Right there.

Right. Fucking. There. I just broke her. The pain on her face and the tears that fell from her eyes broke me too. I hated myself. Hated what I just said.

God, what the hell has gotten into me?!

I was shouting like a maniac at the one person I ever loved, that ever saw value in me. But Jesus, she was stubborn, and it was killing me because I was trapped like a caged animal.

“Allie,” I whispered, trying to fix this immediately before I ruined it some more, “I love you. It kills me how much I love you. But… this… there are things I can’t say right now. I will later, but not right now.”

She didn’t respond. She just looked at me with this… this look of disappointment. I wanted to kiss it away, to make it better, to preserve the image she had of me before I ruined it completely. She turned away before I could even try and disappeared back into the room.

Just like that, everything solid I’d worked hard to build in our relationship broke down. The pieces were so deep and jagged, I didn’t know how I was going to mend this.

I dragged myself to the bedroom and watched her for a while, sitting at the end of the bed with her back to me. With one hand she was rocking the bassinet where Kayden had started fussing. He probably heard my shouting. Hell, I was sure everyone in the apartment building did too. She stared out the window and into the black sky for minutes on end, like she was looking for an escape.

Just like she felt about Ryker, she probably wanted to run far away. Probably wanted to escape the Lawson boys because we were trash. Trash for hurting a woman who was nothing but soft and beautiful on the inside.

“Allie.” I didn’t know what to say, but my heart ached and I was sure she could hear it throb in my voice.

“Is it drugs?” her vacant voice let out.

I shook my head even though she couldn’t see it. “No, baby, I’m not dealing drugs.”

“But you’re hiding something big from me.” It wasn’t a question. It was simply an observation, a statement she wanted to hear out loud and for me to acknowledge.

I swallowed hard. “Yeah.”

“Does it have something to do with that notebook I found in your pocket?”

I froze. Jesus Christ. I hadn’t even stopped to think about that notebook all night. Oh, fuck.

“Where is it?” I frantically demanded.

“I put it back.”

“Did you show it to anyone?”

“Like who?”

“Like anyone?”

“No,” she replied irritably.

My shoulders sagged with relief. I couldn’t fuck that up again. I had to have that book with me at all times. My heart felt like it was on the verge of collapsing. I rubbed my chest and told myself to calm down. She hadn’t shown anyone.

Of course she hadn’t shown anyone! Who would she have shown anyway? I was being unreasonable.

“Yeah,” I finally replied with a sigh. “It does have something to do with it.”

“And you can’t tell me what.”

“No.”

Another moment of silence passed as she absorbed my response, and then she muttered a lifeless, “Okay.”

That was it? Okay?

That didn’t feel like it was enough. I needed more.

I went to her, hating how empty she looked and sounded. I kneeled down in front of her, my heart in ruins at her tear streaked face. I grabbed her free hand and held it to my chest, hoping she’d look at me.

“I will tell you when I can,” I promised. “I swear to you. Trust me.”

Her eyes flickered to mine. “Trust you? Trust is a word you don’t understand. I would have trusted you had you come to me from the beginning. You’ve been lying to me for a while, and I don’t take well to liars. You know that. You know what your brother put me through, how many lies he fed me, the double life he led… Don’t sit here and act like this is any different.”

“This is completely different,” I adamantly replied.

She took back her hand from me and shook her head. “No, it’s not. It doesn’t feel any different, and if something doesn’t feel different, then it isn’t.”

“So what are you saying then?”

Boldly, she retorted, “I’m saying I don’t trust you.”

Frustrated, I wanted to shake some sense into her!

She’d believed wholeheartedly I’d never hurt her. She’d convinced herself I was this perfect being that could do no wrong. But she was wrong. Her image of me was going to crash and burn, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. For once, I couldn’t hold that image up any longer. I was a human being, after all. And humans are flawed and dark and there’s just as much bad in them as there is good.

But trust… trust was something I offered her on a gold platter. She had to trust me about this, and yet she was refusing to. She was shunning the past and all I had done for her, and it made me boil with rage at the audacity!

How fucking dare she?!

I leaned closer to her, forcing her to look at me. When she did, my eyes darkened as I gritted out quietly, “Don’t say that shit about not trusting me after everything I’ve done for you. I fucking tore my life to pieces, changed every bit of me for you. I let my old life go, took on responsibilities I didn’t have to take on, and went home to you every fucking day since you came to me for help. You were knocked up by my brother. You loved him first. You fucked him in this very apartment and stared at him like he was your eternal fucking bliss. And still, I took you in and wanted you. I set aside reason and opened myself to you, fought for you, and did everything in my power to make you happy…” Practically fuming, I inched even closer and growled, “You don’t get the fucking right to tell me you don’t trust me.”

Fearing I might say something else I didn’t mean, I stormed out of the room, leaving her startled and dazed.

Nine

Ryker

“You’re a pussy,” Reaper said, chuckling at me as I mentally prepared myself for my fight with some steroid loving thief they called Animal.

Animal was new, and because nobody had started picking on him, Reaper had thrown the task onto me like it was as trivial as predicting the weather. But one look at the guy and you knew why he ran by the name Animal. He was massive, and not in a way that big guys get when they hit the gym, but massive as in naturally massive. He was thick and big everywhere, like a goddamn Viking.