But at the same time, she sounds so much like Piggy that I want to burst out laughing. Lowering my head, I touch mymouth to hers. I’m an asshole, I know I am, but this is probably the most asshole move I’ve ever made in my life.
I’ve kept my feelings from her for years,years, knowing that there was no way in fuck I could ever let that shit be known. Not when my life with the Vicious Reapers was on the line. Sure, Piggy and Bullet are both acting like it would have been cool if Lainey and I were together.
I know that’s a fucking lie, though.
Piggy would have asked for my fucking head, just like Ivy did.
“The chance of Piggy considering me a betrayer of the club and the brotherhood would be worse than death, Lainey. I could never have chanced it.”
She wraps her fingers around my biceps, her nails digging into my flesh as she looks up at me. I fucking hate the expression she’s wearing on her face. I wish I could do something to make it go away. Maybe another orgasm… or two?
“I need more than that. Piggy would have come around, you know that. He loves me.”
She’s right. He probably would have, eventually, but watching Goose and Ivy, that was goddamn painful. It’s not really about them, though. It’s about my past; my father and his betrayal.
That’sthe reason I refuse to do anything that could have possibly fucked up my life with the Reapers. I’m not sure what you’d call me, but being labeled as a betrayer is not something I could have ever lived with.
I see now that it was detrimental to what could have been and what will be. I essentially fucked shit up.Royally. Bullet was trying to tell me. He was trying to tell me that it was cool for me to claim Lainey. All but begged me. But my stubborn self wouldn’t allow it.
And here I am.
“Maybe he would have, but I would have never betrayed him that way. Piggy said you were off-limits, and off-limits you will fucking stay, Lainey. I am not my father.”
“What do you mean?” she asks, her voice barely above a whisper.
Shaking my head, I pinch my eyes closed and roll over onto my back. Unfortunately, I started this conversation without context, and she’s going to hate me forever if I don’t deliver it to her.
My gaze slides over to her, and I wonder if that would be a bad thing. If she hated me forever, it would make this shit so much goddamn easier. She reaches out, placing her palm against my stomach. Wrapping my fingers around her wrist, I squeeze gently. Let out a heavy sigh.
Telling her won’t change our circumstances. She’s going to marry someone else, and I have one month to soak in every second I can with her. And I can’t do that if she’s pissed as fuck at me.
“My father betrayed the club,” I state. “He was fucking the president’s wife and was also fucking his nineteen-year-old daughter.”
She gasps, which is cute, but I can feel the pity in her gaze as she looks directly at me. I refuse to meet her eyes. I don’t want to see that pity, even though it sears my goddamn skin.
“What happened?” she asks softly.
I snort. “What happened is my father betrayed his entire club, and he paid the price for it. The president killed him. He made me watch him die. I didn’t love my dad, not in the slightest. He was absent and an asshole, but I was sixteen and had never seen anyone die.”
“Shade did that?” she asks in a whisper.
“Vicious Reapers in another town. I prospected for them, then asked for a transfer a few years later.”
Saying all of that out loud releases a bit of the burden I’ve been carrying. I don’t think I’ve ever told another living person this story before. The men in the club, especially from back in the day, already know. There was never any reason for me to say shit to anyone, and I’m not going to volunteer that.
It all makes me look bad, and I hate that shit. But maybe it isn’t just because it makes me look bad; it also makes me feel like shit. Like his stink has clung to me. I want to be everything my father wasn’t.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
VIKING
Lainey doesn’t sayanything immediately. Confessing that my father was a piece of shit who betrayed his president, his club, and his family isn’t light conversation. It’s heavy, and I fucking hate it. She climbs over my body, straddling my hips as she does.
“I wish you had told me all of this,” she whispers.
I wrap my fingers around her waist, gripping her there tightly. She’s so slight, so soft, and I know I could break her easily. It’s the last thing I would ever want to do to her, though.
Lainey is pure, the likes of which I will never have again. I couldn’t dream her if I tried. She is everything I could have never imagined I could have. And the thing is, I’m only going to have her for a short time.