Beyond the Cut (Sinner's Tribe Motorcycle Club #2)(67)
“End of the f*cking line.”
Dawn sighed and covered the gun with her hand, pressing it down. “Put that away, honey. We’re done here.”
*
“He’s a dead man.” Cade gripped Dawn’s elbow to steer her clear of a drunk on the sidewalk. His body shook with unspent adrenaline and the remnants of the fear and anger that had been pulsing through him since Jagger called to tell him what was going on. Jagger had a sixth sense for when Arianne was doing something he wouldn’t like, and when he’d texted to find out where she was, she told him the truth. The message got passed along. Already at the Conundrum border after dealing with the Demon Spawn scum, Cade had raced to Sticky’s, arriving only minutes too late.
“He’s doing me a favor,” Dawn said. “Why do you want to shoot everyone who makes you angry?”
“I’m a Sinner. That’s what Sinners do.”
“Not always,” she said softly. “That’s not what Arianne does. Or T-Rex. That’s not what the club agreed when Wolf offered an olive branch. And if you’d hurt Bunny, I would never have had a chance to find out who was responsible for that video.”
He winced inwardly as her barb hit home. Every day he held back from going after Mad Dog was a day a piece of him died. That bastard was still on the streets, when by all rights he should be lying in a cold grave. If not for f*cking Mad Dog, Dawn wouldn’t have put herself in danger by going to see Bunny. If not for Mad Dog, she wouldn’t be in danger at all.
And she wouldn’t need Cade.
“I told you not to go there.” He tightened his grip on her arm, close to dragging her down the street. Damn. He couldn’t calm down. It was too much … Bunny, the pool hall, all those bastards eyeing her up … the things that could have gone wrong …
“And then you said yes.”
“I didn’t think you were serious.” He growled his frustration. “Or that you would even consider going there without me. And I was … distracted.” Too agitated to continue the conversation in public, he led her into an alley off the street, and drew in a deep, calming breath, his nose wrinkling at the fetid smell of decay and the cloying scents of piss and stale beer.
“Nothing happened. He refused my mark and asked me to dance. I changed his mind. I didn’t go there alone. I’m not stupid. He knew Arianne and Banks were outside. He wasn’t going to hurt me.” Dawn folded her arms and leaned against the brick wall. “In the end it worked out well. I don’t always need you to rush to my rescue whenever there is a hint of danger.”
“You’re in danger every f*cking minute of every f*cking day, and I can’t take it anymore.” He thudded his fist against the brick wall. “I got a need to protect you that I don’t even understand. I thought my heart was gonna explode when Jagger called to tell me where you were. Only reason everyone in that pool hall isn’t dead is ’cause I brought Gun with me and he held me back.” He leaned in, resting his forearm beside her head, caging her with his body.
Startled, she looked up, and he almost drowned in the emerald depths of her eyes.
“I know you can protect me,” she said softly. “I don’t doubt that. But I need to stand on my own feet. It felt good to see Bunny. It felt good to tell him I wouldn’t dance. And it felt damn good to come up with a solution that didn’t involve fists or firearms. I want to stand up to Jimmy the way Arianne stood up to Viper, the way I stood up to that guy in the park. I know you’re planning to go after Jimmy after the election, and I want to be part of that.”
His body shook with emotion. “I get that you want to fight your own fight, but some fights you can’t win. My mom never won her fight with my dad. After years of abuse, she finally moved out, but the week after I was sent overseas, she went back to him. In the end he hit her one too many times, and she died from a subdural hematoma. I never confronted him. Never saw him again. He died in jail. I could never understand why she went back.”
Dawn stroked his jaw, her eyes warm with understanding. “Because that kind of abuse twists your mind. It saps your strength and confidence. You feel worthless and incompetent. You believe the demeaning comments. You don’t think you deserve any better. You think no one cares. Every day is a fight to survive. Every night you hate yourself for not running away. You feel humiliated and alone, and sometimes the abuser can seem like a comfort in the storm, especially on the good days.”
“What did he do to you?” he asked, although he knew. He’d lived through it. And it was all he could do not to jump on his bike and shoot Mad Dog dead, or die trying. Just the thought of Dawn suffering the way his mom had suffered stoked a fury inside him so fierce he thought he might explode.
“He beat me.” Her voice was surprisingly calm and even, a startling contrast with the rage that suffused his veins. “He made me strip and dance for his friends. He treated me like a piece of property and shared me around. He kept me isolated and humiliated me. Sometimes after it was really bad, he would apologize and buy me flowers, and then it would be okay until it started again.”
“I wasn’t there to protect my mom in the end, but I’ll damn well be there for you.” Cade clasped her chin between his thumb and forefinger and turned her head roughly, forcing her to look at him. “I’ll do what has to be done to end this. You may want to face him, but we both know you’ll never pull that trigger. And even if you could, I won’t let you bear that burden.”