Chapter 32
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
GOOSE
Lifting the towel to the back of my neck, I wipe the sweat away. Turning my head, I watch as he makes his way toward me. I don’t know what he’s going to say, but I watch him, waiting. He’s going to be the one who speaks first.
Crossing my arms over my chest, I dip my chin slightly and look down into his eyes. I stare at him, waiting for the reason he’s approached me to be voiced. He’s got something on his mind. He has to.
He’s gone out of his way to find me, though it’s not like I’m hard to locate. If I’m not in my room, at Laney’s apartment keeping an eye on Cidney from afar, I’m in the gym. I wait for him to speak. His gaze is focused, his stare unwavering as he watches me.
“I get you’re pissed. I get you think it’s my fault. If you think I’m not shouldering that guilt myself, you’re damn wrong.”
I could give him an out on that, tell him that I don’t blame him, that I was just mad and spoke out of anger.
That was true. I wasn’t just mad, though.
I was and am pissed the fuck off. I didn’t speak out of anger.
I spoke out of betrayed truth. And I will not take it back or admit any kind of fault.
“What’s your point?” I demand.
His brows shoot up in surprise, then he snaps them together. I can tell he doesn’t believe I’ve said what I have. I would be shocked, too, if I weren’t so fucking pissed off at him and the situation he created.
“I don’t want this life for Cidney.”
“This life, or me in her life?” I ask.
He shakes his head once, his eyes sliding closed slowly before he flicks them open again and focuses his gaze on me. He stares at me for a moment, and I know he’s trying to read me, likely attempting to figure out how to approach this and not piss me off even more than I already am.
He can’t.
There is only one response I’m going to accept, and that’s his full support. Nothing more, nothing less. I want a handshake and a welcome-to-the-family announcement. So I wait for his response.
“Everything. I wanted her to have someone who loved her and could give her a good, clean life. She’s had a rough life, and she deserves so much better than this club.”
Taking a step toward him, I don’t break eye contact. He’s said the quiet part out loud. He doesn’t want Cidney to be part of the family. I run my fingers through my hair, gripping the strands before I pull on them slightly and release them.
“You may not want her to be with me, or anyone else here, but that ship has sailed. We fell in love, Ivy, and there’s nothing you or anyone else is going to do about that. I’m claiming her—protecting her.”
“You can’t have her.”
Taking another step forward, I tilt my chin down. I have never felt more powerful than another man, but after building all this muscle, I could take this fucker down in a goddamn heartbeat, and nobody would be the wiser. I let him kick my ass the last time. It will not happen again.
“With or without your permission or consent, Cidney is going to be my woman. I’ll take whatever punishment the club doles out. I tried to do it the right way, and all it did was hurt the woman I love. Not again.”
I don’t allow his response. I honestly don’t care that much about what he thinks or what he has to say. Turning around, I walk away from him. He can look at my fucking back as I go, but he doesn’t just let me walk away in peace. No, he has to call out my name.
I still don’t look around. I stay with my back to him, my feet stopping, but only for a moment. I know I’m not going to like what he has to say, but I’ll listen to him. At least for now.
“I still don’t agree, and I will never give you permission.”
His words should not hit me like a punch to the gut, but they do. I’ve known him for years. Loved him like a brother for years. He is the man who Cidney looks up to and loves. It’s really fucking sad that he can’t accept us.
Turning my head slightly, I look over my shoulder at him. I refuse to face him completely. He hasn’t earned that kind of respect from me. In fact, he’s lost almost all of it, as far as I’m concerned.
“That’s too bad, Ivy. You’re going to miss out on a lot.”
And with that, I walk away from him. As much as I want to hash things out, he very much has it stuck in his head that there can be no other way. That his way is the only way. And I get that, but not in this. I’ve lost respect for the brother I would have once both died and killed for.
Climbing onto my bike, I start the engine and look around the parking lot of the gym. I have an idea. It goes off inside my head like a lightbulb. I never understood how that could happen. I always thought that people were full of shit when they said that until now.
