Thirty-Four
FANG
Fuck her vulnerability. I tuck my thumbs into the armholes of my cut to save from reaching for her. She puts on a brave face, but she hides some deep fucking childhood wounds below. Abandonment issues. Trust. Fear of rejection and of not being enough.
Yeah, I resonate with all of that. It’s why I mask with my fucking stupid behavior.
She appears to roll the idea of lying to her father around in her mind, gaze distant while she stares at the floor.
“You think he’d be worried enough to give in?” Fuck knows I don’t want to be the one tasked with getting him here.
I can guarantee if that were the case, I would have taken Circus and got it done by now, legal measures or otherwise. Ask me, Chaos buys time with all this fucking prep talk. What for? I don’t know. But I get the impression it has something to do with where he’s gone today.
“Maybe.” Jenna shrugs, arms folded tight across her chest. The sweater she’s borrowed today doesn’t quite fit her properly—small in the body and wide in the shoulders. I like her better in mine.
Must itch at her brain to be stuck in somebody else’s clothes, though. Someone else’s house.
Must chafe more not to want to leave for the alternate—a home that’s nothing of the kind and maybe never was.
“What made your mom let him back into your life?”
Her head snaps up, surprise in the pinch of her brow. “Excuse me?”
“She knew he was bad news, right? Why leave you tied to him like this?”
“Desperate times call for desperate measures.” She sighs.
“We talked about it,” Jenna confesses. “Before she asked him for help. We’d tried getting extra work—both of us—and it just made things worse.
So she asked me before she called him. Told me what he’s like, why she left.
” Her lids grow heavy, regret sallowing her features. “He was a good man, once.”
“Let me guess. During his first years with the club?”
She glances toward me, seemingly annoyed that I discounted the tiny bit of redemption she kept aflame for the man.
“We all were, Freckles. Every one of us one percent fuckers. We were all good men when we joined. Bright-eyed and full of big ideas, middle fingers raised to our predecessors. But time has a funny way of showing you why the people you rebelled against acted the way they did. It proves that some things can’t be changed. ”
She half-shrugs as though to say she sees my point. “You wouldn’t be a one percent club if it weren’t for the drugs, women, and all the shit you do on the wrong side of the law, though. Why try to change it?”
“I ain’t talking about that.” My chest grows tight.
What the fuck am I doing here? Being vulnerable like Chaos fucking said I should.
I drag a hand over my face with a sigh and explain.
“I mean doing the same shit you saw your father do and swore you never would.” Faint memories of arguments with my old man circle the fringes of my mind.
“Hurting people you love. Using people. Breaking trust.” She softens her gaze some.
“All that basic decent human being shit that everyone else in the world seems to find so easy.”
“You’re wrong,” she states. “Find me a perfect human being who’s never once acted against their morals, no matter how basic, and I’ll show you a thousand more who have. It’s natural to do bad things from time to time when it promises a better outcome.”
“Is that why you’re helping him?”
She fidgets with her hair, tucking the short strands behind her heavily-pierced ear. “Maybe.”
“He promised you an end to the debt hanging over your heads, right?”
Jenna nods.
“What has he done so far that gets you both closer to that goal?”
“How do you mean?” Her frown returns.
I glimpse Jezabel poke her head around the opening from the parlor and then back off, seemingly happy knowing where Jenna went. The woman in question still watches me, waiting on my answer. “Your old man placed you inside Breed business and made you a spy.”
“In the most basic terms, yeah.”
“And what did he do while you were there, feeling as though you had to look over your shoulder while you kept your ear to the ground?”
Freckles straightens her arms before her, smoothing the thin sleeves of the jumper. “I don’t know, really, but I know he had connections.”
“Did he use them, though?”
“What are you trying to get at, Fang?” Her frown grows stern, losing the gentle thoughtfulness of before.
“I think we’ve established he’s an asshole who can’t be trusted.
What do you want me to do to show you that I get that?
Change my fucking name by deed-poll?” Her chest rises and falls with deep, shaky breaths.
I raise my hands and speak the truth. “I don’t know what I wanted.
” Perhaps to make sure she understood he’s not worth risking herself for.
