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“Yes, I’m sure,” I had to force strength into my voice.
Hades did not look happy about this, but he nodded once then began talking. “We fell into the same crowd. She did even worse shit than me, which was sayin’ something. But she’d also been through shit worse than me. Shit she never talked about, shit that I later learned took away her ability to be human.”
My stomach roiled at his words.
“She had me tangled up in her shit for a long time.” He stared off into the distance, like he was back there. Faraway.
“Before I patched into the Sons. Sure, we’re outlaws, we do some fucked up shit, but we have rules. She’s a high-ranking member of a cartel. Those fuckers have no rules. I knew she’d get me killed. I didn’t want to die. She took me explaining that to her as rejection. It didn’t end well.”
I raised my brow in a ‘no shit’ gesture.
“Hadn’t seen her until a few months ago. The night I met you.” He reached out and took my hand.
I gaped at him. “The night you met me? The mean the night you were stabbed?”
He nodded once.
“She was the one who stabbed you?” I screeched.
He didn’t reply, which was all the confirmation I needed. “We’ve been together all this time, and you didn’t tell me your psychotic ex-girlfriend tried to kill you?”
“Not exactly something you slip into conversation,” he remarked dryly.
I glared at him. “I don’t know … how about, ‘hey babe, remember that night we met? A girl didn’t like the way I broke up with her, so she tried to end me. For good.’ ” I waved my hand. “Something along those lines would’ve worked swell.”
Hades rubbed the back of his neck. “If I’d tracked her down and killed her like I should’ve, then we wouldn’t be having this conversation right now. You wouldn’t have to live with this for the rest of your fuckin’ life.”
My anger dissipated immediately. It hadn’t disappeared completely; I was sure it would reemerge at a later date. But for now, I reached up to cup Hades’s jaw.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake! I swear, if another alpha male tries to place blame on himself for not being supreme ruler of the universe, I’m going to scream,” I rebuked. “I will not let you take the blame for this just because you didn’t kill your ex-girlfriend after she stabbed you and left you for dead.” A dark smile stretched across my face. “There’s a sentence I never thought I’d say.”
Hades examined me then. Examined me as if he was trying to see inside of my head. “You’re okay.” Not a question exactly. An observation.
I remained quiet for a moment, doing some of my own self-examination. “Not entirely,” I admitted. “But you’re okay. Sirius is okay. I’m okay. Those are all ingredients to me being on the road to okay.” I frowned at him. “As long as you’re not going to do some noble, alpha male shit and decide to leave me because you don’t want me to have to deal with your world.”
His eyes blazed, and he squeezed my hand. “I’m not fuckin’ noble, Freya,” he bit out. “And I’m not goin’ anywhere.”
An oath.
I relaxed.
“Then I’m definitely going to be okay.”
Hades had not wanted me leaving the house after that. He was in full-on, alpha male, protective mode. I couldn’t breathe heavily without his body stiffening and his eyes narrowing as if he was waiting for me to dissolve into a blubbering mess, trying to figure out how he’d catch every single one of my tears.
It was nice, comforting even. But it also made me feel all the more breakable knowing he was waiting for me to break down. I needed to be around someone different. Someone who had called late the night before.
“Coffee,” Macy said as a greeting. “Tomorrow morning. I’ll also come over later on in the afternoon with wine or tequila or both, but I feel like you need to talk to someone sooner than that. So coffee. As soon as you wake up. Call me. You won’t wake me up because I have children, and those little devils are up before dawn.” This was followed by a long pause. A loaded one. “You’re going to be okay. And you did the right thing. Love you, babe.”
“You too,” I returned, a little stunned. Stunned that she’d said all of that without so much as taking a breath. That she’d known exactly what I’d needed to hear, that she’d said ‘love you’ in an offhand, casual way yet really sounded like she meant it.
And that was why we were sitting at Oliver’s at seven-thirty in the morning with pastries and very strong coffees. I’d barely slept the night before, even with Hades’s arms wrapped around me, with Sirius’s weight at our feet, with all of the adrenaline rushing out of my body. I knew Hades had barely slept either because every time I’d jerked out of a nightmare, his arms had tightened around me. He never said anything, just held me close. It had helped. A whole bunch. But there were some things even hot, alpha male bikers couldn’t fix entirely. Sometimes you needed a hot, hippy biker babe like the one sitting across me with understanding in her eyes. The one who had just shared her heartbreaking story with me, the one that made me feel a heck of a lot less alone and doomed.
