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He squeezed his eyes shut and once again took a long inhale through his nostrils. His heart was attempting to escape his chest. He wouldn’t doubt she could see the intense thumping through his damn T-shirt.
But he needed to nut up and be a man right fucking now. Own up to what he’d done and also explain why.
She had to understand. For fuck’s sake, she had to.
She was smart and level-headed. She was rational.
“Can’t live with this secret between us, so I gotta tell you. You might hate me and I get it. Gonna hate it if you hate me, but gonna understand it if you do.”
“What?” Her brown eyes were now wide, the excitement long gone and he could hear the slight tremor in her voice. All the color had fled her face. “What? You’re scaring me. Tell me.”
He didn’t want to tell her.
He didn’t.
But how couldn’t he?
“This is somethin’ I ain’t ever told anyone before.” He struggled to get air, his throat felt like it had closed to the width of a pencil, and a sharp pain radiated through his chest. “My mother died—”
“You told me that already.”
He shook his head. “She didn’t just die. Someone killed her when I was fifteen.”
Her worry quickly turned to sadness and empathy. “I’m sorry. Why didn’t you mention it before? That had to be very difficult.”
“Yeah. Came home and found her in our kitchen—”
She gasped and slapped a hand over her mouth for a second, then dropped it, a horrified look on her face. “You found her? Oh my God! That’s awful. To find your mother…” Her eyes instantly became shiny.
Christ, if she started crying this would make it so much fucking worse. He needed to continue and see this through.
“Someone had gotten into the house and… The person was looking for her boyfriend. But, of course, she was there, too. She ended up bein’ collateral damage.”
As he’d been talking, she’d moved closer. “Someone killed her and her boyfriend?”
He hesitated. She didn’t need to know the truth about Fender since it didn’t touch her in any way. “Yeah.”
Fuck.
Now she was toe to toe with him and held a tight fistful of his T-shirt within her fingers. She tipped her face up to him. “You were only fifteen. What did you do?”
“Ran to a neighbor’s house. The old man called the pigs. Then the state came and got me, even though I didn’t wanna go.”
“Did family eventually come get you?”
He shook his head. “No. My father was in prison. Because of that, the little family he had disowned us all. Had no other family to go to. Nobody wanted me, so ended up in the system for about a year.”
“Ozzy, I’m so sorry.”
Not as much as he would be. He pushed on because he needed to get this the fuck over with. “Took off from the foster home before I was supposed to.” The fuck if he was waiting until he was eighteen. Instead, he ran away the day right after he turned sixteen.
Just fucking ghosted.
“After you took off, did you immediately join the Fury? You said you lied about your age at the time.”
It wasn’t immediate, but it didn’t matter, so he nodded and tried to swallow the brick lodged in his throat. The closer he got to the truth, the larger that brick was becoming.
Keep fuckin’ goin’.
“Even though my mom had no ties to any MC, the man she was seein’ at the time did. That led to her bein’ killed ‘cause of a beef between two clubs. The biker she was seein’ didn’t belong to the Fury but betrayed them. ‘Cause of that, someone in the Fury broke into our house to leave a message and a warnin’. That Fury member killed my mother ‘cause she was a witness.”
She shook her head slightly and frowned. “I don’t understand. How could you join the same club that killed your mother?”
This was where the truth was going to really start fucking hurting. “Revenge. No other reason.”
“And did you get it?” Her question was whispered but it might as well have been shouted.
“Yeah.”
Something crossed her face, but it was gone as quickly as it came. “Was the revenge as sweet as everyone thinks it is?”
Fuck me. “At the time, yeah.”
“At the time? How about now?”
A clock began ticking in his head. A countdown to the end. Of this story. Of what he and Shay had. “Not… quite.”
Her brow dipped low. “What changed?”
Bile rose up his throat making him want to fucking puke. “Who was affected by that revenge.”
“I don’t understand.” She shook her head, clearly confused. “Who else was affected besides the people directly involved?”
He sucked in a breath. Then another. He was walking a narrow path along a cliff, knowing it could be disastrous but once he started, he couldn’t stop. It was too late for him to go back. To change his mind and take another path. He had to keep going and get to the other side.
