23. Lily
23
LILY
“ I t’s go time, lil cuz,” Toker mutters to me as he flounces past me. “Hope you memorised your cues.”
“What cues? Go time for what?” He doesn’t answer me because he’s already reached Zeke.
My cousin, troublemaker extraordinaire with a hidden heart of gold, comes up behind my fiancé and claps a hand over his shoulder. From my position on the couch opposite the flat-screen TV that takes up two-thirds of the wall in the den, I watch with wide eyes as Toker rips Zeke off his stool and punches him in the face. The impact knocks my man to the floor. Slash and Hunter surge to their feet, ready to break up the fight.
“Stay the fuck away from my cousin,” Toker yells in Zeke’s face as he leers over him. “You’re nothin’ but trouble. Cherub doesn’t need you… doesn’t want you. It’s time you took the hint and fucked off outta her life.”
Mouth open, heart pounding, I realise that this is it.
Zeke and I are fake a break up.
In the most public way possible.
“Come on, Cherub.” Toker advances on me with a gleam in his eyes. He slings an arm over my shoulders. “He won’t bother you anymore.”
I clear my throat, unsure what to say.
“Think you wanna watch your mouth,” Slash advises Toker. He proves he’s in the loop and helps hide my confusion from the group of bikers and old ladies who’ve rushed into the den to watch the latest episode of Mayberry family drama by dragging everyone’s attention to him instead of me. “It’s tryna cash cheques your arse can’t afford.”
“Yeah?” My cousin takes three menacing steps toward his two best friends before I manage to kick my brain into gear. Slash points a thick finger at my cousin as Zeke scrambles back to his feet. “You have no idea what I’m capable of when my family’s in danger.”
Quickly catching up with Toker, I twist the back of his cut in my hand and try to pull him to a stop. When he doesn’t heed my interference, I rush in front of him and press my palm to his chest. Slash stops behind me, so I nudge him in the stomach with my other hand.
“Both of you need to step down,” I tell them. My voice shakes as I add, “This is between me and Venom .”
You could hear a pin drop in the silence that dawns in the wake of me spitting out Zeke’s road name. Our private sexual interludes aside, it’s common knowledge that I have long refused to publicly address him by it. He’s always been Zeke to me, and the stupid tradition of erasing new patches legal identities after they earn their top rocker would not change that. It took multiple arguments with my father for him to accept that I would not yield to the decades-old precedent.
Zeke was always going to be Zeke to me.
Until now…
“So that’s it then?” My man emerges from behind Slash. Hunter is hot on his heels, a critical expression on his face as he observes the crowd watching us to assess whether they’re buying what we’re selling. “It’s over?”
“Y-yes… it is.”
“After five years of dealin’ with your shit, I’m just tossed aside now Daddy’s here to save you?” When I blanch at the hostility in his assertion, Zeke looks away from me. I know we’re supposed to be selling this, but that was a low blow. “What? Got nothin’ to say for yourself?”
“I have nothing to say because you’re not worth arguing with,” I snap at him. “Plus, you’re right. I need someone who can protect me, and that evidently isn’t you, is it?”
To drive home my point, I gesture at my bruised face, the stitches in my lip and eyebrow, then at my ribs. The pain that fills Zeke’s face hurts my heart. I curl my fingernails into my palms so hard that they pierce the skin with half crescents. Caught up in the moment, we glare at each other. Chests heaving, our anger is palpable, and for a second, I almost believe this break-up is real.
I burst into sobs, and tears roll down my face even as I try to remind myself that we’re only faking this argument.
“Since that’s how you feel,” Zeke states in a lethal tone, seemingly unaffected by my breakdown. There is a glimmer in his eyes that makes my hair stand on end when he continues in the same voice. “I say we are done. I’m not gonna tie myself to a needy bitch who’ll never have the courage to step outta her daddy’s shadow.”
“That’s enough,” Slash bellows. He jabs Zeke in the chest so hard that I’m not sure if he’s still pretending to be angry. “Go and cool off somewhere.”
“I think that’s enough play-actin’ for the day,” Toker murmurs in my ear after he drops an arm around my shoulder and uses it to shepherd me out of the den. When I try to look back at my man, my cousin stops me. “Shit’s gonna be said that can’t be taken back if you two keep goin’ at it like that.”
“It’s not real?” I jerk when something hits the wall behind us. “He didn’t mean it, did he?”
Toker stays silent until we’re alone in mine and Zeke’s room. My cousin shakes out his hand, hitting me with a rueful grin as he declares, “Your old man has a hard fucking head.”
Since my cousin and Zeke have brawled hundreds of times before, I know Toker’s only trying to lighten the situation. It doesn’t work, because as I try to swipe away my tears, they fall too fast to catch. Pulse pounding, my knees turn to jelly, and I drop to the floor. Toker’s on his knees next to me in the next instant. He awkwardly hugs me, rocking me as my sobbing morphs into full-blown wailing.
“Hush now,” Toker soothes. “I know it felt real, but I promise you it wasn’t. All y’all did was sell your breakup like a pair of seasoned pros. Fuck, even I believed it for a heartbeat.”
“What if he meant those things?”
