I can guarantee if that were the case, I would have taken Circus and got it done by now, legal measures or otherwise. Ask me, Chaos buys time with all this fucking prep talk. What for? I don’t know. But I get the impression it has something to do with where he’s gone today.
“Maybe.” Jenna shrugs, arms folded tight across her chest. The sweater she’s borrowed today doesn’t quite fit her properly—small in the body and wide in the shoulders. I like her better in mine.
Must itch at her brain to be stuck in somebody else’s clothes, though. Someone else’s house.
Must chafe more not to want to leave for the alternate—a home that’s nothing of the kind and maybe never was.
“What made your mom let him back into your life?”
Her head snaps up, surprise in the pinch of her brow. “Excuse me?”
“She knew he was bad news, right? Why leave you tied to him like this?”
“Desperate times call for desperate measures.” She sighs. “We talked about it,” Jenna confesses. “Before she asked him for help. We’d tried getting extra work—both of us—and it just made things worse. So she asked me before she called him. Told me what he’s like, why she left.” Her lids grow heavy, regret sallowing her features. “He was a good man, once.”
“Let me guess. During his first years with the club?”
She glances toward me, seemingly annoyed that I discounted the tiny bit of redemption she kept aflame for the man.
“We all were, Freckles. Every one of us one percent fuckers. We were all good men when we joined. Bright-eyed and full of big ideas, middle fingers raised to our predecessors. But time has a funny way of showing you why the people you rebelled against acted the way they did. It proves that some things can’t be changed.”
She half-shrugs as though to say she sees my point. “You wouldn’t be a one percent club if it weren’t for the drugs, women, and all the shit you do on the wrong side of the law, though. Why try to change it?”
“I ain’t talking about that.” My chest grows tight.What the fuck am I doing here?Being vulnerable like Chaos fucking said I should. I drag a hand over my face with a sigh and explain. “I mean doing the same shit you saw your father do and swore you never would.” Faint memories of arguments with my old mancircle the fringes of my mind. “Hurting people you love. Using people. Breaking trust.” She softens her gaze some. “All that basic decent human being shit that everyone else in the world seems to find so easy.”
“You’re wrong,” she states. “Find me a perfect human being who’s never once acted against their morals, no matter how basic, and I’ll show you a thousand more who have. It’s natural to do bad things from time to time when it promises a better outcome.”
“Is that why you’re helping him?”
She fidgets with her hair, tucking the short strands behind her heavily-pierced ear. “Maybe.”
“He promised you an end to the debt hanging over your heads, right?”
Jenna nods.
“What has he done so far that gets you both closer to that goal?”
“How do you mean?” Her frown returns.
I glimpse Jezabel poke her head around the opening from the parlor and then back off, seemingly happy knowing where Jenna went. The woman in question still watches me, waiting on my answer. “Your old man placed you inside Breed business and made you a spy.”
“In the most basic terms, yeah.”
“And what did he do while you were there, feeling as though you had to look over your shoulder while you kept your ear to the ground?”
Freckles straightens her arms before her, smoothing the thin sleeves of the jumper. “I don’t know, really, but I know he had connections.”
“Did he use them, though?”
“What are you trying to get at, Fang?” Her frown grows stern, losing the gentle thoughtfulness of before. “I think we’veestablished he’s an asshole who can’t be trusted. What do you want me to do to show you that I get that? Change my fucking name by deed-poll?” Her chest rises and falls with deep, shaky breaths.
I raise my hands and speak the truth. “I don’t know what I wanted.” Perhaps to make sure she understood he’s not worth risking herself for. But then again, I know that’s not why she continues with this stupid fucking crusade. She does it for women like those still here with us. For the ones who aren’t, like Eleanor.
I swallow the constriction in my throat and utter the words I’ve barely said to a single goddamn person my whole life. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have pushed you like that.”
She looks disturbed. Unsure what to do with herself or my words as she fidgets with the cuffs of the sweater. “I’m sorry I snapped.”
“You had a right to.”
