34. Venom
34
VENOM
Three months later
S pinning around on my barstool to face my club brothers, I snap, “How long has she been actin’ like this?”
“Jesus, Venom. She’s having fuckin’ fun. You should try it sometime.” Toker snickers at the look on my face, then he clinks his beer bottle against Isaiah’s. “You owe me fifty.”
“Why? He hasn’t done anythin’ yet.”
“He will. Shit’s gonna blow tonight. I can feel it.”
When they start to bicker like a pair of old women over their latest bet, I swing my back to them. I’ve avoided the compound for three months. Done my best to pretend Lily doesn’t fill my every waking thought. Tried to ignore the way the brothers in the east coast chapters snicker every time I turn down a cut slut.
Nothing’s worked.
I can’t move on.
Lily is embedded in every atom of my being.
Not being with her is eating me alive.
Since I arrived back in Perth two days ago for Isaiah’s patching-in ceremony, I haven’t laid eyes on her. No one will tell me a thing about her. Sander flipped me the bird and peeled out of the compound in his sports car when I tried to approach him yesterday. He hasn’t set foot in the club since. My biker brothers pretend they can’t hear me whenever I say her name. Slash acts like he’s going to pound my face in when I try to talk to him about anything other than the plans we’re hatching with the Blackards. Toker just laughs at me. Even Fret refuses to divulge the most basic of information about her.
Seems like everyone has accepted that we’re over.
Except me.
My life is a fucking mess, and I’m living on a wing and a prayer as I work to fix it before time runs out. The sole salvation on the horizon at the moment is that Brutus hasn’t brought his business proposal to church for a vote in my absence. None of Joseph’s goons have raided the compound again, either. My president, the turncoat that he is, has kept his end of the bargain.
I’ve broken our deal once. The only mercy is that no one seems to know about my lapse with Lily at the penthouse after Apollo’s concert. I imagine she wasn’t too keen to tell anyone about it after I left her lying half-naked on a table on the balcony and disappeared. Isaiah caught me in Apollo’s bedroom, but he didn’t seem to put two and two together.
For now, it needs to stay hidden.
I’ve reached an uneasy truce with Brutus. My plans with the Blackards are only weeks away from bearing fruit. The Perth chapter has settled into a new norm. Our president still refuses to explain to anyone why he set Joker and Honey loose, so everyone remains wary of him, which works in my favour. Despite that, he retains his president’s patch, and I still sit by his side on the rare occasion I’m in the city during church.
Brutus’ face has healed, but he’s kept the bandages. Not sure why. Just know that on the few instances we’ve found ourselves alone together, I’ve smirked at him until his face has filled with rage.
Justice isn’t swift.
Not in the biker world.
It’s important to grab the sweet moments when they pop up along the way.
Speaking of sweet, my gaze is drawn back to the blonde woman I’ve been trying to ignore all night. I take a sip of my beer to disguise the growl that rumbles through my chest when I see what she’s up to now, spluttering when the bitter liquid goes down the wrong way.
“Careful you don’t choke,” Slash tells me as he pounds me on the back.
Too hard.
Deliberately so.
Glaring at him over my shoulder, I warn him in a low voice. “Keep goin’. I’m more than happy to break ya nose a second time.”
Slash brushes his middle finger along the scar that splits his eyebrow, then peers over my shoulder. As a new song starts playing, malice enters his gaze, and he licks his lips before he drawls, “Damn… every fucker in here’s gonna chub up watchin’ this.”
Although I know he’s baiting me, my attention immediately flicks back to Lily.
He’s not wrong, though.
She’s gyrating on top of the bar. Nadia’s up there with her. Dancing to a song by one of the bands that supported Apologies to Medusa. “Adrenalize,” I think it’s called. Whatever the name of the song, she’s rocking the shit out of it. Eyes closed. Feeling the lyrics. Tits bouncing in the strappy bra-like contraption she’s trying to pass off as a top.
As she swings her hips, Lily’s high-waisted miniskirt rides up her thighs and the three preppy pricks she brought to the bar tilt their heads back to take in the view. Mouths open. Eyes filled with bad intentions. If I hadn’t watched them try not to piss their chinos after the girls dragged them inside the compound, I’d have scooped their beady eyes out with a rusty spoon by now. There’s no way they have the guts to make a move on either woman. Not when the two dozen men they’re sharing the bar with are openly carrying.
