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“So you’re a lover not a fighter?” I joke, trying my damndest to make him smile, because serious Beast makes me way more nervous than any other version of him that I’ve met already.
“I’m both,” he smiles then. It’s a small, sexy smile, and I try my hardest not to stare at his handsome face for too long. “But I’m also a cold-blooded killer.”
I grin, nudging his knee with mine. “You don’t scare me, Beast.”
The look he gives me next has my smile slipping from my face. “I know and that’s a huge fucking problem.”
“Why?”
“Because youshouldbe scared. I’m not a good fucking man, Princess. None of us are. There’s a darkness in me that I’ve come to accept. That will never go away. Not ever. I can’t be saved, and I’ve long since lost the ability to fucking choose the man I want to be.This life, my life, is nothing to aspire to.”
“You’re well respected. Dom and the guys look up to you,” I argue.
“Maybe so, that doesn’t mean I’m not a bad man.”
“Theylikeyou.”
“Perhaps that’s true, and maybe that’s only because they’re just the same as me. But how much can you truly like a man who could end your life just like that?” he says, snapping his fingers. “I’m respected, yes. Liked…? That’s a matter of opinion.”
“Connall would say otherwise.”
“Connall is like a brother to me. We knew each other before.”
“Before?” I ask him, keen to find out about his past and where he came from. All I know is that he was a fighter at Ransom’s club and he grew up in Birmingham before moving here to work for my dad a year ago.
“Connall was a childhood friend. He lived in Shirley too. Moved to London a couple of years before me to work for his family. One of the reasons I took the job was so I could hang out with him again.”
“You went to school together?” I ask.
Beast laughs, and this time his eyes twinkle. “We skipped school together. Got up to the usual shit.”
“Like what?”
“Like pulling girls older than ourselves, smoking weed, getting into fights. You know, that kind of thing. Wherever trouble was, so were we. Best fucking years of my life.”
“I can imagine.” I grin, but when his smile drops, mine does too. “What is it?”
“I didn’t make things easy for my mum. She was a good woman, and for a while I caused her a lot of grief. I regret it.”
“Was it just you and her?” I ask tentatively.
His expression darkens. “I had a dad too. He was a dick.”
I nod. “That bad, huh?”
Beast scrapes a hand over his face. “A womaniser and a fucking drunk. Mum got sick with cancer, and he left us to look after each other. She died when I was seventeen.”
“I’m sorry,” I say, reaching for him. My fingers wrap around his arm, squeezing gently. “That must’ve been hard.”
“It was. Watching her waste away before my eyes with stomach cancer was the single fucking hardest thing I ever had to endure.”
“Your dad didn’t help at all?”
“No.” Beast’s jaw tightens at the memory. “But he did have the gall to turn up at the funeral half cut, saying how much he fucking loved her when he hadn’t seen either of us in two fucking years. I lost my head and almost beat him to death. If Connall wasn’t there to pull me off of him, I would’ve.”
“Fuck,” I whisper, meeting his gaze and feeling his rage like it’s my own. To have to take care of your mum whilst she’s dying of cancer is bad enough, but to do it alone? Fucking unforgivable.
“That day I went to the funeral as Roger, and left as Beast. I mademychoice, and here I am.”
