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I push open the door and wait for her to round my side before taking her hand in mine. “Yes. At least it’s me.”
Ithought over this day so many times since giving birth to Wolf. How it would happen or how I would tell Wicked. I struggled with envisioning how the words would come out, since I know that I’ve never wanted to say them to begin with. But standing here, watching him hover over Wolf’s bed in his room, with the flickering of lights from his space projector, I never thought I would have felt this bad.
“Mama is still the same.”
“Same as in she trusts you still when she shouldn’t?” I ask, entering the room after leaving my shoes at his door. “Then yes,” I hiss. “She’s the same.”
Wicked’s jaw clenches as he stares down at Wolf. “You fucking kept him from me, Ruby?”
“Shhh!” I snap, grabbing his arm and wincing when his warmth collides with my cold palm. Dragging him out of the bedroom, I wait until I’ve closed the door until I look up at him.
That guilt comes through tenfold when I see the pain in his eyes. A man who has never so much as explored the probability of emotions, yet I’ve just stolen them from him. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. I just—I didn’t know where you were or what I would say to you.”
“You and I both know that is bullshit!” he snaps, his fists clenching at his sides as he paces down the long hallway. He stops outside the door that leads to where his bedroom used to be, right across from mine. The room where we slept together for the first time ever.
I follow him as Poppy slips behind me, and before I can tell her not to wake Wolf, his door is closed. Sighing, I continue to where Wicked stands, his back to me and his arm resting on the doorframe of his old bedroom.
“I agree I didn’t handle it the best I could. But I didn’t know how else to do it. Papa died”—I quote the worddiedwith an eye roll—“and I had to quickly step into his shoes. I didn’t know where you were or if you even got out. Wicked, the last fucking time I saw you, you kidnapped me and let people drug me in a fucking maze!”
He snaps, his hand is on my throat and I’m being shoved against the wall. He peers down at me, and I watch as his eyes harden. Gone is the pain I saw moments ago, and hello wrath. “You could have told me as soon as you saw me tonight.”
I level my eyes on him, unwilling to give him the pleasure of showing pain. “Who’s to say that I wasn’t going to?”
“Oh, I don’t know…” He squeezes further and I feel my cheeks inflate. “Maybe the fact that you tried to run.” He shoves me backward, pointing at me with his finger. “He is mine as much as he’s yours, and from now on, Ruby? That’s exactly how this is going to play out.” He storms down the grand stairs as I massage my throat, leaning back against the wall and breathing through the will to bite back. My eyes rest on the bedroom in front of me,seeing it exactly as it was all those years ago. The familiar bed he fucked me on, the desk—sheets even. I growl out and grab the door handle, slamming it closed.
Shutting off not just those memories, but the pain that comes from them.
I didn’t know how I was going to break it to Wolf when he grew up anyway.Oh hey, buddy, so your father is too fucked up to know.I knew that wasn’t going to work because I’m just as fucked up as Wicked.
My phone blares off in my pocket as I make my way back downstairs where I hear men talking. No doubt with Wicked.
“What?” I snap down the phone.
“I know it’s late, and I know that you don’t work weekends, but you need to come back to the clubhouse. Victor needs to finish his conversation, and there has been a new development.”
Sighing, I end the call, when I see Ma standing near Wicked, her arms crossed. They look deep in conversation. Ma is even doing that thing where her eyes are watering and the wrinkle between them is prominent. Wicked softens for Ma. He always has.
“I have to go,” I say to both of them. “They need me back at the clubhouse.”
“Ruby!” Wicked barks, and I stop just short of the front door, my feet cemented to the floor. “You are not going back to my fucking clubhouse flashing your ass around a bunch of horny fucking bikers.”
I turn slowly, my arms crossing in front of my chest. “I don’t take orders from you, Wicked. I’m not one of your little club sluts.” Snatching my jacket hanging on the hooks near the front door, I shove it over my shoulders and take the steps two at a time.
“Come on, Menace.” Val opens the driver’s door to the G-Wagon. I pause, tilting my head to the side before sidesteppingand walking down the side, toward the garage. “Oh, come on! Please don’t make my job hard!” Jogging down the steps, I ignore the creeping feeling of someone chasing me trickling down my spine as I beep the garage door with the keys in my pocket and slide beneath the glass before it’s completely open. Grabbing the keys to my pastel orange Aston Martin DB 11, a rush of adrenaline rushes through me and I squeal as I lift the door up and slam it closed, locking it just as Wicked slams his palms onto the passenger window.
He points. “Open this fucking door, Ruby!”
I flip him off. “No.” The dash lights come to life and I rev her purring engine a few times before tapping the gear into drive and zipping out of the show garage and past the waiting Mercedes that Val had idling for me.
The wired gates are already open as I floor it onto the road, my Bluetooth hooked to the radio.
Letting out a sigh of relief as my heartbeat levels out in my chest, I look into the rearview mirror to see not just the Mercedes, but single headlights not far from behind him. I don’t know what I expected with Wicked coming back into my life. Did I think it would be hard? Sure. He is a hard man to be around, and I’m not an easy woman, but not like this.
The little green phone starts dancing across my LED dash and I hit the phone button on the steering wheel. “I don’t want a lecture.”
“I know. But damn. Are you both going to be this toxic the entire time?”
“Val, you didn’t know us back then. You don’t know what he has done to me. Me keeping Wolf from him for four years is nothing.”
