Bane (Sinners of Saint #4)(103)

My suspicion was that she’d vowed to never let a man in again.

And she hadn’t.

Trent Rexroth had been a fuck buddy.

All the ones after him were more of the same shit.

It killed me that my mother had given up on love, but maybe that’s why I owed it to myself to be less of a dick in general.

Snowflake’s posture crumbled, her chin shaking slightly. “O…okay,” she whispered. “I mean, sure.”

“We don’t have to.” I was staring hard at the busy road and hoping my long, internal scream wasn’t audible to the outside world.

You need to give her a fucking chance, Jesse. For me.

I glanced at my phone every now and again. Saw something I’d been waiting for. Smiled.

“Why are you smiling?” she asked, shuffling in my peripheral.

“Beck won the competition. First place.”

Her jaw nearly dropped. “That was today?”

I nodded.

“And you missed it, even though you trained him?”

I hadn’t really thought about it like that. I just knew I couldn’t be there when Jesse was dealing with so much shit. Even if she didn’t let me be a part of that shit.

“No biggie. I’ve been to plenty of surf competitions before.”

“Oh, Bane…”

“It’s Roman.”

“I want to meet your mom, Roman.”

“What made you change your mind?”

“You.”

I spun my head to look at her. She let loose a bitter grin.

“You made me change my mind. Your sperm donor was obviously an asshole, and yet you’re the best person I know. She must have done something very right to make that happen. So, yeah, I’d like to meet her.”

I nodded, taking a sharp right toward my mom’s place. It was the weekend. She’d be home. She’d be happy to see me. She’d be happy to see Jesse—even though I’d brought her up to speed with our issues. It’s not like I’d wanted to, but she’d nearly kicked down my door when I’d been mourning my lost relationship—and had told me everything was going to be okay.

Possibly.

Probably.

Hell, hopefully.

I parked in front of my mom’s house and rounded the truck to open Jesse’s door. She kept on checking her phone, waiting for that phone call from Madison Villegas, and I had to pluck it from between her delicate fingers and tuck it into the back pocket of my pants.

“Don’t worry. They didn’t arrest them only to let them go because they forgot their weed at the party,” I said. She crinkled her nose at me, which was also adorable, and also made my dick hard. Then again, there weren’t very many things about Jesse that didn’t inspire my blood to rush straight to my dick.

We walked into the house. I kicked my boots off against the wall, Jesse slipped off her Keds then arranged them neatly by the door. She wasn’t the tidy type, so I took it as a good sign. She was trying to make a good impression.

“Mamul?” I called out from the hallway. I heard a thud coming from her bedroom, then a loud moan of pain. She came out a few seconds later, looking flushed and flustered, knotting a robe over her waist. She wiped her hair away from her face and smiled through a suspicious blush. “Roman. My sun.”

I took a sidestep and motioned for Jesse with my head. “This is Jesse. Jesse, my mom, Sonya.”

They shook hands. I asked her if it was a bad time. She said it was never a bad time to see me. I had a feeling that there was someone in her bedroom, but I really didn’t want to know, so I offered to go out and grab some takeout coffee while Jesse made herself comfortable. Mom sighed with relief while Jesse looked like she was about to stab me. I couldn’t see someone doing the walk of shame out of my mom’s room without breaking both his legs on his way out.

“My phone, please.” Jesse opened her palm and stared holes in my forehead. I produced her phone from my pocket and put it in her hand, curling her fingers around it. “Take lots of pictures of him, so I’ll know who to stab later.”

“Bane,” she hissed. She called me that because I was acting like an asshole.

“What? He fucked my mom.”

There was a line that seemingly started from the gates of hell at Starbucks, then when it was finally time to order, I found out they had run out of the complicated shit my mom usually ordered, so I had to drive to another location, and before I knew it, it had taken me twenty minutes from the moment I’d left them to the moment I came back. I walked back into Mom’s house worrying I’d find hair scattered on the floor as they’d beaten each other senseless, so I was pleasantly surprised to find them sitting in front of one another. My mom’s hand was on Jesse’s knee, and tears ran down Snowflake’s face. They were silent and brave.

I stepped into the living room, dumping the Starbucks paper bag with the double glazed donuts and sliding a cup of coffee for each of them. My mom immediately took a sip. Jesse looked up and smiled through her tears.

“I hate coffee,” she said.

I shrugged and took a sip of my latte. “Ditto.”

My mom looked between us and laughed.

“Hey, Roman, what’s the antonym of hate?”

“Jesse.”





The call came an hour later. We were standing by the door in the hallway when I told Jesse she could do whatever she wanted. Take the truck if she wanted to do it all on her own, or have me come with, if that was okay.