Of course, the moment I put that thought out into the universe, the one closest to Lily decides to test my resolve. He pushes his stool back and climbs up on the bar with the girls. I expect him to go for Nadia. She’s been trying to reel him in since they arrived. He doesn’t. Instead, he takes Lily’s hand and twirls her. When she’s spinning back around to face him, he purposely tugs her off balance. Eyes wide, fear bleaching the colour from her face, she unwillingly tumbles into his embrace.
Her palms land on his chest.
She freezes.
Douchebag with the three-hundred-dollar haircut doesn’t notice her reaction.
I’m on my feet before his hand has finished dropping low enough to palm her arse.
“Easy,” Toker cautions. He clamps a hand on my shoulder and presses me back down into my seat. “She doesn’t belong to you no more… by your choice.”
Slash snorts. I shoot him a look filled with the promise of another beat-down. Fixing Toker with the same expression, I tell him, “Doesn’t matter if I’m with her, I won’t stand by and watch this jackarse paw at her when she’s not up for it.”
As if she hears my words, Lily’s gaze finds mine. I meet her head-on, unblinking and steadfast, promising her with my eyes that if she gives me the sign, I’ll pull the prick off her.
Lily’s chin lifts defiantly.
Her gaze narrows into a scowl.
“She’s gonna do it,” Toker murmurs from behind me. “Even with all the partyin’ she’s been doin’, Cherub hasn’t closed the deal with any of these suckers yet. Girl’s on a mission tonight, though.”
Isaiah actually sounds worried when he replies in a low voice, “If she takes him to a room, Venom’s gonna go nuclear.”
I block out the two pricks currently commentating my life like it’s a sitcom. My shoulders are rigid as I force myself to sit back on my stool. Lily smirks at me. My leg bounces to the beat of my racing pulse. My hand closes around my beer bottle tight enough to make my knuckles scream.
Toker is right. I can see it in Lily’s eyes.
It’s been three months since I stole a taste of her.
Told her it was a mistake.
Demanded she move on.
Lied to her that I was going to do the same thing.
After all this time, she’s finally going to do it.
Tonight.
Right in front of me.
It’s unfortunate, more so for Lily than for me, but I think Isaiah might be correct, too.
If she touches this dickhead, I’m going to lose it.
I know it’s not fair.
I abandoned her.
Doesn’t mean I’m capable of bearing witness to her efforts to patch herself back together, using another man’s attention as glue without snapping.
“He’s not here, you know?” Hunter sidles over to our table. He swipes my long-forgotten beer from my hand and passes it to Toker, who drains it. “Our so-called prez. Brutus. King Fuckwad from Couldn’t-Give-A-Fuck-Stan… whatever name his royal pain in my arse is going by nowadays. He never is when she comes to the compound… truthfully, I don’t think they’ve said more than three words to each other since the shit hit the fan, and that was only because Charlie tricked them into bein’ in the same room.”
“Do you have a point?” I cock an eyebrow and glower at him. The new haircut and the tattoos he’s had inked along his hairline make the teenager look edgier than he really is. “Or are you just a fan of your own voice?”
Hunter smirks. “Just tryin’ to offer some brotherly advice before this cold war you’ve got goin’ with little Cherub blows up in your face. She’s been slowly goin’ off the rails for weeks. You’ve spent the night breakin’ into a cold sweat every time she comes within a metre of another man. Why don’t you just put both y’all out of your misery?” While Slash looks like he’s sucked on a particularly bitter lemon, Toker and Isaiah break into belly-rumbling laughter. They only get louder when Hunter leans into my space to add. “Plus, I’ve got a hundred against Sander that you pounce on her tonight… once I track the moody little shit down, I’d really like to take his cash home with me.”
“There’s no cold war,” I snap from between gritted teeth. “She’s free to do whatever she wants.”
“Cool. Cool. ” Hunter nods his head like a carnival clown. “My bad for thinking the love you two have is the forever kind.”
His dig hits the bull’s-eye. I jerk like I’ve been shot, then try to disguise it by scoffing, “What do you know about love? Fuckin’ nothin’, ’cause if you did, you’d know it walks hand in hand with sacrifice. Sometimes what’s good for one isn’t fuckin’ good for the other person?—”
“Fuck this shit.” Slash pushes to his feet and slaps Hunter across the back of the head. His voice is gruff as he announces, “I’m outta here.”
