Lethal Temptations (Tempted #5)(34)

At least then I’d have a rebuttal.

Now, I just sat there like the young na?ve girl he thought I was.

“He’s in the hospital, hanging on but he suffered a heart attack,” he said, finally.

My eyes snapped toward him and my mouth fell open as my heart lurched into my throat.

“A heart attack? What the hell happened to him?”

“Watch your tone Lacey, giving away a whole lot with the way you’re talking,” he warned.

“Giving away what? That I care about Blackie? Of course I do. You have yourself to thank for that because the moment you stepped foot onto that bus to Riker’s he was there for me and he’s never left,” I trembled as my voice shot octaves higher with each word I spoke.

“Shit,” he ground out. “Blackie’s not some knight in shining armor Lacey. He traded places with you because that is his job. It’s who he is. That man has a death wish and everyone knows it, including the man who took him. He loaded him up on drugs. Blackie should be dead right now but he’s hanging on because his body is so immune to the poison he keeps filling it with. He’s not a prince, Lace, he’s the devil clothed in leather. He is the same as me and don’t you forget that!”

“I know exactly who he is and I accept him as he is…the same way I accept you,” I insisted.

I wasn’t sure if he was trying to scare me away or warn me but either way it didn’t matter. I knew Blackie had a drug problem I saw it with my own eyes that night. But, he was still a man, a broken man who lost his way. He could push me away, try to make me hate him, but I’ve known him nearly all my life…I know how good he can be.

“Best-case scenario, he makes it out of this and gets the help he needs,” my dad added.

“And worse case?”

“He cheats death only to beckon for it to come again,” he said as he pulled the truck back onto the Belt. “Can’t make someone live when they don’t want to. You can’t keep them breathing when they want to suffocate.”

I stared at him as he fixed his eyes back to mine

“Blackie’s at the end of his rope, Lace.”

I restrained from shaking my head and telling him to shut up that he was wrong. Blackie may be at the end of his rope, but I was going to give him another inch, I was going to be the one who pulled him back.

Just watch and see.

I fell back against the seat and stared out the window.

“I’m sorry you had to see everything you saw,” my father whispered. “The world isn’t always pretty but the one me and Blackie live in is downright ugly.”

Duly noted.

Words.

They wound but they don’t change the way a person feels.

Luckily, neither of us uttered another until he pulled up in front of my mother’s house. She was on the stoop waiting for me, her arms crossed against her chest and a worried look adorned her pretty face. I climbed out of the truck just as my father slammed his door shut. He walked around the truck, meeting me at the curb.

“Lace…”

“Thanks for keeping your promise,” I interrupted, reaching up and throwing my arms around his neck.

Daddy’s little girl.

Until you’re not anymore.

Until there is another man.

And sometimes he’s just like the first man you ever loved.

Sometimes he's just like your dad.





Chapter Eleven



I conned my mother into lending me her car, told her I needed a break from the last few days. The reality of my father’s life was harsher than I could’ve imagined. She bought the act, handed over her keys and I made a beeline for the hospital.

To be honest, I don’t think she bought my little act at all. I think my mother knows me better than she lets on. In fact, I sometimes think she’s a witch and knows all my secrets. It wouldn’t surprise me if she even surmised that I was going to see Blackie but for whatever her reasons were, she didn’t try to stop me.

I should be more cautious, try to make more of an attempt to mask my emotions, make it harder for her to read me but it wouldn’t work. My mother knows me but, more than that, she knows herself. She lived what I am living. I wouldn’t be na?ve to say she condones my feelings, but she gets them. She’d be a hypocrite to try to stop me.

It makes me wonder about my parents when they were young and in love, mainly my mother and what she was like when she was property of Parrish.

Property of Parrish.

I’m sure there are women who would cringe at being called someone’s property. But there are a few things I know about the MC world and being a man’s property doesn’t mean he owns you but more that you own his heart.

You belong to his heart…to his soul, whatever is left of it.

Love, it’s the only purity men like my father and Blackie have.

And to own that solitary piece of him…well, it’s bigger than all the I love you’s any man can say.

So, when I say I want to be Blackie’s property don’t look at me with pity.

Keep your pity.

Because being Blackie’s property means I own the only piece of him that isn’t black.

Being Property of Petra is owning his heart.

It’s restoring his soul.

It’s the unspoken I love you.