Total pages in book: 64
Estimated words: 59738 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 299(@200wpm)___ 239(@250wpm)___ 199(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 59738 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 299(@200wpm)___ 239(@250wpm)___ 199(@300wpm)
“Of course I don’t fecking think that,” I snap.
“Then why are you pissy with me?”
“Because ye can’t even follow a simple goddamn request.” I scrub a hand over my face. “If you had just done what I’d asked, everything would have been fine.”
“You can’t seriously believe that.” The vein in her neck pulses with repressed anger. “You brought me on a date to the same place I took my clothes off for the world to see. What were you thinking?”
“I was thinking that’s where I like to spend my free time and you could come along too.”
She mocks me with a caustic laugh. “Did it ever occur to you that maybe I didn’t want to? That from the beginning, I haven’t had a say in any of this and I’m just along for the ride?”
If her intention was to wound me with those words, she’s done a bang-up job of it. This conversation is going nowhere fast, but I can’t let it die.
“I saved your arse when I could have just put a bullet in your head. Have you even thought about that? I gave ye a home. A safe place for Archer. I don’t know what more ye fecking want from me. Ye’re alive, and ye haven’t been captured by the Locos, so it seems to me ye have it pretty good.”
Her head dips, and all the fight leaches from her body. “You’re right. That should be enough.”
But what’s she’s saying is that it isn’t. And it only confirms what I’ve been thinking myself all along. She’s here because she has to be. She’ll never see me as anything else than the man who fucked up her life. I don’t know what the bleeding hell I’ve been doing, playing house with her like we’re a fucking family. Kissing her and fucking her and whispering bullshit words in her ear at night. If it wasn’t clear before, it’s perfectly clear now. Ivy despises me for what I did, and she always will.
I’m no hero.
And I guess it’s time I remembered that.
“Are you alright, mate?” Reaper’s voice breaks through the stillness of the basement, and I blink up at him.
His eyes are on my hands, still speckled with the blood of the two useless wastes of human life I extinguished tonight. It didn’t occur to me to wash it off, and it speaks volumes to how far I’ve come since I first began. But the fact that Reaper is even sitting here at all, asking me if I’m okay speaks volumes about him too.
The man was practically a robot when I met him, but his wife Sasha humanized him in ways I never thought possible. When I see them together, there is no denying the pure love in his eyes. They would die for each other. They will fight for each other. It’s the kind of love that starts wars, and I’ve always been a little envious of that.
We might be a crazy, murderous foul lot of muppets, but at the end of the day, we want to come home to a warm bed and a beautiful woman who loves us in spite of all that. I never fancied myself a bloke to want such things, but in my drunken state, I can admit that I do. But after what Ivy told me tonight, I don’t know that I’ll ever have it.
“She isn’t just a girlfriend,” I slur. “It’s a lot more complicated than that.”
Ronan acknowledges my drunken confession in his usual fashion. “If that wasn’t bleeding obvious, I don’t know what is.”
I take another swig of the half empty whiskey bottle in my hand. “She isn’t like your missus.”
“How do ye mean?” Ronan asks.
“She isn’t with me because she’s crazy about my dumb arse. She only married me because she had no choice.”
Ronan shrugs and snatches the bottle out of my hand. “They don’t have to like you in the beginning. Time will sort out her feelings.”
“Maybe.” But I have other ideas. An idea that only a drunk bloke would think was a good one. “Would ye mind giving me a lift home?”
The house is quiet, and after a little investigation, I find Ivy asleep in Archer’s bed. I expected as much, but it doesn’t make it feel any less like a slap in the face. She wants nothing to do with me, and if her words didn’t let me know it earlier, this definitely does. Still, I hesitate in the doorway, watching her sleep while I consider my intentions.
There’s no coming back from what I’m about to do. The truth will change things. It will open my eyes and probably fuck everything up, but I’m done playing make believe with her. I need to know how she really feels, and there’s only one way to do that. But it doesn’t make me any less apt to go to her. To get down on my knees and beg her for sweet words and false promises. Promises that she could feel something else for me like the way I feel for her right now.