After shoving his way through the crowd, he uses both hands to push the heavy double doors at the exit open in one angry movement. They crash against the outside walls, and the left one drops off its hinges. One of the new prospects ducks out from behind the bar to lift it back in place.
“Does anyone know what the fuck is up his arse?” I ask.
The tension between us is to be expected. He loves Lily like a brother, and I hurt her. Also broke his nose and cheekbone and left him with a chunk missing from his eyebrow. Doubtful we’ll ever be as close as we once were. That’s my cross to bear, though, and it doesn’t stop me from worrying about the random way his temper has been exploding over nothing the past two days. Normally, the only time he acts like this is around the anniversary, but that’s still two months away. Something’s off with Slash, and I need to work out what it is before he gets to the point where he’s thinking about hurting himself again.
“Bebe?” Toker offers questioningly. “Not that he’s mentioned her in months.”
Hunter claims the seat his big brother just abandoned. He leans back on two legs with a pensive look. “Close, but no cigar. He’ll work it out, though.” Pausing to screw up his face at me like my mere presence offends him, he adds. “Slash is smarter than most men. More honourable, too. He doesn’t run when the goin’ gets tough.”
“You got somethin’ to say to me?”
“Yeah, I have one question.”
“Have at it, then.”
“How do you feel about the dickhead in the chinos havin’ his tongue down Cherub’s throat?” Hunter asks with a grim chuckle.
I knock my stool in to the table as I scramble to my feet.
Every nerve ending in my body pings with one objective.
Lily.
Stop her.
Now.
The crowd parts when I start over to her. Drunk bikers stumble out of my way, allowing me an easy passage to the bar. When I reach it, Lily doesn’t notice me because she’s too busy playing tonsil hockey with the chino-wearing douchebag. Nadia sees me approach. She flips me the bird with both hands. I ignore her. She’s Lily’s girl, and I like knowing, past mistakes aside, that she’s got Lily’s back through thick and thin.
Although I’ve spent months telling myself that I’m imagining how empty I feel without her, I swear the moment my hands are gripping Lily’s hips, everything that’s been off kilter in my world rights itself. Slinging her over my shoulder, I use one hand to knock Mr. Prissy Haircut off the other side of the bar. He screams like a bitch when he hits the concrete floor.
His two mates step up to me. I bare my teeth at them, and they back down without a fight.
“Put me down!” Lily shouts. Unlike the trio of pussies she brought to the compound, my woman mounts a proper defence. She hammer-fists me in the kidney, but I’m so lost in the feel of her body touching mine after so long that I barely register the impact. “I’m not joking, you bloody arsehole. I’m going to murder you if you don’t let me go.”
“Bring it, metukà shelì. You always come hardest when you wanna kill me. I look forward to hate fuckin’ you into submission.”
“Keep dreaming. I’ll never touch your diseased dick again.”
With a chuckle, I secure her in place by wrapping my arm around her thighs. I’m not drunk, yet I waver on my feet when I get a lungful of her perfume. It’s been months since I’ve been close enough to smell her. Like an addict who gets a hit after being clean, the familiarity of her scent goes straight to my head. Clamping my hand down on her arse when she tries to push upright, I carry Lily out of the bar.
The motherfuckers at my table clap us out of the room.
Lily swears a blue streak. “God, you’re so fucking embarrassing. An honest to God fucking nightmare. Pain in my arse. Impossible. Stupid. Mean. Prick .”
“Push a man too far, and that’s usually what happens. You’ve been tryin’ to get me to bite all night… well, here I am, sweet thing, biting.”
“You’re so fucking conceited. I stopped wanting your attention months ago. Didn’t even know you were here until you started growling at me. Tonight was for me, dickhead… I was attempting to move on from you and your mangled version of love—just like you told me to.”
“Jesus, flay a man alive, why don’t ya.”
“ Oh , I will. The second my feet touch the ground, it’s on.”
Out of habit, I stop outside the room we once shared. I swap sides of the hall and enter what used to be Cub’s room, but is now mine. One of the benefits of being the VP means I can make ridiculous demands and get my way without an argument.
Changing rooms was one such request.
Sleeping in our old bedroom now that I’m back would’ve been worse than physical torture. Not that I’ve done much sleeping lately. I spend my nights staring at the ceiling, wondering what Lily’s doing without me.
