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I’d slept through them. At least twelve hours, and by the way my body and neck ached, I’d slept almost all of it without moving an inch.
Holy crap.
I pulled the sheets in around me. They were black as well as the comforter and pillows. Not surprising. Bishop rode motorcycles, worked on engines at the clubhouse, and liked getting his hands dirty, so why wouldn’t he have black sheets? It was surprisingly practical.
“You’re still here.” I couldn’t disguise the astonishment in my voice or the vulnerable tremor, both acting in complete betrayal to how I’d wished those words sounded.
“I told you I would be,” he answered, his head falling to the side a little as he watched me. “We’ve had this discussion twice now about—”
“How you never say or do anything you don’t want to,” I finished with an airy laugh. “I know. I’m sorry you had to see—”
“I’m not.” He got to his feet, my heart rate escalating as he walked around the bed and sat next to me. “I keep telling you to trust me, and I know you get a laugh out of it, but it’s not something I say just to get you to do what I tell you to like I know fucking best. I tell you that shit because I want you to know that you can come to me with anything, and you can trust me to help with it, fix it, or fucking burn it down.”
I leaned in, my fingers twisting in the comforter as I desperately wanted to reach out to him.
Bishop didn’t often share this side. The side where you could see pain in his eyes and heard it in his voice.
It was like he’s had to put up this heavy, impenetrable steel wall for so long.
He’s had to protect everyone, taking the blows for them. Hit after hit while they pulled themselves back together.
But what was left when his walls crumbled?
Who would be the steel wall who stood in front of him while he built them back up?
Like he’d done for everyone else.
His head dropped, and I reached out, grabbing his hand, pulling it to my face, and pressing my lips to his palm. It brought him back to me. He raised his eyes, and his hand curled around my jaw, cradling my face.
“Tell me,” I whispered.
His jaw clenched, and he sucked in a deep breath. “Calli’s mom, Lucy, had a heart arrhythmia. She just dropped dead one day, and that was it. She was gone.” I leaned into his hand, offering him that small encouragement to continue. “For years after, I thought it was undiagnosed, that she just had no idea. Found out from Lucy’s sister that it was actually genetic, and she’d known about it since she was a baby. If she’d just told me, trusted me with the truth, I could have had more time with her. I couldn’t have stopped it from happening, but I would have come home earlier from the clubhouse at night. I would have told her not to work so she could spend more time with Calli.”
The air was heavy with the weight of his confession.
“Does Calli know?”
His already deep frown buried itself even further into his brow. “No. I didn’t want her to know. Maybe that’s cruel.”
“It’s not,” I told him seriously. “Calli always talked about her mom’s death as some freak accident that no one ever saw coming. In a way, I think that gives her peace, knowing there was nothing anyone could have done. I don’t think telling her the truth would do anything but hurt her.”
He nodded.
It was just another burden he had to carry to protect someone he loved.
Everyone had skeletons in their past that hurt them. No one moved through life without a little pain.
Bishop’s pain lurked beneath the surface of a stoic façade.
He hid it well. Much better than I did.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, reaching for his club cut and holding it tightly in my fist. “I’m sorry you didn’t get more time with her, and I’m really sorry I’ve been laughing at your ‘trust me’ mantra.”
We both smiled—an unspoken understanding—and the air lifted enough for us to breathe again.
Still, his hand cradled my cheek, and he used it to draw my face forward, pressing his forehead to mine. “Before we move on from this, I do need the answer to another question,” he murmured, and I knew what it was before the words even vacated his mouth.
“My brother never moved on from that life like I did,” I explained with a heavy sigh. “When he saw how tired I was, he tried to give them to me.”
