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“You don't want to know about my past, babe,” he said, his tone causal, his fingers drawing circles over my hip.
I turned my head to look up at him. His chin ducked and he looked me in the eye. “Tell me,” I tried again.
He rolled his eyes, letting the air out of his chest. “What do you want to know?”
“Everything,” I decided. Because I did want to know everything. The big things, the little things. Everything that made Reign who he was.
He shook his head, his hand pressing my head back on his chest. “Not much to tell, babe. What you see is what there is. I'm prez here. It's booze and bitches and brotherhood. You ain't stupid. I'm sure you put two and two together and figured out what I do.”
“You sell guns,” I put in.
“Yeah, I sell guns. So I meet with a lot of unsavory types. I bust skulls when I need to. Which is more often than you would think. But that's it, babe. That's my life.”
I wasn't giving up that easily. “What was your childhood like?”
He made a short, weird chuckle. “Seriously?”
“Yeah, seriously,” I said, mocking his tone.
“It was this too. Dad was prez. We grew up on the compound. Me, Cash, Wolf, a few of the other guys.”
“What were you like?”
“A little shit,” he answered honestly. “Picking fights for no good reason with the outside kids. Getting myself a nasty reputation by the time I was in middle school.”
“Were you and Cash close?” I asked. Because they were close as adults. Closer even than most brothers.
“Not always. He was always tagging along. Being a pain in the ass. Cracking jokes that I didn't think were funny. Trying to be part of my friend group.”
“What changed?”
“Mom died,” he said, his shoulder shrugging underneath my head.
“How old were you?”
“I was twelve. Cash was ten.”
“I'm sorry,” I said, being motherless myself, I understood the sting. But my mom was long gone before I could even miss her. He got twelve years to love his.
“She was too soft for Dad's life. Always worried. Always sick. She couldn't deal with the stress. One day, she got sick and never got better. Cash was a mess. Dad went off the deep end...”
“The deep end?” I prompted.
“He might have made her life difficult with how much the chapter meant to him, how hard he worked, how often he came home bloody and bruised. But he loved our mother. And he didn't handle losing her well. Drinking all the time. Fighting. Taking off on all the runs he could go on.”
“Where were you and Cash?” I asked, my hand running down his arm.
“Here. Some of the men were always here to make sure we were fed and went to school and shit. Vin especially.”
“That's sad,” I said, my fingers brushing over his hand.
His hand moved, surprising me by grabbing mine and lacing his fingers through. “Don't feel sorry for me, babe. It wasn't that bad. I got away with shit no other kid my age would have.”
“And Cash?”
The shoulder shrug again. “I took care of him.”
Of course he did. Because underneath his big, bad, biker persona was a decent person. Someone who didn't just live for depravity like it seemed from the outside. He was someone who raised up his annoying little brother. He was someone who saved me. He was someone who refused to drag his men into my mess.
He might have been bad.
But he was a good man at the same time.
“Any fucking thing else or can I go to sleep?” he asked, but the words were softened by his hand squeezing mine.
“What's your favorite color?”
His body rolled under mine as he laughed silently. “Black babe.”
“Black isn't a color. It's the absence of color,” I countered.
“Don't be a know it all,” he chuckled, reaching up and tugging my hair playfully.
After that, we fell silent. I took a breath, breathing in his scent, snuggling closer to him, throwing my leg across his body, giving in to my need to be as close to him as possible.
“What about you?” he asked later. So much later that I had assumed he was asleep so the shock sent me jolting up, the top of my head slamming underneath his chin, making me yelp and him grunt.
“What about me?” I asked, reaching up to rub my head.
“What was your childhood like?” he asked, shocking me. He actually wanted to know about my past?
“Oh, um...” my past sounded silly compared to his. His was rough and sad and interesting. Mine was, well, not...
“Talk,” he commanded and I felt myself snort at his bossiness.
But I gave in anyway.
“It was just me and my dad. He was great. Always encouraging. Always there to help me out when I needed him. Really strict about my grades, my friends, and later... who I dated. He kinda... forced me into the family businesses which I kind of resented. But, then again, I had never said anything about not liking it so he couldn't have known about that.”
“What happened to your mom?” he asked, one of his hands moving up into my hair, slowly sliding into it and sending a shiver through my body.
“I don't really know,” I admitted, my words a little sad, a little edgy. My mother wasn't a good topic for me. There was resentment there. “My dad didn't really talk about it. He just said she was selfish and didn't want to share our lives and that it said things about her, not me, that she did that.”
“Sore spot,” he commented quietly.
“No, no it's fine. I mean I'm over...”
“Sore spot,” he repeated, his arm around my hips squeezing me a little.
“Yeah, I guess.”
“So let's stop talking about it,” he suggested.
And we did.**It really kinda sucked that I was never going to get the chance to tell Reign that I finally got my answers about her. That she wasn't just a sore spot anymore. She was a giant festering wound.
At that thought, tears burned up behind my eyes.
Not because my mom was a monster.
