Chapter 38 Kitty #2
“I think I was blind,” he admitted rawly. “I thought my feelings for her were one thing, but after she turned eighteen, I could never do it. Could never talk to her about how I felt. It seemed so perverted. The age gap between us was immense. Bridging it… impossible.”
“To repeat something Currau said, I think it’s a testament to how fucked up the world is.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean… men and women are rarely allowed to be friends without people thinking there’s more to it. Men and women can’t have a sibling link without someone assuming something.” I hitched a shoulder. “We hypersexualize everything, but it’s not always about sex. It’s about love.
“The Ancient Greeks thought there were seven types of love, but nowadays, that’s not fashionable to believe.”
I stared into his soulful eyes, feeling my heart break for what he’d gone through. I’d suffered enough grief to hurt for him, rather than to envy what he’d once felt for a now-dead woman.
“No, I guess not.”
“How did you meet her?”
“You want to talk about it?”
“I think you haven’t talked about it enough,” I chastised, amused.
“We took over this sweatshop.” He pinched the bridge of his nose.
“I’ll never forget the sight of her and her mother.
They were living like rats. The conditions…
they horrified Luc and me. They slept on the floor on mats made of plastic bags.
They shared a single toilet between twenty of them.
” His gaze turned inward. “I was young. Barely a man. It left a lasting impression on me. I wanted more for them, for her.”
I lifted his hand to my lips so I could kiss his knuckles. “Trauma begets trauma. When my brother died, our whole house seemed to freeze. Lucas blamed Cade for Vinny’s death—”
“Why?”
“Because they used to race streetcars together and that’s how Vinny passed away.
In a crash. Ma broke down completely, Lucas blamed Cade, and Raisin, Neev, and I, we…
floundered. But Cade—he stopped eating and began working out like crazy.
He doubled in size and it wasn’t like he was a weedy kid to start with.
“Looking back, I’d go as far as to say that he had an eating disorder, but we were all so lost…” I shook my head. “The worst moments in our lives shape our futures. It’s no wonder that you wanted to take her under your wing.”
“You know what I’m capable of, Kitty. I don’t think I deserve for you to be this generous with me.”
“Why wouldn’t I want you to stop beating yourself up over things that happened in the past?” When I tutted, he shot me a weak smile. “Do you see her mother anymore?”
“Evangeline’s? No. Alina… Luc gave her enough money to build a restaurant. She doesn’t really want anything to do with us. I don’t think she blames me—”
“I should hope not, seeing as it’s not your fault her daughter was sick!”
“—it’s more like she wants to cauterize the wound and cutting us out is a part of that.”
My scowl spoke of my disapproval, but he didn’t comment on it. “When did you last visit her grave?”
“I… Never.”
“Why not?”
“Because I didn’t deserve to.”
I stroked a finger along his jaw. “You know you do, right?”
“Maybe now.”
“Will you take me there?” Using my hold on him, I turned his chin so that I could stare into his eyes. “Would you take me to your friend’s grave?”
He chewed on the inside of his cheek. “Will you take me to your brother’s?”
“Of course.”
Luigi, who’d traveled with us in the jet along with the rest of his crew, or what he called Stidda, dropped the privacy screen. “Almost there, boss.”
He turned to watch the roads pass, and I let him because that’d been an unexpectedly heavy conversation, but one I figured we’d needed to have.
Life was too short to begrudge the love that someone had found in their past. Maybe my own past meant that I upheld that love because I knew how precious it was and how devastating its loss could be.
Whatever reason lay behind my easy acceptance of his feelings for Evangeline, I wouldn’t let the idea of us visiting the graves of our loved ones drop.
In that direction, I hoped, lay a chance for his grief to scab over.
Closure sucked but it mattered.
The car rocking over a large pothole jolted me from my thoughts. I glanced out of the window, too, and noticed we were driving down a narrow lane toward a surprisingly pleasant clubhouse.
Having visited this and the Hell’s Rebels’ in the past couple months, I supposed I had a metric—this one was better.
When we pulled up outside the closed gates, a man waited for us in front of them.
He had long hair that flowed down his back, black as pitch aside from a streak of lightning at the front.
He wore a leather cut, jeans, and a Henley—standard biker fare, I’d also come to learn.
The patch on the flap of his cut read ‘Prez.’
This welcome was night and day to the Hell’s Rebels.
The guns might have stayed hidden, but I’d felt the building pressure like a finger on a nebulous trigger for every hour we’d stayed in Rutherford.
This man, I sensed, scanning his relaxed but watchful posture, wasn’t as trigger happy.
“Stay here,” Stan ordered.
I wasn’t worried about him because I knew he’d never have brought me along if he expected trouble, but I still shuffled closer to the window to listen in on their conversation.
“Welcome to Coshocton,” the Prez greeted, his gaze tripping along the cars that pulled up behind ours.
“I appreciate the invitation.”
“You have Rachel Laker to thank for that.”
“I guess I do.”
“How do you know her?”
“Good test question,” he approved. “My sister’s her best friend. They went to law school together. Two sharks in a million.”
“Your shark definitely played the predators at their own game,” the Prez applauded before holding out his hand. “Storm.”
“You can call me Stan.”
As they shook on it, Storm dipped his chin. “Rachel told me you weren’t staying long.”
“I figured we could talk.”
“About?” Storm’s gaze fixed on Stan before flickering over to the car. “You brought someone with you?”
Shit. He must have seen movement behind the tinted windows.
“Just my Stidda. And…” Stan twisted back and opened the door. “Meet my—” He cleared his throat. “Kitty.”
Storm’s tension bit the dust when he saw me. “Pleasure to meet you, his Kitty.”
I peeped a smile at him. “Likewise, Storm.”
His lips twisted as my eavesdropping registered. “Come on through.” He shoved open the gates and walked onto the compound, beckoning us to join him.
I half-figured Stan would be mad at me for disturbing his meeting, but he pressed his hand to the small of my back and ushered me onward.
Stan’s hesitation about what to call me, as well as my presence here, suddenly took on a different meaning. An extraordinary one.
Stan represented the Sicilian Famigghia and he’d brought lil ol’ me along…
He’d told me via text that he loved me but had never spoken the words out loud.
This was a declaration.
A roar to the world.
To his world.
I belonged to him.
I was under his protection.
He’d claimed me as his own.
But he wasn’t the only one who needed to stake a claim…