Page 84 of Life Or Death

I turn my back to him. My throat is so tight I can barely breathe, and I don’t know how to shape the words into something that won’t destroy me. Every emotion I’ve been carrying since Ginger walked into that clubhouse is sitting right beneath my skin, raw and bleeding, and if I open my mouth now, I’m going to say something I can’t take back.

“Your voice broke along with the fucking phone?” he growls. “I’m talking to you. Turn around and fucking look at me.”

Something hot and sharp flares in my chest. I spin around to face him, my hands curling into fists at my sides.

“She didn’t say anything that wasn’t true.”

He scoffs. “I highly doubt that. Ginger is a cunt.”

He takes a step toward me, and I try to back away, but there’s nowhere to go. My shoulders hit the wall, and he closes the distance, his body crowding mine, his palms slamming against the plaster on either side of my head.

“What the fuck is going on, Jess?” His voice drops, and the anger starts to fade. I can handle a loud and abrasive Lucifer, but when he gets all soft on me, that fucking wrecks me. “I’ve been out of my mind, worrying⁠—”

“I think we need to get divorced.”

The words fall out of my mouth before I can stop them, and he goes completely still. Every muscle in his body locks, and his eyes widen just a fraction before narrowing into dangerous slits.

“The fuck you just say?”

I swallow hard. “I can’t do this anymore, Lucifer.” My voice trembles, but I force myself to keep going. “Not after what happened between us the other night. I’m not wired like those other women. I’m not my mother.”

His brows furrow. “Your mother? What the fuck does your mother have to do with this?”

A frustrated sound tears from my throat, and I press my palms flat against his chest, pushing him back as I step around him.

In all the months we’ve been doing this, we’ve never been very forthcoming with our pasts, but there’s no way to properly express what I’m feeling without giving him the truth.

“My mother was a whore,” I rasp. “And my father . . . he was her pimp. I ran away from home because I knew if I stayed, I’d wind up just like her.” My eyes burn, and I blink hard, but it doesn’t help. “That it was only a matter of time before my dad had a line of johns waiting outside my door like he had them wait outside hers.” A tear breaks free and rolls down my cheek. I don’t wipe it away. Instead, I turn around and bare my pain to the man I so badly wanted to be mine.

“What happened between us . . .” My voice cracks, but I push through. “It wasn’t just an itch I needed to scratch. It wasn’t just sex for me.” I look up at him. “I . . . fucking love you, and I know that’s not what you want to hear. That you married me because you felt immense guilt but⁠—”

The rest of the sentence dies on my tongue as he closes the distance between us, and again I find myself backed against another wall.

“Shut the fuck up.”

I flinch, and my chin drops, my gaze falling to the floor between us. He lifts his hand, his fingers curling under my chin, and he tilts my face back up. His touch is rough, calloused, but there’s something almost gentle in the way he holds me, and that breaks my heart even more.

“You don’t know shit about what I want to hear,” he rasps.

His thumb traces along my jaw, and I can feel the tremor in his hand.

“I did marry you out of guilt. I put you in that bar because I was a man obsessed, and you almost died because of it. You weren’t fired from The Hideaway because you did something wrong. I wanted you close. I wanted to be able to look at you whenever the fuck I wanted, so I had Max fire you and I gave you a job. Watched you night after night, committed every fucking feature to my mind, everything from your walk to your fucking smile.”

My breath catches, and I try to make sense of what he’s saying, but he doesn’t give me a chance to process anything before he dumps more truth on me.

“When I realized you were fucking trapped inside the bar, burning alive, something in my soul fucking died. I knew then that I was going to do whatever I had to do to make sure you survived. I would’ve paid anything, and did, but it wasn’t enough, and marrying you became a matter of life or death. But staying married to you is a matter of life or death too because I’d rather die than watch you live the rest of your life as someone else’s woman.”

I open my mouth, but nothing comes out. A sob builds in my throat, and I press my lips together to hold it back.

“I’ll tell you something else too . . . that night. It wasn’t just sex. I marked every inch of your body and came inside you.” I go to turn my head, but his hold on my chin tightens, forcing my eyes to remain locked with his. “I ain’t never done that before, and I didn’t give a fuck about the consequences. Still don’t. I ain’t nobody’s first pick for a husband, and I probably would make a shitty father, but you’re the only person I want any of that with.” He pauses, his nostrils flaring as he pulls in a deep breath. “Now, I don’t know what you need from me to make you realize this is real. You want me to claim you to all my brothers? Done. Nightmare already has a broken nose to prove it. You want me to fuck you in front of every saddle bunny? Line ‘em up and let’s give them a show, baby. If I’m lucky, I’ll knock you up. Ain’t nothing says mine more than you carrying my baby.”

I don’t know what the hell is going on, but the man doesn’t play fair. He’s killing me. Feeding me glimpses of a future I never knew I wanted. A future that I didn’t even think I could have when I woke up from the coma, because the only thing I wanted was to die.

“Or we can keep it simple, and you can put me out of my misery by agreeing to be my ol’ lady. Wear my property patch and ride on the back of my bike. Let me fucking love you for the rest of my days. Be my wife for real. In all the ways that count.”

My heart is hammering so hard I can hear it in my ears.

“Are you proposing to me?” I hiccup. “After I just asked you for a divorce?”