AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“You do?”
“Yes.”
The corner of her mouth curled, but she remained silent. She liked his answer but struggled with her own. Judgment was a nasty bitch. Trey knew it firsthand. It had been years since he’d even given a second thought to how anyone perceived him. But she wasn’t him. Dahlia still judged her own worth based on what others thought of her.
“East doesn’t pay anyone, but they paid you to work their bar.”
Dahlia shrugged. “Gunner was just being nice, helping me out.”
“No,” Trey said, and she looked up, wide-eyed. “Gunner doesn’t help others without a gain. Means you must have had value with East.”
“I just made drinks,” she whispered.
“They saw value in that.”
Dahlia smiled. “Maybe.”
Ah fuck! How could this woman not see her worth? Trey saw it.
“East?”
Dahlia cleared her throat, shifting slightly. “This is a judgment-free zone, right?”
There it was. Much like East valued Dahlia, she valued what Trey thought of her. Hell, if she only knew, she’d be sitting high and mighty.
“No judgement.”
Dahlia clamped her lips, nodded, and drew her gaze to the floor. “I kind of stumbled upon East. I went to a party with a friend of mine one night and just kinda stayed. Loved the family vibe of the club. Dysfunctional, yeah, but there was this loyalty and trust they had for each other. Like if anything happened, they had each others’ backs.” Dahlia shrugged. “I don’t know, I just liked it. And their dynamic with the old ladies. There was this protective shield over all the women, sometimes even me.”
East had nothing on the Underground. Dahlia had no clue, but her shield was ten times stronger than East could ever provide. Trey had to remind himself it wasn’t a competition. If it had been, he’d win. His possessiveness was showing, and he quickly shifted gears.
“Tell me about your father.”
Her entire face lit up. “My dad was the best. Really rough around the edges and not super social, but he was very protective and loved my mom and me. He died when I was sixteen, and my mom and I were kind of lost without him for a while, you know, ’cause he was everything.”
“How did he die?”
Her face paled as her eyes widened. The question came at her too hard, too fast, and she was obviously unprepared. Fuck!
“Uh…” The question seemed to have caught her off guard. “He was in a convenience store, and it was robbed, and he was shot.”
Dahlia spoke without any emotion as if it was a rehearsed explanation. One she’d told a hundred times.
“You must miss him.”
She flattened her lips, but he saw the tremble. Dahlia nodded and stayed silent while he changed. He was dealing with guilt seeing her shut down a little, as if by bringing up her father’s death, he’d dimmed her light. Trey walked over to the bed, and she shuffled to the top near the pillows. He reached for his phone but stopped when he heard her soft, shaky voice. “Can I tell you something?”
Trey lifted his chin.
“I know it’s going to sound crazy, but there was a part of me that was angry with him when he died. Like, mad as hell that he left us. I know it wasn’t his fault, but…” She twisted her hands and gazed across the room. “We had a really great thing, just the three of us. I mean, we never had a lot of money and didn’t go on fancy vacations to the beach. But it was really good, and when he died, it felt as though he took all that good with him.”
Even through his hardened black heart, Trey could feel her loss to his core.
Dahlia laughed without an ounce of humor. “I’m sorry. That was way too deep, and I just made things weird. Forget what I said.”
No, he wouldn’t. Trey couldn’t.
“Dahlia.”