Taking my phone out of my pocket, I text Bullet.
MEET ME AT THE CLUBHOUSE
BULLET: WHAT THE FUCK FOR?
GOT AN IDEA
Instead of waiting for his response, which is probably just more questions, I head straight for the clubhouse.
I want to get this conversation started and get the plan rolling.
It might take a hell of a lot of doing, but I think it will be the best-case scenario where Goffredo and Lorenzo are concerned.
I just have to know if we can pull it off logistically, and I’m going to need help doing it.
CIDNEY
Posey is nervous. I can feel it coming off her in waves.
I start to tell her that she has no reason to be anxious, but then decide not to.
Maybe that makes me a bitch, because I know that none of this stuff with Goffredo, Justin, and Goose is anything she can actually control, but I’m kind of pissed off at her by proxy at this point.
She’s with Justin and could probably talk to him about everything that happened. I can’t imagine he wouldn’t listen to her. He’s stupidly in love with her, so I can’t help but wonder why she hasn’t tried to help, at least to help me.
“Okay,” she says, letting out a heavy breath. “What can I do to fix this?”
I’m surprised she’s asking now, but I‘m glad for it. At least she’s not entirely heartless. I don’t say what I want to say, because it would be pointless, even though what I want is to ask her to figure out a way for Justin to accept Goose and to let bygones be bygones.
But I don’t know if I could do that with Goose where Justin is concerned, so I guess it would make sense that she can’t, either. And maybe she feels the same way, that she couldn’t persuade Justin to think any differently.
“Nothing,” I murmur. “Justin and Goose have whatever they have, and there’s nothing to do, which really pisses me off.”
She gives me a soft smile, and that kind of irks me, too, because she doesn’t know what it’s like. She fell in love, and poof, they’re together, the rest of the world be damned. I imagine if I tried that, Justin would lose his shit, and Goose might lose his life.
“I hate this. I just want everything to go back to normal and everyone to be happy.”
She doesn’t mean it, I say to myself on repeat. She doesn’t mean it.
She wants everyone to be happy. That I do believe. But she can’t mean that she wants me to be lonely, to be both jobless and lonely. To be searching for love only to be manipulated and almost killed.
She can’t mean any of that.
Right?
Posey is happy in her life. She’s got a man and a baby.
She is in new-relationship bliss. She’s also got a man who is a lawyer.
Who makes plenty of money. Just because he doesn’t have his own office anymore outside of the house doesn’t mean he has fewer clients and makes less money.
He probably makes more because he doesn’t have as much overhead.
I’m trying not to be bitter, but she’s making it difficult.
“I’d like to be happy, Posey, but I’m finding it a bit difficult at the moment.”
My words don’t come out snarky, but I can feel the resentment bubbling just beneath the surface. I don’t want to upset her, but at the same time, I need her to know that I’m doing the best I can in this situation I’ve been dealt.
“That came off rude,” Posey murmurs. “I’m sorry.”
I place my palm against my forehead. Inhaling through my nose, I let the air out of my mouth slowly before shifting my attention to meet hers. She is watching me, her body tense, her eyes focused.
She wants me to accept her apology, and I will, but that doesn’t mean I will agree. She wants things to go back to the way they were for her. She wants Justin to be happy, and that’s great, but that wasn’t a good time for me.
In fact, I didn’t realize how unhappy I was.
Meeting and falling in love with Goose was something I wasn’t ready for.
I didn’t think that finding my heart would change anything about my life, but it has.
It’s changed every single part of my being almost as much as Goffredo’s attack, just differently.
“It’s okay,” I finally murmur. “It’s okay because you want your home to be settled and happy. It’s not right now, and that’s because of me.”
Posey shakes her head a couple of times as unshed tears fill her eyes. “No,” she whispers. “That’s not what it is. And none of this is your fault, not a single moment. It’s not your fault at all.”
It very much is my fault. I know it is. If I hadn’t tried to date Goffredo in an effort to fall out of lust with Goose, then fallen in love with Goose, none of this would have happened. So this is ultimately my fault.
All my fault.