Rough Ride (Chaos #5)(13)

It was Snapper.

He had six rental properties, a couple were condos, the rest small homes.

This was his.

He was giving this to me.

He probably had someone evicted so he could give it to me.

I drew in breath as I heard a motorcycle roar to life.

“Rosalie?” Mom called.

I shifted just enough I could see out the window and watched Hop pull out with Lanie at his side in his truck. Tack and Tyra in their huge SUV were already out and driving away.

I shifted more and saw the curb was empty but I knew that already, the sound of Snap’s pipes were fading.

“Honey,” Mom murmured and I looked to her. “You okay?”

“This,” I waved the note in the air, “is Snap’s.”

“Sorry?” she asked.

“This place they moved me into without my permission or agreement or even really acceptance. Snapper owns it.”

“Oh,” she murmured, her eyes drifting reverently to the paper.

Yep.

Reverently.

She’d always liked Chaos too. She used to party with them with Dad back in the day before I came along.

The thing I was worried about was that she’d start to get to like Snapper, especially before she’d even met him.

This could happen. He was just that likable. An all-around good guy. Easy on the eyes. Easy to talk to. Easy to be with. Sweet, smart, thoughtful.

It was my turn to call her attention to me.

“Mom.”

She looked right into my eyes.

“Please, Rosalie, let them take care of you.”

I closed my eyes.

I opened them.

“You did the right thing with Beck and his club,” she said when I did. “I’m proud of you. Your father would have been proud of you, though he wouldn’t have let you do it.”

That made my lips quirk.

Then again, Dad would have been on me about being with Beck at all. He’d let me make my own decisions, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t have something to say about it.

“He still would have been glad you considered it,” she carried on. “It went bad. He’s not here to keep you safe and I—”

“Mom—”

“But they can,” she finished determinedly. “I’m here to listen, you want to talk. I’m here to hold on to, you want to let it out. I’m here to get angry right along with you, you want to rail and scream. Whatever you need from me, I’m here. But I can’t give you that. I can’t keep you safe. You can’t keep you safe. But they can and…” she swallowed then pushed it out, “Bounty is not done with you.”

I drew breath in through my nose, ticked my mom was worried, ticked at Beck, ticked at myself, but she was and there was nothing I could do about it so I nodded.

“We’ll go look at it soon, okay?” I offered.

“We should ask Tyra and Lanie to meet us,” she suggested.

I shook my head. “I don’t think getting deeper into that crew is a good idea.”

To that she stated, “He’s handsome.”

She was talking about Snap.

“Yeah, he is, but—”

“He’s yours.”

I shut my mouth.

Mom didn’t.

“Standing outside in the cold, waiting for word about you, putting you in his place so he knows you’re safe, he’s yours like Beck never was, like that other one never was. He’s yours. He’s yours to break or he’s yours to hold safe.”

“Chaos men are unbreakable,” I informed her.

“If your father lived to see his daughter in that hospital bed like I saw her, he’d have shattered,” she retorted.

And that’s when the tears started to sting my eyes.

“Men are breakable, Rosalie,” she said in her calm, serene voice. “They just hide the cracks better than we women do.”

“I thought he was going to kill me,” I whispered.

She stood solid and held my gaze, hers suddenly bright like mine was, filled with wet, knowing I was now talking about Beck.

“He’d kissed that neck he’d nearly squeezed the life from so many times, I couldn’t count them,” I told her.

My mom stood there and kept hold of me, warm and safe, using nothing but her gaze.

“Do you think I want to jump into another situation with another biker?” I asked.

“Your father was a biker,” she reminded me.

“My father was one of a kind,” I reminded her.

“He died and you went searching,” she stated.

This, I couldn’t handle. I knew it. I understood it. I was coming to terms with the mistakes I’d made.

But hearing it come from my mother’s lips, I couldn’t deal with it.

So I looked out the window at our dead winter lawn, our empty driveway, the curb bare.

“You found that Chaos boy, the first one, as a replacement,” she said, careful, gentle, sweet.

I swallowed.

She was right.

Dad had died.

I’d been lost.

Then I found Shy.

“He wouldn’t keep you, you went reeling,” she kept on.

I saw nothing but clear, hot waves rippling before my eyes.

“Then you latched on to the next thing that reminded you of what you lost,” she said.