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Her caustic reply came straight back. “Clearly. But that’s because he wasn’t willing to listen to anything I had to say. Which, correct me if I’m wrong, seems to be King’s go-to response when he doesn’t get his own way. He’s always been like that.
”
If I was going to get anywhere with her, I needed to ease her into this. “He does like things to go his way, Jen, but aren’t we all like that? He’s not perfect, that’s for sure. But are you?”
She fired up at that. “No, but I never said I was!”
“I know. And I also know that he’s hurt you deeply. I don’t know the ins and out of it, and I don’t want to know. But I do know that he cares about you, even when you feel like he doesn’t.”
Her body sagged and the spirit she’d brought to her fight with King, drained from her. “I know,” she whispered, her voice close to breaking. A tear slid down her face. “I can’t help myself from fighting with him. We just bring the worst out in each other sometimes. And then at other times, he’s amazing and I remember why I love him so much.” A guttural sob tore from her and she clapped her hands over her mouth as she looked at me in horror. “What have I done, Devil? He’ll never forgive me for this.”
I sat quietly and watched while she fell apart. There wasn’t anything I could say in answer to her question. I didn’t know what this would do to their relationship. I suspected he would forgive her, but maybe he’d simply stash it away as another knife to his heart and hope like hell he could still look at her without despising the shit she’d done to him and his club.
I reached for her hands and pulled them away from her face. “Jen, listen to me.” When I had her attention, I continued, “What’s done is done. You both have to figure out how to live with it, but the only way you’re gonna do that is if you speak honestly and tell him, or me, exactly what you told Shannon. We need to know what we’re dealing with here so we can put measures into place to protect the club and everyone involved.”
She nodded, back and forth, over and over, like a crazed woman. Gulping back her hesitation, she said, “All I knew about Moses was that he was dumped on the club’s doorstep one morning and that the club whore who birthed him killed herself later that day. The next thing I heard about it all was that the baby and the father went missing.” She slid sideways on the chair, closer to me, and lowered her voice. “But I know that their disappearances weren’t because the father took the baby and left. I heard King talking about it on the phone one night, saying that he had no clue what happened to the child, but that all the tracks were cleared up and no one would be able to prove a thing later on.”
Fuck.
“And that’s what you told Shannon?”
Fear radiated from her as she whispered, “Yes.”
King was right to be worried, and I felt the distinct urge to drown in a bottle of rum. I stood. “I’ll pass this info onto King.” I struggled to look at her myself; I wasn’t sure how King would manage it without wanting to throttle the life out of her.
Her fingers clawed at me, gripping my arm as I tried to leave. “Wait!” She stood. “What do you think King will do now that he knows all that?”
I raised a brow. “You’re fucking kidding me, right?”
She remained silent.
Easing out of her grip, I said, “What do you think he’s going to do, Jen? You betrayed his trust and you’ve put him and everything he values at risk. I think you know what he’ll do.” The thing was, though, that I figured he’d do what he already told me he’d do—he wouldn’t be able to say no to her. Plus, he wouldn’t leave a child to fend for itself with Jen as its mother.
She blinked rapidly a few times. “Yeah,” she said with quiet unease.
I left her then and hoped I never had to see her again. Betrayal like she’d dealt to King wasn’t something I could understand, and if she were in my life the way she was in his, I wasn’t sure how I’d ever deal with it. Forgiveness would be a hard battle.
I found him and Hailee. She took one look at me and knew something was up. “I’ll leave you two to it.”
As he watched her go, King said, “I like her.” He then turned to me. “But I’m not going to like what you’re about to tell me, am I?”
I shook my head. “No.”
After I relayed the information to him, he sat in silence for a long time before finally saying, “If she wasn’t having a baby, I’d kick her out in a heartbeat.” I felt every ounce of his dilemma. With one final glance at me, he said, “Why do we continue to love those who cut our hearts out and let them bleed all over the floor while telling us they really do love us?”
16
Hailee
I snuggled up to Devil and traced patterns on his belly. It was still early, somewhere around six, and he hadn’t stirred. Usually he woke around that time, but this morning, he slept like the dead.
He’d been a little off after we’d left King’s the night before. Whatever they’d been discussing had greatly affected him, King, and Jen. When we finished up there, none of them were talking. Devil and King seemed okay with each other, but neither man could look at Jen.
He’d even been subdued while we had sex. Rather than being wild and passionate, it had been slow and deep. Instead of looking at me like he wanted to consume every part of me like he usually did, his eyes had held something else all together. I’d felt like he was trying to read me. As if he’d been trying to figure something out. But we’d fallen asleep almost straight away, so I didn’t get a chance to ask him about it.
“What secrets do you have buried deep?” I whispered as I kissed his chest.
I’d known him for almost two weeks and felt completely at ease with him. And yet, I hardly knew anything about him. Our relationship still felt right, though, and I hadn’t experienced the usual new relationship nerves. I desperately wanted to know him on a deeper level, but I didn’t want to push him to share anything he didn’t want to. It wasn’t the way I liked my relationships to go. If a guy wanted to take his time to open up to me, I could live with that so long as I felt he was invested. And Devil had made it abundantly clear he was invested.
