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“Anytime, Nova. Love you little sister.”
He walked away then, and it was a good thing he didn’t look back, or he would have seen me blubbering like a lunatic over being called his little sister. Technically, I was. His sister-in-law anyway. At least, until everything with Ashlynn finally imploded, as it was bound to do.
Part of me wished Tripp had somehow been my dad, so that Kip could be my brother for real, but I had a feeling that we were already close enough. Certainly, more so than my actual half-sister. It was still hard to wrap my head around the fact that we were related, I’d cared for her son, and she never once treated me well.
I wondered how she felt now that she knew who I was to her. Or maybe she didn’t know. Would it have changed things? Would I have been able to get to know her?
That was one thing I’d learned along the way though, you could never go back and change things, so it was ridiculous to wonder about all of life’s ‘what ifs’. Maybe, in another world, Ashlynn would have been a wonderful big sister to me. In the one we inhabited, that wasn’t the case, and it was something I would just have to live with. Kind of like what happened between Breakneck and me.
It was something that I was either going to get over or I could allow it to fester and keep picking at the wound he’d left behind so that it never healed. What I did know was that I couldn’t stop thinking about the letters. The most recent one and the other that I’d kept. He messed up. We all knew that. There was more to it than just one screwed up instance, though and that was what I struggled with more than anything else. I struggled with all the beautiful parts that came before.
Chapter 42
Breakneck
“Where are you going?” Trench asked as I slipped a fucking book bag over my shoulder.
“Going to fucking school.”
His laughter made me want to punch him in the fucking face. Then again, I felt like those fucking hang-around posers the club would sometimes get. They’d hang out trying to play like they were hard and linked to the club until shit went down and they ran as fast as their piss-dribbled legs would carry them.
“You think pretending to be a student in the same school is going to win her back? Doesn’t that just give her more reasons not to trust you? Feels like a deception to me.” All humor was gone as he threw out that last bit.
“Maybe if I was actually pretending to be a student, but I’m not. I’m there to fucking guard my woman. The threat against her isn’t completely neutralized yet, and I’m not playing student.”
“Then what’s in the fucking bag?”
“Snacks, asshole.”
Trench started laughing again, so I flipped him off and walked out of the clubhouse. Tripp was standing there with his baby’s momma when I walked out. They seemed to be in deep discussion, but when he looked up and took note of the backpack slung across my shoulders he grinned and tipped his head in acknowledgment. Fucker already knew what I was up to without me having to say a word. That was a good sign. Tripp had far better judgment when it came to women than I did.
“You can’t just step in and start making demands!” Vina yelled at him, making me second guess that theory.
“The fuck I can’t. She’s my daughter, too.”
I tuned them out. Too many troubles of my own to worry about to rock up in someone else’s shit. Nova’s next class started in twenty minutes, and I wanted to be there in time to get a seat close enough to her that she knew I was there, but far enough away that I could observe her and the rest of her class.
The roar of my pipes must have been loud enough to disrupt Tripp’s argument since they both stared at me. He seemed grateful for the interruption while she seemed to resent it. I’d wish her luck, but my brother had already raised two really fucking good kids into the most amazing fucking adults a person could hope for. Kip and Star were both solid.
If they were having an argument about what to do for their daughter, then he probably had it covered and she should put her pride aside and pay attention. It was still a kick in the balls for me to think of him as having fathered a kid with a former club whore. Every man had his weak moments though, and for fucking sure I wasn’t one to judge.
~*~
I slipped into class with about five minutes to spare. The university was aware of my presence and each of the professors teaching Nova’s classes knew not to bother me. I’d procured a private investigators and security license ages ago and kept it updated. A few of us originally got them so our runs that involved guarding people’s cargo would be covered without question.
It also gave us plausible deniability in certain instances so we could keep the club’s nose clean. If we don’t know what fuckers are shipping in their containers we can’t be responsible. We were just hired to keep them safe from highway robbers. I chuckled at the thought. It was ridiculous, but it had worked in our favor a time or two. Now, having those credentials worked in my favor for personal reasons. The school never questioned the fact that there needed to be a bodyguard in class with my woman once they saw I was legit.
Nova was seated three rows up. No one sat on either side of her. There weren’t a whole lot of people in the class. I had imagined it packed to the fucking gills for some reason. There were clusters of people who sat together and a few other loners like Nova, but she was one of the few who was seated by herself in that section. That was until some douchebag sat down next to her.
She smiled at him and moved her stuff further over toward the other side, as if he might try to steal her shit. I grinned at the thought. My woman looked like she was fresh from prison, eating in public for the first time, tucked around her food like it might not be there two seconds from now. It killed to know that her own family had done that to her. They made her believe that someone could come along and take everything from you in the blink of an eye whether they were entitled to it or not.
I wanted to show Nova that she was strong enough to stop them, strong enough to take it all back and then some. She was. When I first became infatuated with her, I never would have thought that, but the way I watched her stand up to me - fuck to my whole club - I knew she had started to realize there were some things you were never meant to allow people to take from you. She was determined to regain dignity - something I didn’t think she’d ever lost. If anyone needed to reclaim that shit - it was me. I’d fucked up in the shittiest way and could have cost that girl her life as a result. Some of my brothers still couldn’t look me in the eye.
Nova’s laughter captivated me. Her head tipped back, and she looked so much younger and far more carefree in that moment than I’d ever seen her. Maybe being here was the wrong way to go about things. Not for the first time, I found myself wondering if she would be better off without me in her life. The answer was no. If for no other reason than there was still a threat to her life. I didn’t deserve her, her forgiveness, or another chance, but I was stubborn enough to take whatever she was willing to give anyway.
The dick sitting two seats behind me dropped his book on the floor and caused Nova to glance back. Her eyes immediately found mine and locked there. Her brows pulled in toward the bridge of her nose and she cocked her head to the side as if to question why I was there, but before she could seek answers, the professor finally arrived and called everyone’s attention to her. My eyes scanned to the front briefly to assess the woman.
She seemed like a bitch, which was probably why she was stuck teaching adults how to teach children. The only threat she posed was whether she would bore me to death or simply annoy the shit out of me with her droning voice.
