Smoke and Steel (Wild West MC #2)(68)

It covered his left pec.

It covered his heart.

He knew Hellen would get there eventually.

And he knew what he had to give her when she did.

“This one?”

“My mom loved mermaids.”

He heard the tone in his voice, and she didn’t miss it either, her gaze racing to his, her hand flattening on the mermaid.

Her hand there, warm and light…

Christ.

“We don’t have to talk about it,” she said quickly.

“She died an ugly death.”

“Okay,” she whispered.

“She’d like you. She’d respect you. She’d admire your strength. She let a man break her, and by the time she could do something about it, she was too broken to fix.”

Hellen was struggling with that information, so much, she tried to hide it but couldn’t.

“Your dad?” she asked carefully.

She was asking if his dad broke his mom.

“Yes,” he said clearly.

“Again, we don’t have to—”

“He beat her and he took her money. Never knew him to work. Did know him to drink until he was sloppy and mean. He was pure shit. Pure evil and pure shit.”

Her expression was startled, he knew, not only at his words, but the fierceness of his tone.

“My God, Core.”

It was time.

At least for some of it.

And knowing it was, he was both tense and relieved.

“I got him in me.”

She didn’t know what she was talking about, and still, her face grew stubborn and she snapped, “You don’t.”

“I absolutely do.”

“Okay, so I have my dad in me too. He’s all about money. Working hard and earning. He lost his marriage to it. He lost his family to it. Trying to use it as control, he lost his daughters to it more than once. I started work when I was fifteen and it’s been about money since then for me too. I’m borderline obsessed with it. And since we had dinner with him, I’ve been worried something I admired about myself, maybe wasn’t such a good thing.”

“There’s hustle and there’s greed, babe. You want a good life, you work for it, even if that work is long and hard,” he returned. “You just want, that being want, plain and simple, you let the things that matter suffer so you can feed your need. You’re the first, he’s the last.”

“Yes, there’s your wisdom again,” she pointed out. “Was your dad wise?”

Point scored for Hellen.

He clenched his teeth.

“You are not shit,” she bit off. “And you are not evil.”

The forcefulness of her tone punched him in the throat.

“I hate that you had a dad like that,” she went on. “What happened to him?”

“He’s dead too.”

She didn’t say it, but her face said, Good.

“Baby,” he started gruffly, not knowing how to lay it out for her, “I’ve lived some life.”

“No shit?” she asked. “You’re an Angel of Death, Core. You started us with a version of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ about what clearly is your club’s bent toward vigilantism. My guess is, to take care of the Greeks, you didn’t operate fully within the law. You also didn’t sit down with them for a counseling session to show them the error of their ways.”

He was drowning here and she was cracking jokes.

Funny jokes, but fuck.

To get his head above water, he pushed up in bed to rest against his headboard and pulled her over him so she was straddling his lap.

“And how do you feel about that?” he asked.

“Preferably, I wouldn’t want my boyfriend possibly to be arrested for taking down a multi-state swindling scheme. I was worried when you were gone. I’m afraid to learn how often this happens and how dangerous these operations are. Fortunately for you, my brother-in-law is Chaos, and I watched that documentary about them, so I kinda get it. Though, I’m a victim of seriously conflicting emotions, because what you did for Bree was totally fucking awesome. But it also freaks me way the hell out.”

“We’re good at what we do,” he assured. “We got experience. We train. We’ve been doing this for—”

“God!” she exclaimed, tipping her head to look at the ceiling. “I don’t want to know how long you’ve been putting yourself in danger!”

With that, she tried to swing off him.

He grabbed her hips and kept her where she was.

“We’re not done,” he growled.

“What do you want me to say?” she demanded.

“We do what we do because it’s who we are. It’s never going to change, babe. And it fucks me up, because I dig you a fuckuva lot, but I gotta say, if you can’t deal with it, I can’t get out of it. Because I can’t and because I won’t. I made a vow I am not gonna break. What we do is the man I am now, it’s the man every brother in my club is, and if you can’t hack it, then we can’t be.”

Her face paled.

“Are you breaking up with me?” she breathed.

“Are you breaking up with me?” he shot back.

Her eyes slitted. “So I can’t communicate I’m worried about the fact you’re a fucking vigilante without you threatening to break up with me?”