3. Lola
LOLA
Idon't sleep much. Considering I've walked out of the only home I've ever known, helped one of Perdition's patched men escape and driven straight into Kingdom Come, that isn't exactly surprising.
What surprises me is how little anyone here seems interested in making the situation worse.
Nobody drags me out for another interrogation.
Nobody locks my door. When I finally give up on sleep and leave my room, the clubhouse is still awake, but nobody stops talking when Cyrus's daughter appears.
They look. Of course they look, but then they go back to whatever they were doing.
Cross is outside beside the garage. He's leaning over his bike with a rag in one hand, his stripped cut lying across the seat. The leather still looks wrong without Perdition across the back and only his name remains.
He looks up as I approach. "Couldn't sleep?"
"Kind of unsurprising given the situation, don't you think?"
He tosses the rag onto a bench. "What do you want, Lola?"
The question irritates me immediately, probably because I've spent hours asking myself exactly that.
"I want to know what happens now."
"Ask Kane."
"I'm asking you."
"Your guess is as good as mine. I came here expecting five minutes with him. Everything after that is new."
"And I came here because you blew my life apart by making me part of this whether you intended to or not."
His expression changes. "We're not doing that again, are we?"
"Why? Because you decided the argument was over?"
"Because I didn't make you lie to Cyrus."
"No. You just made it necessary by doing what you did."
"Your father made it necessary."
There it is. It always comes back to my father. Always Cross looking at me like I'm refusing to see something obvious.
"You've been waiting years to say that, haven't you?"
His brows draw together. "Say what?"
"That everything wrong with Perdition is Cyrus and everything wrong with me is that I don't hate him enough."
"I've never said there's anything wrong with you."
"You don't have to. You're really good at making that clear."
"How?"
The genuine confusion on his face makes me even angrier. "You've spent years treating me like you can barely tolerate being in the same room with me."
Cross goes still. Good, because at least that lands.
"Every time I defended the club, you looked at me like I was an idiot. If I agreed with my father, you'd walk away. If I disagreed with you, I'd get that expression."
"What expression?"
"That one."
He rubs a hand over his jaw. "You think I hate you."
"Don't flatter yourself. I haven't spent years worrying about it."
"Liar."
"Fuck you."
Something flashes in his eyes. "I don't fucking hate you, Lola."
"Could've fooled me."
"I hated some of the shit you defended."
"My father."
"Sometimes. Perdition more often."
"The club colors you happily wore for ten years?"
"I never said I was better than anyone else in it."
"No. You just acted like you were better than me."
His jaw tightens. "I was harder on you because you're smart."
For a moment, I genuinely have nothing.
Cross steps closer. "You saw more than half the patched men did. You knew when something wasn't right, then you'd find a reason it was different because Cyrus was the one doing it."
"So now insulting me is a compliment?"
"No. I'm telling you why it pissed me off. I expected more because I knew you were capable of more."
"You arrogant bastard."
"Probably true."
"You don't get to decide what I should've believed."
"No. I don't."
The lack of argument takes some of the force out of mine. I've spent years certain Cross looked down on me. Apparently I've built a lot of perfectly good hatred around something that may never have been true.
I turn away. "This was a mistake."
His hand closes around my upper arm and the contact stops me faster than the grip does.
Cross has touched me before in all the insignificant ways people touch when they've known each other for years.
Passing something across a table. Brushing past in a crowded room.
This isn't accidental, and every nerve in my body knows the difference.
"Let go."
His hand disappears immediately and I look at him. "Why do you do that?"
"Do what?"
"Act like touching me is going to set off a fucking bomb."
Something changes in his face. Finally. Something real.
"Because it probably would have."
"What does that mean?"
He gives me a look. "You really don't know?"
"If I knew, I wouldn't be asking."
"You're Cyrus's daughter."
I fold my arms. "That's your explanation?"
"Your father made damn sure everyone in Perdition understood you were untouchable."
My heartbeat changes. "Untouchable how?"
His mouth twists. "Don't make me spell it out just because you're enjoying watching me hate this conversation."
"I'm not enjoying anything."
"Another lie."
"Cross."
He exhales through his nose. "Wanting you was never the problem."
The entire argument stops inside my head. "What?"
"You heard me."
