Unbeloved (Undeniable #4)(15)
Those green eyes had once looked at him with love too.
Opening his eyes, Jase slumped down in his chair, wishing he were drunk. In fact, the only reason he wasn’t drunk was because he’d known he’d never be allowed inside the prison reeking of booze. But as soon as he got the hell out of here and back to the club . . .
He could already picture it, pouring himself a nice tall glass of “drowning his sorrows” because he didn’t have anything worth a damn left.
“This is really what you want?” he asked quietly.
Her request for a divorce hadn’t come as a surprise as much as Chrissy’s request to see him in person had. Every attempt he’d made in the past to visit with her, she’d refused. Then out of nowhere, Maribelle had called him early last week—another surprise since not one of his three daughters had wanted anything to do with him since gaining their independence—and informed him of her mother’s wishes.
“Your wife is up for parole in a few years, Mr. Brady. Her ties to you and your club will do her nothing but harm.”
Jase cut his eyes toward the pudgy-faced lawyer seated beside Chrissy. “Would you shut the f*ck up? This ain’t your business.”
He wasn’t opposed to a divorce, but at the same time, even though he was loathe to admit it out loud, the thought of severing all ties to his wife and quite possibly his children because of it, terrified him. Aside from the club, this was all he had left; it wasn’t much, and it might be tattered, shredded to shit, but it was all he had.
But if he were honest with himself, he would have to admit that it had been his own fears and insecurities that had gotten him and everyone around him into this mess in the first place. And that if he continued ignoring the needs and wishes of those around him, prolonging the inevitable, tragedy was bound to strike again.
“Just sign the papers, Jason,” Chrissy repeated tonelessly. “You don’t want me. You never did.”
He stared at her, his stomach churning as his inescapable guilt welled up twice as strong inside him. That wasn’t true. He had wanted her. Once upon a time, when they were both still teenagers with endless possibilities ahead of them, he’d wanted her very much.
He’d loved watching that tight body bouncing up and down in her high school cheerleading uniform, and that beautiful, flawless face grinning as she cheered him on from the sidelines. But that didn’t mean he’d wanted to become a father at seventeen and a husband at eighteen, forced to spend the rest of his life listening to her prattle on about stupid, insipid bullshit he couldn’t give two shits about. She’d taken to married life, to motherhood, like she’d been born for it and he’d . . .
He’d enlisted in the Marine reserves to escape the hell that had become his life. He’d taken to drinking heavily too. And it was during one of the many nights he’d spent intoxicated at a local bar that he’d run into the local Horsemen president.
Not too long after, he’d found himself a patched-in member of one of the most notorious motorcycle clubs in the country, and a lance corporal in the reserves.
Jase had known he was an anomaly—Marine by day, biker by night—but the truth of the matter was he’d never been able to find a happy medium. Constantly dissatisfied and always itching to be on the move, always looking for something new, he needed the duality in his life. The Marine reserves kept him grounded, forced him to stay in one place, forced him to be the man he knew he had to be for his family, but the club gave him the excitement he always felt he was lacking. Despite his dual life, he found himself still searching for something more.
He’d found that something more in the most unlikely of places.
His Horsemen chapter had f*cked up big-time. Two boys had been thrown inside, and word was they’d been about go turncoat and start singing to the district attorney. Everyone in his chapter had to scatter, especially him. Being a Marine, he couldn’t afford to have trouble with the law. He’d been lucky too. Being picked up by Deuce wasn’t something that happened every day. At first he hadn’t been happy about the move until . . .
Little Dorothy Kelley Matthews.
He should have left Dorothy alone; he hadn’t even meant to fall for her, but it was hard not to fall for Dorothy. They had all fallen for her in their own way, every last boy in that club, even the constant flow of whores had loved her. She was a natural caretaker, a mother to everyone. You couldn’t help but gravitate toward her, waiting for your turn to be enveloped by that beautiful glow that always surrounded her.
And, as was his usual MO, he’d put his own wants and needs before that of everyone else, and in turn had destroyed them all.
To his left, Maribelle leaned forward, her hard eyes catching his gaze. “Haven’t you done enough damage?” she asked, her tone acidic. “The least you could do is sign the papers and give her a fraction of a chance to get out of this place.”
Unlike his twin girls, Meghan and Marisa, Maribelle was the spitting image of Chrissy in her youth. Along with her blue eyes and long auburn hair, as well as her natural tanned and flawless skin, she possessed the same tall, slim, yet muscular body as her mother, and the two of them could have been mistaken for sisters if not for the apparent age difference. But that was where the similarities between mother and daughter ended. Whereas Chrissy had always been fun loving, most times bordering on silly, Maribelle was all piss and vinegar. Something else that was his fault.