With my heel, I shut the door behind us. When it slams, Lily punches me in the liver. Once I’ve breathed through the pain, I march over to the dresser and swipe everything from the top of it. The second I plant her arse on the polished wood, she hauls off and slaps me.
“Guess I deserved that.”
Her eyes flash. “ Oh , you deserve more than that.”
“So, give it to me…”
Rather than launch into another tirade, Lily looks around her. “Why am I up here?”
“Don’t want your feet to touch the ground just yet.”
“Why?” Two blue slits filled with suspicion regard me with unconcealed malice. “Because you know I’m gonna kick your arse when they do?”
“’Cause I miss you, and I don’t wanna fight with you tonight.”
Lily’s laugh is filled with scorn. I wait her out. Let her get it out of her system.
“All it took for you to miss me was for me to kiss someone else. You’re sick… I’m not some discarded toy you get to snatch back whenever it catches someone else’s attention. We are not fucking. Tonight. Or any night.”
“It’s not like that.” When she jams her knee in my chest and tries to slide down to the floor, I use my bulk to keep her trapped. “All I wanna do is talk.”
“You had the chance to talk. Instead of that, you boxed up my shit and had my little brothers deliver it to Slash’s. I still gave you a tonne of opportunities to talk after that, and you ignored every one of them. You acted like I didn’t exist. Eradicated me from your life. Sold our house. Took my Harley away. Tried to banish me from the compound.”
“I’m sorry.”
“That’s not good enough.”
“I know it’s not… just want you to know I had my reasons.”
“Your reasons stink.” Lily sinks her teeth into her bottom lip. Without thinking, I tug it free before she breaks the skin. My woman slaps me again, then angles her face toward the ceiling. “Let me down, please. I can’t—I thought… I can’t do this. I can’t be this close to you.”
When her voice cracks, I realise she’s trying to stop tears from falling.
“Don’t,” I plead. My throat tightens. I wedge my upper body between her thighs and slide my hands around her waist. Fingers linked at the small of Lily’s back, I press my face into her cleavage. “If you cry—” I momentarily pause when I realise that my necklace no longer hangs around her neck. “—I’m gonna lose it.”
“ Oh , fuck you.” Lily roughly digs her hands into my hair and uses her grip to force me to look up at her. “You’re the big man. You call the shots. Surely you have the balls to face the consequences?”
“I couldn’t watch you break. Not again. Not like that. It was my fault. The safe house. Alex. The baby. I thought I had everythin’ under control, but I was foolin’ myself.”
Lily stiffens when I mention our lost baby, then rallies to throw some more snark my way. “You were under something, all right. I hope Honey gave you syphilis.”
“I don’t think that exists anymore.”
She huffs. Like a starving man, I swallow her breath when it hits my face. “My sentiment still stands.”
“I didn’t fuck her.”
“So, everyone keeps telling me.” Lily rolls her eyes. “It doesn’t matter. We were already broken up back then, only I was dumb enough to believe it was fake.”
“It was fake. Technically, we never broke up.”
“You’re so full of shit your eyes have turned brown. You texted me after the concert to tell me to move on… told me that’s what you were doing, too.”
In the face of her resigned hostility, desperation starts clawing at my throat. I’ve never felt so disconnected from Lily. She’s acting like we dated for a few weeks then went our separate ways. Our love has spanned a lifetime. It’s a living and breathing entity that I believe consumes us both.
Have I really broken our bond past the point of repair?
Scrambling hard for something to break through her stoic fa?ade, I pull out another line of bullshit. “We didn’t end. Not officially. Everyone knows text doesn’t count.”
That does it. The hair-trigger temper she’s been doing her best to control explodes. Lily balls her hands into fists and punches me with both hands. She smacks me in the chest. Splits my lip. Pummels my shoulders. Scratches at my neck. Rips my hair from my scalp.
I stand my ground and take it all.
Because while she’s hitting me, she’s also purging her soul.
“I can’t think of a more official declaration that something is over than abandoning your fiancée after they’ve been raped and beaten to the point where their body is expelling their dead baby .” The only time I flinch is when she mentions our child. For the rest of her tirade, I’m stoic. I accept her cruel words because they’re accurate. I’m guilty of everything she alleges. “You left me alone at the worst point in my life. Then you told my father that we were permanently done without even sparing me a minute of your time to talk about it... more fool me, I tried to move past that, let you touch me again, and what did you do? You fucking walked away for a second time! Even the biggest idiot on the planet—namely me —knows that means we’re over.”