"No. I heard something completely fucking ridiculous, so I'd like you to say it again."
His eyes lock onto mine. "I wanted you."
The past tense irritates me instantly, which is an insane thing to notice right now. "For how long?"
"Does it matter?"
"Apparently."
"Years."
My stomach drops. Every argument. Every time he walked away. Every look I decided was contempt. "You are such an asshole."
That almost makes him smile. "That's what you're taking from this?"
"You let me believe you hated me."
"I didn't know you thought I did."
"How could you not?"
"Because most of the time you looked like you wanted to stab me. I figured we understood each other."
"We clearly didn't."
"No." His voice has changed, and so has the space between us.
"What stopped you?" I ask.
"I told you. Cyrus."
"You're afraid of my father?"
Cross gives me a flat look. "No."
"Then what?"
"He would've used it."
"Used what?"
"You." The answer lands harder than I expect.
"Anything a man cared about became another thing Cyrus could put his hand around. I wasn't giving him that."
I want to tell him he's wrong, but too many memories arrive before I can.
My father knowing exactly which brother needed money.
Who had a kid somewhere. Whose mother was sick.
Which man couldn't afford to lose the club.
I've always called it knowing his men. Maybe sometimes it was, but sometimes I knew in my heart that it was control.
Cross is watching me too closely. I don't want him seeing what that thought does, so I reach for anger instead.
"Convenient."
His eyes narrow. "What is?"
"Ten years of acting like an asshole suddenly becomes noble self-control."
"I didn't say it was noble."
"You just secretly wanted me the whole time?"
"Not secretly enough, apparently."
"What the hell does that mean?"
"It means you're standing close enough that I can feel you breathing while asking why I never touched you."
He's right. I don't remember either of us closing the distance.
I should move, but I don't. Cross looks at my mouth, and that is all it takes.
I don't know who moves first. Maybe neither of us ever does.
One second I'm furious with him and the next his mouth is on mine.
There's nothing gentle about it. Ten years of restraint apparently leave no room for tentative.
My hands hit his chest, but instead of pushing him away, my fingers curl into his shirt. Cross makes a rough sound against my mouth, one arm wrapping around my waist as I drag him closer.
The kiss feels like another argument, except neither of us is trying to win it.
His mouth is hard, mine just as demanding, and every stupid thing I've told myself about him collides with the way he kisses me like this isn't new to him at all.
Maybe because it isn't. Maybe he's imagined this as many times as I have.
His hand slides into my hair and my body presses into his before my brain catches up.
Cross breaks the kiss barely an inch. "Lola."
I kiss him again. He turns us until my back meets the side of the garage, one hand settling at my hip. I can feel the restraint in him even now, which somehow makes the hunger underneath it worse. Then reality finally gets through. I'm kissing Cross.
The man my father sent people after tonight. The man who walked out of Perdition while I was still defending it. The man I've spent years believing despised me because that was easier than wondering why I cared. I shove him away and Cross releases me instantly. We stand there breathing too hard.
"I can't do this."
His chest rises once. "Okay."
"That's it?"
"What do you want me to say?"
"I don't know."
"Then I'm probably safer saying nothing."
I glare at him. "You don't get to become reasonable now."
"I'm not being reasonable. I'm trying very fucking hard not to kiss you again."
That shuts me up.
Cross reaches for his cut rather than me. "Go inside, Lola."
He lets me leave and that might be the most dangerous thing he's done all night.
Twenty minutes later, I'm sitting on the edge of my bed with my fingers pressed against my mouth.
Cross wanted me for years, and the fact rearranges memories I don't have time to examine properly.
It doesn't make him right about everything, and it doesn't make me suddenly wrong about every part of my father.
Nothing that simple could undo thirty years of being Cyrus's daughter.
But Cross didn't force me to lie tonight.
He didn't make me warn him and he didn't put me in my car and drive to Kingdom Come.
I did those things because when the moment came, I knew dragging him back to Perdition was wrong.
And I came here because I knew what being caught helping him might cost me.
I still don't know what any of that means tomorrow.
But I know what I want tonight and that's enough.
Cross answers his door in the same dark T-shirt, and his expression turns guarded the moment he sees me.
"Lola?"
"Don't." I hold my hand up.