But then again, I know that’s not why she continues with this stupid fucking crusade.
She does it for women like those still here with us. For the ones who aren’t, like Eleanor.
I swallow the constriction in my throat and utter the words I’ve barely said to a single goddamn person my whole life. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have pushed you like that.”
She looks disturbed. Unsure what to do with herself or my words as she fidgets with the cuffs of the sweater. “I’m sorry I snapped.”
“You had a right to.”
Her throat works, ink rolling as she composes her next words. “It’s really hard to work out where I stand with you, Fang.” Fingers tangled before her, Jenna avoids looking at me as she speaks. “I can’t tell if you hate me or if you sympathize with me. If you want to help.”
“Neither.”
My answer confuses her more.
“You lie,” I explain. “You withhold important information that you know could help others purely to help yourself. You change your tune about what you want to do every day—do you stay in the chase, or do you break away and start again? You separate yourself from the others, and you seem hellbent on not needing anyone’s help when all people have done is show you that they’re willing to be a sounding board for your problems.” Her chin quivers, nostrils flaring.
“And yet you’re also the most selfless person I’ve met in a long while.
” I pause to gather my galloping thoughts, aware her gaze softens on me—intrigued.
“You keep yourself in harm’s way with the sole thought of helping other people to avoid going through the same trauma you did.
You check on Kathy, on Darla, and The Kid, always wanting to make sure they’re okay.
You got yourself involved in this fucking ludicrous plan of your father’s to avoid seeing him bear the consequences of an unpaid loan from the Devil’s Breed.
A man, by the way,” I stress, “who has done nothing for you in return. You confuse the fuck out of me, Jenna. I don’t know whether I hate you or admire you or want to protect you,” I admit.
“All I know is I’d hate it if you left and I never knew what happened to you after; where you went.
Whatever you decide to do when this is all said and done, I want to help you do it. ”
“Even though I’m a liar,” she weakly bites.
“Do you honestly believe I’ve been one hundred percent truthful with you?”
She ponders the idea for a moment before a slight smile tugs at her lips, pink from her worrying teeth. “I’m glad you haven’t been.” She smirks, huffing a small laugh out her button nose. “You want to know God’s honest truth?”
I lift my chin to urge her to go on.
“I’m scared, Fang.” Soulful eyes lift to mine.
“I’m fucking terrified of what does come next.
Nobody wants me here, but I also don’t want to be anywhere else.
I’m stuck, just…” She winds her hands, searching for the right words.
“Frozen, I guess.” Jenna shrugs. “Frozen solid in stasis here, doing what I’m told and fucking petrified that if I make a definitive decision for myself, I’m gonna get it wrong. ”
She lifts her head, a sharp inhale passing her lips when I step closer.
“I’m fucking terrified too,” I admit, the truth both setting off warning bells in my mind for taking my vulnerability too far and providing relief.
“Difference is, I’m fucking terrified of where I am now.
Scared that’s all it’ll ever be. This goddamn groundhog day of disappointment and hopelessness for change.
” My throat constricts, heat pooling behind my eyes.
I clear my throat and sling my elbows wide, hands laced behind my neck.
“Take from that what you will,” I mutter.
“Just didn’t want you to think you were the only one who feels like they’re lost.”
Her soft gaze threatens to shred what little composure I have left. “I knew I wasn’t the only one.” Jenna almost looks proud of me. The fuck? “I’m grateful you shared that with me, Fang.”
“Yeah, well, don’t expect too much more like it.”
I don’t look at her. Don’t wait around to hear what she has to say next.
I book it from that room like the fucking pussy I am, heaving deep breaths as I aimlessly head for the front door.
Fuck Chaos. He has an uncanny way of reading into these things before you’ve had a chance to unravel them yourself.
Being more vulnerable does work.
And I am my own worst enemy.
Otherwise I would have done what I wanted in that kitchen instead of bolting for the yard. I would have admitted that what’s right for us doesn’t always come at the most convenient time, and what’s good for us doesn’t always appear that way.
I would have eliminated any doubt in Jenna’s mind about how I feel about her.
And I would have kissed that woman like she needed me to.
Like I needed to.