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My eyes crack open slowly and I stare blankly at the art piece hanging on my wall. “They’ll get what’s coming to them.”
“Hey!” His voice hardens, but his tone remains soft. Gentle. “Look at me.” My eyes shift to his. Wicked is painfully attractive, in a way that would be considered classically handsome if not for the hardness in his eyes, the nose ring, tattoos, and… well, the scar I haven’t touched yet that’s carved into his chest. “Youdon’t have to be that person with me. You know that.” He and I haven’t been around each other long since reuniting, but I know. I’ve known since the first time I saw him again that I could trust him. It’s as though all of our years apart don’t exist.
“You’re the only one who sees this side of me,” I answer hoarsely, the tears now dried on my cheeks. Reaching for his hand, I suck in a deep breath when electricity zaps between us. “Stay in here tonight.”
His hand stills. “I’m not fucking you.”
I glare up at him. “Did I fucking ask you to?”
“No.” He stands from the bed, moving across the room and flicking the light off before kicking his gray sweats off.Rude.“But then have I ever waited for your permission?”
“No,” I say into the darkness.
“Wolf crashed as soon as I put him down. This where you guys stayed?” he asks as the mattress sinks behind me.
“We stayed at Papa’s while he was gone, but I always kept a room here for him as a—”
“—vault house. I get it.” A vault house is what we basically call a safe house. It’s a getaway house if you need one.
“We spent a lot of time here, though. Sometimes, I’d pretend that I didn’t have a whole mafioso to run. Here, I’d be able to just be Ruby La Rosa, Wolf’s mama. But out there? As soon as I left this house.”
His arm rests over my body and he pulls me into his chest. “You were Lala La Rosa, the devil in black.”
“Yes,” I whisper, shuffling farther into him. I duck my mouth behind his arm just enough to breathe the smell of his skin. Soap, nicotine, and clean detergent. “Can I ask you something?”
“You’re going to anyway,” he growls into my hair.
My eyelids turn to lead as my mouth opens. “Why did you put me in that maze?”
Sleep takes hold and sweeps me up into the darkness.
I roll onto the side to squeeze farther into Wicked, and my arm lands on a cool spot. I push up off the mattress and reach for my phone that’s already charging on the bedside table. He must have put it on there before he went to bed last night.
Last night.
Pain radiates through my heart once again, and any time I think of Mama’s face, it’s as though a knife digs deeper and deeper into my chest.
“Morning,” Wicked says from behind me, and I turn to face him.
Wolf’s little hands reach out for me and I curl my finger toward them both. Wicked lays him down on my bed and he crawls his little body over to my side, slipping beneath the blanket. “Mama sad…”
I kiss his little head, looking up at Wicked. I don’t know if it’s because so much has happened since he and I have seen each other again and he feels too guilty to grind me about keeping Wolf from him, or it’s an impending storm that he’s holding from me, but I decide not to poke the bear.
“Morning.” I smile down at Wolf. His dark eyes so much like Wicked’s, only brighter. “Hungry?”
He nods before sliding out from my blanket and over the bed. He runs his little body down the corridor. “Untle! Untle!”
“Hey, buddy…” Royce’s voice drifts through my room, and my smile falls.
“Shit—” Wicked steps in farther, closing the door behind him. “Don’t be like that.” He raises his brows at me. “You, of all people, understand the importance of family, Ruby.”
I sigh, inching up the bed and running my fingers through my dark hair, pushing it to the side. “I know. And I know how bikers are, but right now?”
“He’s family. The most family I’ve ever had that isn’t Poppy or you.”
Chewing on my bottom lip, I slide out from beneath the bed covers. “Okay. Look, I need to go see Papa—” I spin around and instantly feel paralyzed by the way he’s glaring at me. I look down at what I’m wearing, the same bra and panties from last night. “What? Don’t act like you haven’t seen me naked.”
“I have—and that’s precisely the fucking problem.”
