Better When He's Bad (Welcome to the Point #1)(54)

“Let’s go to my apartment. I cleaned it and it’s closer.”

“Your furniture was trashed.”

I rubbed my arms and shivered even though I wasn’t cold. “Fine; let’s go to your place in the city.”

He pulled back and narrowed his eyes at me. “Why?”

“Why not?” Maybe seeing his crash pad, I would get the idea that there really was no Shane, that he was always just Bax and I would never, ever be foolish enough to hand my heart over to that guy. Maybe he knew exactly what I was doing, because all his barriers snapped into place.

“Fine. Let’s go.”

CHAPTER 11

Bax

I DIDN’T WANT TO know what Dovie thought about the place that I called home, but really it was just a place to store all my stuff and catch a few z’s in between all the stuff I usually had going on. It was a crap hole. A studio in an apartment complex that was only half a step up from her own. I actually had a security door that worked, but other than that, between the dirty hallways and loud, disruptive neighbors, the two places could’ve been on the same block.

I didn’t have much. Just a bed that hadn’t been made, ever, a flat screen that I was always amazed to see when I opened the door, a black leather chair that had rips in the arms, and posters on the walls that were of mostly naked chicks and badass cars. I liked the cars better than the girls most of the time. It was dirty, musty, and I felt like she was seeing inside of who I really was as she followed me in the door, those wide green eyes taking it all in. This was where I belonged; not that bungalow so far out of the city.

“Have a seat. You want a beer or something?”

She shook her head, those red curls slipping and sliding across her pale face. She surprised me by sitting on the edge of the bed instead of taking the worn-out chair.

“Who paid for this place while you were in prison?”

I looked at her over my shoulder and got myself a beer out of the tiny fridge. I didn’t like her here. She didn’t fit in, just like she deserved something better than that shithole she lived in at the Skylark.

“My mom.”

She made a noise in her throat and caught all of her hair in one hand and pulled it off of her neck. She looked so young, so lost. I couldn’t figure out why I couldn’t just let her go when I knew I was going to end up taking all of that shine off of her.

“What?”

She lifted her eyebrows at me and bit her lip. I wasn’t going to like what she had to say. I was starting to recognize that as her tell.

“Your mom . . . who can’t even pull it together enough to get sober and live in that amazing house you bought her somehow managed, for five years, to make sure the rent was paid on this place? And what about your car? That thing had to have been somewhere secure, somewhere expensive. You really think she was the one paying the bills, staying on top of things when you couldn’t?”

I glared at her and flopped down in the chair. It groaned under my weight as she continued to watch me unwaveringly.

“Who then? Race?”

She gave her head a tiny shake and fiddled with her hair. “No. He didn’t have any extra money and we were laying pretty low after he first came and got me. I don’t think he would’ve risked drawing Novak’s attention by taking care of your car.”

My eyes narrowed even more as she verbally led me to the only possible conclusion, which she was drawing.

“You think it was Titus?” I asked.

She shrugged. “Maybe.”

“Titus doesn’t give a f**k about anyone but himself. He dropped out of sight before I could figure out how to survive on my own and all he’s done since is make my life hell because I didn’t end up all perfect and law-abiding like he did. We didn’t have the same opportunities, and I think it’s bullshit that he thinks he can judge me for making do the only way I know how.”

She looked at me with emerald shadows drifting over questioning eyes. Just like always, she was trying to paint me in a better light than I deserved. The reality was much darker and uglier than I think she could handle.

“That’s not exactly true, Bax. Parents are supposed to love their kids, provide for them and guide them into adulthood. Unfortunately, that doesn’t happen across the board anymore. Titus made the choice to let your mom go and build a life for himself; you made the choice to stick with her and provide for the two of you the only way you could. You could have let her go, just like she did the two of you. You could have given yourself other opportunities. It wasn’t entirely Titus’s fault.”

“I was a kid, Dovie. What were my options? Starve? End up in the system? Find some nice, rich family to take me under their wing like a charity case while my mom drank herself to death? You tell me how any of that would have been better than becoming a thief.”

She cleared her throat and I could have sworn there was a sheen of tears in her gaze when she looked back up at me.

“You wouldn’t have ended up in jail. You would have never had to sell your soul to Novak. You wouldn’t have to fight for Nassir and end up getting stabbed. I don’t know what the exact answer is, Bax, but I do know you made the choice to be a bad guy and you can make the choice not to be.”

I thought her point was moot. I had only ever been this way. It was how I survived, how I lived, and aside from getting out from under Novak’s thumb, it was a life I made work for me. It wasn’t my problem that she not only wanted but deserved someone better than me. I was going to have to exist here long after she was gone. She didn’t get to come in and dismantle my entire world for the short time she was a visitor in it, even though that was exactly what she was doing.