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“For a long time I just didn’t get it,” he explained with a heavy sigh. “I didn’t understand why she was so angry all the time. Why she seemed to hate the club so much. And why she seemed to hate Ripley and me.”
My heart hurt a little when I heard the change in his voice. It couldn’t have been easy having a mother who spent most of the life you shared with her, treating you like crap.
“That’s why I’ve really been confused about wanting to move away. I’ve found it so hard to admit I might be like her. Not hate the club, but not feel the same connection the rest of my brothers do.” His brow pulled together, knotting between his eyes. “It just didn’t make sense to me until recently. Until I realized maybe it wasn’t her hating the club but just wanting to get away from it. It was how she was kept from following her dreams and ambitions.”
“Passion is soul-consuming,” I repeated again, this time barely above a whisper.
Not being able to do what she loved drove her crazy.
He nodded and cleared his throat. “If I wasn’t allowed to follow this…” he paused and waved his hand at the building, “… or if someone tried to keep me from chasing it like her dad did, I’d have felt destroyed too.”
I leaned into him, his arm coming around me as I lay my head on his shoulder, and we both looked up at the Mob Museum. “So what are you feeling now?”
He let out a huff of laughter. “I’m feeling like I wish I hadn’t avoided the conversation I had with my dad the other night for so long, where he told me he’d known for a long time I was meant for suits more than I was leather. It would’ve save a lot of anxiety about explaining to him how I felt.”
Drake really was something special.
His whole family was.
There were no judgments, just undying support and fierce love and protection. Something that, when he’d first mentioned it like that, I really didn’t understand.
You don’t, not until you see it and feel it.
“Regrets?” I questioned, nudging him a little.
He hooked his arm right around my neck and pulled me in, pressing his lips to my forehead. “Not so much regret.” I looked up when he paused, noticing how he was lost in the sight in front of us for a second before he finally jerked back into reality. “I wish I’d known what my mom’s passion was. What she loved so much that life wasn’t worth living if she couldn’t follow it. I simply wish I’d known what made her the happiest.”
“Why don’t you ask your dad?” I suggested. “Didn’t you say he knew her when she was young?”
He finally turned his eyes back to me and smiled. “Yeah. That’s a good idea.” I got to my feet and grabbed his hand, pulling him off the bench and toward the front door of the building. “I thought we weren’t going in?” he asked as he dragged his feet behind me.
“That’s before you said you didn’t fuck with the mob,” I explained, pausing at the door with my hand on the handle. “So now I need to know why, and which of them you, Drake Shaw the almighty, are scared of.”
His laughter was loud. “Um… I said we don’t fuck with them, I never said was scared.”
“Uh-huh, sure, baby.”
DRAKE
“Katrina called,” I announced, taking a seat at the edge of my bed where Cassie was curled up tight, watching some documentary about wildflowers on my laptop. “The police investigation sounds like it’s concluded, so we’re gonna have to catch an early flight tomorrow morning to be in court just after lunch.”
She scrunched her nose up and peeked over the laptop at me. “How early?”
I’d noticed since Cassie had been staying with me that she definitely wasn’t a morning person. She was more of a night owl. I didn’t mind it though, it was pretty damn sexy to see her all sleepy and out of it the past few mornings when I had to leave and go to the office for work.
It was something I could easily get used to every day.
Hopefully, sooner than planned.
“We’ll probably have to fly out at four tomorrow morning.”
“Four o’clock sounds like a curse word,” she complained, closing the laptop and pushing it to the side before she suddenly paused, her hand hovering. “You said we… right?”
“I said we.” The relieved smile on her face had me reaching for her, pulling her from under the bed covers to my lap. She straddled my legs and faced me, her hands curling around my neck. “You think I’m gonna back out now?”
She laughed softly, the sound light, airy, and comfortable. “How the universe ever decided I deserved to find a man like you, Drake Shaw, I’ll never fucking know.” She pulled me in, her lips capturing mine, a sweet kiss quickly becoming something a lot more heated as we completely devoured each other.
Though, when I gathered my arms around her and got to my feet, planning on pressing her back into the bed and devouring the rest of her body, instead, both of us were jolted back into the present by a faint yell from downstairs. “Cops!”