Lily is breathing hard when she stops lashing out at me. She tucks her hands behind her back and leans as far away from me as she can get with a wall behind her. The look in her eyes is enough to turn gravity on its head.
Up is down. Down is up.
She’s done. The display in the bar wasn’t for me. It was for her.
My woman was declaring her freedom from me.
“Once again, you proved that you love your ego more than anything. Poor little Zeke… couldn’t handle the pain. Couldn’t take the responsibility of loving his broken metukà shelì through the bad shit. Tucked tail and ran, leaving me to get through the loss alone.”
“I thought it was for the best—I let you down.”
“You sure did,” Lily spits from between her teeth. “But not over Alex. You let me down when your pride couldn’t handle me saving myself. I killed him. He’s gone. We were free!” Her tone is brittle when she adds. “I hope you’ve suffered since then because I fucking well have.”
With her knees, she shoves me away, then pulls her skirt up under her tits. Although her legs and panties are exposed, my attention locks on her flat stomach.
“See these?” Lily gestures to the new light-pink lines on her belly. “This is just a taste of my suffering. These are only the scars on the outside.” Spreading her thighs, she turns her leg out to run a fingernail along the area where deeper cuts also streak her soft, pale flesh. “It only happened a few times… once about a week after, then twice more in the days that followed the concert. Tell me… where were you then? Oh, I know! While I was cutting to cope, you were making a deal to stay away from me in exchange for keeping your power in the club. Selling me out for your own agenda, just like Dad did.”
I reel back like she’s slapped me.
Lily laughs.
Her grin consists of canines and spite as she goes in for the kill. “ Oh, you didn’t realise I knew that?”
“No one knows.”
“Well, I do. Your cloud is still synced to my laptop. After the concert, I tried to find that video we made—I wanted to see you, see us, since I couldn’t touch you—ended up serving myself a hard dose of reality instead.” I rub my tight chest when it constricts at the venom in her words. My heart isn’t beating right. To be honest, it feels like she’s shoved her hand in my chest and has ripped it out. “Imagine my surprise when I listened to the recording. Another day, another bunch of lies courtesy of Ezekiel Miles.”
“I can explain.”
Pressing the point of her stiletto to my stomach, Lily nudges me until I’m a leg’s length from her. “I don’t want your excuses. They mean nothing… not when it’s crystal fucking clear that you only want me when I have my mask of perfection in place—when you can congratulate yourself on healing me. ’Cause as soon as you lose control of the world around us, and the people we love discover that I’m a fucking mess, you’re out. It gets too hard for you. You run.”
“That’s not true.” I step to move forward.
Lily uses her sharp heel to keep me at bay.
“Doesn’t matter, anyway.” She dismisses me with a sharp look and a flick of her hand. “You broke my trust when you chose to take my father’s stupid deal instead of coming to me first. That’s what ruined us. Not Alex. Not losing the baby. It was you.”
After she slides down the dresser and back to her feet, I lurch forward and pull her against me. Although she initially stiffens in my arms, Lily slowly melts into my embrace. I nudge my nose through her hair until my mouth is level with her ear. “I’m gonna fix this.”
“Good luck. You’re going to need it ’cause there’s no coming back from this for me.”
Lily runs her nails over the shaved sides of my head then winds her fingers through the longer locks. I allow her to tip my head backward. She drags her fingers over my close-cropped beard, presses her lips to the underside of my jaw, then to my mouth.
As she pulls away, I move with her.
Try to follow her.
With steady hands, Lily extricates herself from my clutches. “The saddest part of all this is that I still love you. Probably always will.”
“I love you, too. More than you’ll ever know.”
“Then it’s a shame my love will never be enough for you. I just hope that you and your pride are happy together.”
When the door closes behind her with a soft click, the ground tilts, reality smacks me upside the head, and I drop to my arse on the floor. I pushed Lily away to save myself, even as I told myself it was for her benefit. Made flimsy excuses for breaking her heart that didn’t stand up to a skerrick of scrutiny. Lied to myself that I was hurting Lily to protect her. Only it turns out, she didn’t need my protection. All she needed was for me to stand next to her without judgement while she slayed her own demons.