Dauntless (Sons of Templar MC #5)(58)
I pushed off my stool, shoving the pancakes away from me. “You weren’t a man,” I hissed. “You were a f*cking kid. A kid trying to survive and trying way too f*cking hard to be a man in a world that doesn’t seem to recognize age as a reason to give someone a break.” I paced the room, anger pulsing through me. Fury. “It wasn’t your fault that your sisters died,” I said fiercely. “None of that is on your shoulders. It’s on the people who pulled the trigger on Camila and Sofia, and as much as I hate to say it, on Alexis.” I ignored the stiffening of his jaw. “She was a baby, a kid. But she was old enough to know better. We’re always old enough to know better when life touches us with bitter reality. There’s usually a limited amount of choices to take. The one your mom did, finding a person to blame, the wrong person. Your sister, looking for escape and finding destruction. Or you, looking for destruction and finding redemption.” I paused. “Because that’s what you are. You may have done some bad things, but that doesn’t cancel out the good. Good means something different when you’re brought up in a different world than conventional America. Good is relative. And you’re good. And bad. But you’re still redeemed.” I unintentionally quoted Johnny Cash, but it was apt so I rolled with it, tears threatening the corners of my eyes. “Your mom can’t see that, but I can. So f*ck her.”
Because my emotions were exposed to the nerve and I had about as much control over them as a plastic bag in a snowstorm, a wayward tear leaked down my face. I wiped it away angrily.
“You’re crying,” Gabriel observed, rounding the counter.
“I’m not,” I snapped, scrubbing at my face, not giving a shit about my eyeliner.
He stepped forward and clasped my hips lightly. “It’s okay to cry. It’s human. Hell, I bawled like a baby when One Direction broke up.”
I scowled at him. “Don’t make fun of me.”
“I would never. It was a tragedy. What was Zane thinking, going out on his own? Solo careers never work. Just look at the Spice Girls.”
“You’re talking about the Spice Girls right now?” I asked in disbelief.
His gaze turned serious and he frowned. “I guess I am. See, I’m still that f*ckin’ kid at heart, so I say stupid shit like that. It’s my only character flaw,” he admitted. “When did you get so old and wise, firefly?”
I gave him a long look, tossing up between giving him some smart-assed answer or giving him more.
He got more.
But not before I stepped from his grasp.
I sighed. “I feel like I was born old. Like the universe decided to rob me of my innocence the moment my parents abandoned me. My chance of being young was taken away before I could even be young. At the same time, I feel like I’ve never really grown up because I had to make every decision since I can remember about how to keep myself alive.” I picked up a photo frame on the mantle, more for distraction than anything else. I didn’t get distraction. Two little girls with dark hair and hazel eyes were hugging a bigger girl wearing too much makeup, her beauty still shining through even though she was scowling at the camera.
I swallowed coal and put it down with a shaking hand, not looking his way even though his stare was burning into the nape of my neck. I kept wandering around the edge of the room. Taking in his cluttered living room, motorcycle parts, beer bottles, and magazines swallowing the coffee table in front of his leather sofa. “It’s a terrible paradox,” I continued. “I’m old without the peace and wisdom that comes with age. I’m just jaded.” I regarded the mirror I’d wandered to. I didn’t have the lines of age, and my pale skin was in surprisingly good condition considering the fact I more often than not slept in my makeup, barely got any sleep, and shot poison into my veins. My jet-black hair was similarly healthy, shiny, and tumbling down to the faded ends I dip-dyed when I needed a splash of color in my gray world. It was my eyes. That’s what sold it. “Old, jaded, and hard,” I said to my reflection. “And I’m so terribly f*cking young because I make decisions based on what’s directly in front of me. Don’t consider consequences. Or other people, for that matter.” My mind went to Lily, the way I’d started to drag her down into my downwards spiral before Asher yanked her out.
Gabriel had been silent for my whole monologue. So silent that, if it weren’t for the heat at my back from his stare, I would’ve thought I was talking to myself.
Which I kind of was.
I sighed. “You know, I used to think drugs gave me clarity. That I could see the world for what it truly was when I was high.” I laughed. “Yeah, I was that deluded. Now I’m clean.” I fiddled with the fireplace pokers. “Or at least trying to be. And I can see everything so much clearer than I ever have. I don’t exactly like it, but it’s me. So I’ve got to deal.”
Suddenly he whirled me around and clutched my neck roughly, his eyes alight.
“Know your secret babe.”
My heart dipped and acid crept up my throat. “My secret?” I repeated in a small voice, all traces of bravado gone like a plastic bag in the wind.
His hands circled my hips, pulling my body flush to his. He regarded me in a way that made me want to freeze the moment. I’d never had anyone look at me like that in my entire life. Like I was someone worth something. Worth the devotion that glittered in the backs of those eyes. “Yeah, firefly. The secret you keep to your chest.” His finger trailed my breastbone lightly. “Beneath all the hardness you put so much effort into building up. Beneath that hard beauty. There is the most beautiful and caring soul I’ve ever encountered.” Somehow the look in his eyes became more intense and I felt myself unable to tear my gaze away, as much as self-preservation screamed at me to.