh, poor Dark, forced to screw a sexy, younger woman for months. Please excuse me while I weep for him.
“Hold up.” I lift my hand to collect my thoughts and temper my growing anger. I blow out a breath, then another, before I speak again. “You would have come home and never told me about Abby had she not gotten pregnant? You cheated on me, and you weren’t going to tell me?”
Looking up to the ceiling, yellowed from years of smoke, Dark massages the nape of his neck and rolls his shoulders. My jailer removes his hold on my hips as we wait a solid minute for his son to answer. “Kali. Babe. It…It’s not like that,” he tries and fails to sound convincing.
Refusing to back down, I dig a little deeper. “You stuck your dick, the one I was married to, into another pussy that didn’t belong to me, and you weren’t going to tell me you cheated. How many times did this happen, Dark?”
My ex’s throat rolls as he swallows thickly. “Kali. Please. Don’t.” His voice is hoarse. But it’s not good enough. I need to know.
“Answer the goddamn question.” Foot bouncing, my anger’s replaced with anxiety. Because this is it. He’s gonna tell me. Finally, after all these years, he’s being honest not only with me but himself.
His nostrils flare. “No.”
“Why?” I push, knowing I’ve got him right where I want him. There’s no getting out of this now. He has no place to go. No place to hide. “Because it was more than Abby, wasn’t it? You cheated on me multiple times, didn’t you? And you felt nothing when you cheated on Abby with me because… because you… oh, my, Mother Earth, you do it to her, too, don’t you?”
Dropping his gaze, Dark stares straight ahead at the ugly, yellow flower wallpaper. Tears trickle down his cheeks, and his bottom lips wobble as if talking about his cheating ways is ripping him apart. Fuck that. He did this. He doesn’t get to be sad about it.
When Dark doesn’t reply, I keep going, and Sunshine’s arms curl around me in a band of comfort and support. “How many women did you cheat on me with?”
“None.”
“Liar!” I snarl.
My ex swipes the wetness from his face with the back of his hand. “I have no love for anyone I’ve ever slept with, Kali, except you. It doesn’t matter how many pussies I’ve fucked. It doesn’t matter why I had to fuck them. I have never loved a single person as much as I love you. You are my wife. That’s what I keep fuckin’ telling you. That’s why I won’t divorce you. You. Are. My. Wife!” Dark roars, punching the air. Face flushed, the muscles in his neck and chest tighten as he slams his fist into the bed, growling like a caged beast. Throwing his skull into the headboard, it ricochets off the wall as he beats the mattress on either side of him again and again until the veins in his forearms pop.
Swallowing down the lump in my throat, I whisper, “I hate you.”
How could someone do the things he has?
I poison people and feel nothing. But even I would never consider hurting the one I claim to love. Not for anything in the world.
“Christ, I know! I live with that every fuckin’ goddamn day.”
“And now you’re hurting Abby,” I shoot back. Sunshine rubs my stomach as if trying to calm me.
Twisting to look at me straight-on, Dark shows zero remorse when he states, “I don’t care about Abby.”
Bile rises in my throat at his conviction. That’s the mother of his child. She deserves more than this. “That’s horrible! Don’t say that. Take it back.”
“No. I won’t. She’s nice. I like her fine enough. But I don’t love her. You don’t just love someone because you have sex with ‘em. You can’t fall in love with someone else if you’re already in love. It doesn’t work like that. Ask Pops why he doesn’t have a woman, Kali. Ask him why he doesn’t date.” Dark lifts his chin at his father, goading him to say something.
“Dark,” Sunshine rumbles in warning.
Peeling the older biker’s arms from around my waist, I pad to the front of the room to get a little space. Shaking my arms down at my sides, I pace the distance between the front door and the ancient television on the even older dresser. It’s missing a drawer. Literal cobwebs fill the dark space. There are only a few feet to move about, but it helps me focus. I shouldn’t have asked Dark. I don’t even want to know all this, but I need to know. I need… to be freed.
Ignoring Dark for a moment, I face Sunshine. “Did you know about Abby? Did you know what Dark does?” I gesture between the two of them.
Much like his son, Sunshine drags a palm down his face. That simple motion confirms my worst fears.
He. Knew.
“You lied to me,” I croak. “You said you didn’t know where Dark was.”
Sitting on the edge of the bed, Sunshine rubs his knees. “I know.”
A lone tear breaks free and slides down my cheek to the tip of my chin, where it falls to the ground.
“You knew about the cheating.” My voice wobbles.
A shallow, solemn nod is his only reply.
Fuck.
Just like that, my entire world implodes. Rushing to the bathroom, I slam the door shut, lock it, and press my back against the cool wood as I shatter. Ugly sobs rack my body as I slide to the floor, and pain unlike I’ve ever experienced before rips from the depths of my already fucked-up soul.
I trusted them.
The men I loved most in the world.
The men who saved me from a lonely life.
Everything has been a lie.
Our marriage.
The friendship.
Dark and Sunshine frantically pound on the door. The force rattles through my spine as snot runs down my face. Knees pulled to my chest, I rest my chin there and cry, and cry until I can cry no more. Until every broken piece of me lay at my feet—shards of glass tinged with blood. My blood. From trusting them. From… my stupidity.
“Kali!” Dark roars. “I’m sorry.” He beats his fist against the doorframe. “I’m so fuckin’ sorry, babe.”
But he’s not.
He did this.
He made his choices.
And his father went along with it.
They’re no better than the men I kill.
No. They’re worse.
I trusted them.
“I never want to… to see you again!” Rubbing my salty anguish into either shoulder of my dress, I draw shaky circles across my shins. “Never, ever, ever, ever, again,” I announce quieter.
“Sweets, please, let’s talk about it,” Sunshine reasons, tone scratchy as if he, too, is crying.
But I don’t reply.
Because they win.
They ruined everything.
I have nothing left to give.
They lied.
They broke me.
It’s over.
The End
For Now…