Sitting back on his haunches, Toker softly pinches my chin between his fingers. He makes me meet his searching gaze as he asks, “Did you mean that shit about Venom not being able to protect you?”
“No.”
“Exactly. The pair of you know how to push each other’s buttons… that’s all that was.”
“Hope you’re right.”
“I’m always right,” Toker tells me with a wry chuckle. “The only problem is none of y’all ever listen to me.” Footsteps stomping up the hallway put an end to our conversation. “That’ll be Brutus. I need you to keep cryin’ while I pack your bags.”
It’s not hard to follow Toker’s advice when my heart is pounding like drums in my ears, and I feel like I’ve been whiplashed.
I’m still on the floor, knees to my chest, eyes leaking when my father bursts into the room. The door bounces off the wall after he shoves it open, and he literally punches it out of the way when it flies back in his face.
“What. The. Fuck. Was. That. All. About?”
“I broke up with Ze-ke,” I tell him.
After my voice cracks over my fiancé’s name, a look I haven’t seen for a long time appears on Dad’s face. I recognise it as satisfaction—an uncommon emotion for the hard, unyielding man who raised me to express toward me. He replaces it with sympathy almost immediately, but I know what I saw.
Hunter is right.
My father resents my relationship.
Why?
“It’s been a long time comin’. You made the right choice, Cherub,” he muses with a hint of humour. Lowering his attention from my tear-stained face to the diamond ring I still wear on my finger, he seems puzzled, although he quickly rallies. “Do you want me to give that back to him?”
Every atom of my being screams at me not to hand over my ring. I tamp down on my misgivings as I twist the symbol of my engagement from my finger and drop it into my dad’s outstretched hand. When he curls his fingers around the precious piece of jewellery, my bottom lip wobbles, and I start to cry again.
I peer at my naked hand.
It certainly feels real now.
“Can you—can you return that to him?” I ask with a whimper. From behind me, Toker makes a little noise to remind me of my next step, so I breathe deep, then add. “And tell him that I’ll be out of his room as soon as I can find somewhere else to go.”
Dad brushes his empty hand over the top of my head, and it takes all my willpower not to recoil from his touch. “I’ve got a safe house you can go to. Pack your shit while I tell Venom where to stick this ring, then I’ll take you there myself.”
I know I should be ecstatic that Zeke and Hunter’s plan is working.
I’m not.
With every action, my father is proving that their suspicions are correct.
The words stick in my throat, but I manage to force them out. “Thank you, Dad.”
“Anything you need, little Cherub, you just ask me… and only me.”
I bite my tongue, so I don’t tell him to go to hell as he stalks out of the room.
“Fuckin’ hell, he’s got balls of steel,” Toker announces after checking the coast is clear. He slams the door shut and pulls me back to my feet. “I was in two minds about all this when Hunter laid out the plan, but there’s no denying it now… Brutus’ bent as fuck.”
“If it helps, I even tried to convince myself he had dementia or something. I still don’t completely believe it either… probably never will.”
“Who would? That man has been built up like a superhero in my head for so long… it fuckin’ hurts to find out he’s only human after all. Human scum, at that.” Toker pulls a new mobile phone from his back pocket and hands it to me. “Here. This is from Venom. It has the numbers for our burners in it… just for emergencies, mind you. For day-to-day shit, you needa use your normal phone, so things look legit. No contact with your man, no matter how temptin’ it gets. We have Cub to scrub our records, but they might have someone trackin’ ’em in real time.”
Toker’s instructions leave my head in a rush when the door opens and Zeke storms over to me. My breath catches in my throat as I take a step back from him, uncertain why he’s here or what he’s about to say. My cousin softly flips the lock and uses his body to bar the entrance.
“Keep this.” Zeke pulls my hand open, then closes my fingers around my engagement ring. “I know you can’t wear it… it’ll make me feel better knowin’ you have it, anyway.”
I brush my fingertips over the swollen eye Toker gave him. “I’m sorry I said those horrible things.”
“I’m sorry we ambushed you with it. When Hunter overheard Brutus talkin’ about leavin’ shortly, we knew we had to do it now or wait until tomorrow. I didn’t wanna delay gettin’ you somewhere safe, so we went in blind.”
“It’s okay.”
“It’s not, but it will be.” Capturing the hand holding my ring in his, Zeke lifts my knuckles to his lips. His kiss is soft—fleeting contact that I know will need to sustain me through what’s to come. “Need you to run now, sweet thing… I gotta break some shit before I blow this plan to pieces.”
As Toker grabs my bags and tries to usher me out of the bedroom, I resist.
I press my mouth to the underside of Zeke’s lightly bearded jaw, then his lips before I whisper, “I love you.”
“We’re for-fuckin’-ever , sweet thing… promise you’ll remember that?”
“Promise.”
This time, I allow my cousin to tow me away from Zeke. My feet have scarcely grazed the carpeted hallway when the crashing starts. Something made of glass smashes. Wood is broken. A solid object hits the wall. Then another. And another. Knowing there’s little I can say or do to stop Venom from ruining our room, I decide to do as I was told.
I run.
From Zeke.
From the old ladies’ pity.
From Slash, Toker, and all the people I love.
Straight into the arms of the father who seems intent on betraying us all.
At any cost.