Page 11 of Cross’s Reckoning

Cross is outside beside the garage. He's leaning over his bike with a rag in one hand, his stripped cut lying across the seat. The leather still looks wrong without Perdition across the back and only his name remains.

He looks up as I approach. "Couldn't sleep?"

"Kind of unsurprising given the situation, don't you think?"

He tosses the rag onto a bench. "What do you want, Lola?"

The question irritates me immediately, probably because I've spent hours asking myself exactly that.

"I want to know what happens now."

"Ask Kane."

"I'm asking you."

"Your guess is as good as mine. I came here expecting five minutes with him. Everything after that is new."

"And I came here because you blew my life apart by making me part of this whether you intended to or not."

His expression changes. "We're not doing that again, are we?"

"Why? Because you decided the argument was over?"

"Because I didn't make you lie to Cyrus."

"No. You just made it necessary by doing what you did."

"Your father made it necessary."

There it is. It always comes back to my father. Always Cross looking at me like I'm refusing to see something obvious.

"You've been waiting years to say that, haven't you?"

His brows draw together. "Say what?"

"That everything wrong with Perdition is Cyrus and everything wrong with me is that I don't hate him enough."

"I've never said there's anything wrong with you."

"You don't have to. You're really good at making that clear."

"How?"

The genuine confusion on his face makes me even angrier. "You've spent years treating me like you can barely tolerate being in the same room with me."

Cross goes still. Good, because at least that lands.

"Every time I defended the club, you looked at me like I was an idiot. If I agreed with my father, you'd walk away. If I disagreed with you, I'd get that expression."

"What expression?"

"That one."

He rubs a hand over his jaw. "You think I hate you."

"Don't flatter yourself. I haven't spent years worrying about it."

"Liar."