Page 14 of Snake (Road Rebels MC 3)
But despite all of that, it was hard to ignore his lies. It was hard to swallow the fact that he didn’t want me meeting his friends. It was hard to be left in the middle of the night or early in the morning, only to be told he’d be back soon without letting me know where he was.
It was hard, and it got old fast.
That was the first time we’d ever fought. One of our bike rides was interrupted by a phone call he received. I could tell it was urgent by the way he spoke, but instead of taking me with him or filling me in, he simply dropped me off at my place. Gave me a quick peck on the cheek and told me he’d be back soon.
He was gone for four days before I heard from him, and the lies flowed forth ever since that moment.
I felt the bike slow down before we pulled into an abandoned parking lot. He pulled off into the shadows behind an abandoned building and brought his bike to a stop. He put the kickstand down and shut the engine off, and I scurried away as quickly as I could. I needed to breathe something that wasn’t tainted by him. I needed to get my hands away from his rock hard form. I needed to keep my eyes diverted from his, and I needed to focus on what the fuck had just happened.
He almost killed a man tonight.
“We needed to get away from the bar,” he said as I slid my helmet off.
I scoffed and shook my head as the hazy fog of his musky scent slowly lifted from my body. We were in a part of Henderson I recognized. A part of the town that had flourished when I was a child. But now, it was worn down. Abandoned. Forgotten and overgrown with weeds. My eyes took in the dark scenery before me as broken windows cast jagged shadows on the walls of abandoned homes. I saw the playground I used to play in, the swings rusted and the merry-go-round bent and cockeyed. I saw the old gas station that used to sell one-dollar slushies, its doors were torn to shreds and the walls spray-painted with gang signs.
I looked up the hill behind us and saw an old and abandoned diner. Reminiscent of the one Jace and I used to frequent.
“Is that…?”
“Yep. That was Sassy’s Diner. Don’t worry, though. They didn’t shut down. Just moved.”
I nodded as my gaze slowly panned back over to Jace.
I had no idea how I needed to feel at that moment. Was I supposed to be sad? Upset? Scared? Defeated? I was turned on. I was ready to hop his bones and recreate our fondest memories on his bike. My eyes raked over his tight shirt, his chest swelling as I looked back up to his eyes. He loomed in the shadows as the darkness cast jagged outlines upon his face.
But his eyes.
They were always softer than the rest of him.
But instead of settling on that, I settled on anger. He had dislocated a man’s jaw with one punch. He almost choked the fucking life out of him. He barged back into my life thinking he had some sort of claim on me, and that needed to be addressed.
No matter how much fire coursing through my veins was setting my body aflame.
“What the hell was that, Jace?”
Chapter 13
Snake
I sighed with a groan before I shook my head. Of course, that was all she latched onto. My actions back at the bar. Screw the fact that I’d gotten her out of trouble. Screw the fact that I’d saved her from whatever disgusting bullshit that asshole had in store for her. Fuck the fact that it was obvious she wanted me with the way she was feeling me up on the damn bike ride.
I was the one at fault. Always me.
“I’m not your property anymore, Jace. What the fuck was that?” Laiken asked.
“Are you really upset that I got you away from that asshole?” I asked.
“No!” she said. “I’m pissed because you apparently thought it was your responsibility!”
“Seriously, Laiken? I saved your ass.”
“Because you thought my ass was yours. Admit it.”
I stared into her eyes and saw them dripping with frustration. Years of pent-up anger and forgotten memories were surfacing for her. It was obvious she’d tried to forget me. Tried to move on and was unable to do so. I never tried. I tried to replicate the feeling I had with her, but I never attempted to erase her. She was the best damn thing that had ever happened to me, and I wanted to make sure I held onto that. Held onto that standard, she set in my life.
But it was clear I was not a standard to her, and it only twisted the knife she was plunging into my gut.
“You creep out from the shadows and come over to me in some random fucking bar because a guy is touching me and you expect me to thank you? I would’ve gotten that man off me. You know me better than that. And if I struggled, that bartender would’ve blown the guy’s fucking dick off before he got me out of there. Why the hell were you necessary?” she asked.
Anger was coursing through her veins. She held my helmet underneath her arm as she balled up her fists. Her body was trembling. Shaking with the words she never got to say to me that day.
The day I tossed her out of my fucking house.
“You think you own me, but you don’t,” she said. “You think you loved me, but you didn’t. You lied to me, Jace. You lied to me, you accused me of turning into my mother. You made me fall in love with you before doing fuck-knows-what. I assumed you were probably cheating. Creeping around behind my back. Why the hell else would you have been done for days on end? Getting up in the middle of the night? Lying to me about the ‘boring life’ you told me you had? Huh!?”
I let her yell at me. I let her get it out. It turned my stomach that she thought I could cheat on her. After the perfection, she’d brought into my world. When I was with her, I tried to get her to see what she meant to me. I tried to learn how to treat her. I tried to learn how to spoil her and comfort her and love her in the ways she needed. I stood up for her. Defended her to people in her life that walked all over her and tried to diminish the light she brought into this fucking hellhole.
But she was right. I had lied on multiple occasions to keep her at arm’s length with my own life. Partially because of her aspiring dreams, and partially because I wanted to protect her.
And I would never take those motives back. I would never take back the lies I fed her. Pushing her away was the best thing I did for her because had I introduced her to my life she might have rejected me. Spat at me. Called me pathetic. Possibly even came after us if she had pursued her dreams. But if she hadn’t? If she had accepted my life and kept her mouth shut?
She would’ve been there at the shootout. The night with The Devil Saints that changed all of us forever.
“You know, I could never prove you were cheating,” Laiken said. “I went through your phone. Dialed numbers to see who you fucking pick up. Asked you repeated questions to see if I could get you to trip up in your stories. I would check your body for marks when we made love and smell your clothes after you’d come back in. You made me paranoid. Your lies and your deceit made me lesser of a fucking person. I stooped to doing things I cringe at people for now. But there’s one thing I can prove. One thing you did do that you will never come back from.”
I braced myself for the hurt I knew was going to come with her words. The one thing she could accuse me of that was true.
The one thing that made me physically sick at night.
“You broke my heart,” she said. “You ripped it from my chest, you heel-stomped it into the ground, and you left it to rot.”
I didn’t know what else to do. Her words cut to the bone as she left me to bleed out on the street. Tears were cresting her eyes as she tossed her helmet at my chest. I caught it in my hand without a second thought and propped it up underneath my arm. She had every right to be upset. Every right to say what she was saying. She had every right to accuse me of cheating because what the fuck else was I supposed to be doing? No woman thought her man was involved with a gang. The most common answer was cheating.
And even though it angered me that she could think that about me, I could understand her train of thought.
What else was I supposed to do, though? Just…
let her in to that life? I tried to protect my sister from it, and look at what it fucking got her. She spread her legs for a guy I tried to keep her away from, and now she was holed up in the fucking main lodge of our compound trying to outlive an impending war. She got sucked right into the middle of shit that didn’t even concern her because Talon got selfish and couldn’t control his dick.
“You broke my fucking heart, Jace. And I don’t think I ever touched yours.”
Her words echoed off the recesses of my mind, and I lost it. Even though I knew I needed to keep my mouth shut, that was not a lie I was going to allow her to convince herself of.
“Never touched mine? Laiken, are you fucking serious!? You don’t think, for one measly second, that you broke mine in the process?” I asked.
“Oh. And what is it that I did to hurt your fragile little ego?” she asked.
