Cruz (Dark and Dirty Sinners' MC #5) - Serena Akeroyd Page 0,69
sensing the half-truths he couched in every word he uttered, except, here and now, I didn’t hear anything amiss.
And as far as I was aware, there was no reason to have my guard up. What could he do to me while he was all the way over in Ohio?
Aside from rupture the vows we’d made to each other time and time again, of course.
“Are you okay?” was all I asked in response to his comment. I couldn’t tell him the truth, that it was good to hear from him too, but I could make sure the father of my baby was doing well. “How’s the transition going?”
“It’s a clusterfuck,” he admitted gruffly. “It’s always difficult making shit right, but this is harder than I thought.”
“Means it’s worth fighting for,” I murmured, my eyes on the microwave plate that was spinning around and around as popcorn kernels started to pop. “You know how bored you were here.”
“Yeah, I do,” he agreed. “I’m pretty sure boredom was the reason I always got into so much goddamn trouble.”
I narrowed my eyes at that. “Everything you did here—” It went unspoken that I was talking about his inability to keep his cock in his pants. “—you’d have done whether you were VP or Prez, Storm. You’re kidding yourself if you think otherwise.”
He grunted. “Maybe.”
“No maybe about it.”
Silence fell, then he rumbled, “I miss you.”
“Did you miss me when I was a twenty-minute drive away?”
“You know I did.”
“So why didn’t you come for me?” I retorted, brows pinching as I already knew the answer.
“I tried.”
“You tried to worm your way back into my bed, sure. You never tried to stop doing the stuff that broke us up in the first place.” I jerked my chin up. “Look, I have plans tonight. I don’t want to rehash old stuff. Is there a reason you wanted to talk to me? I know Cyan must be bursting at the seams to speak with you.”
“I miss her as much as she misses me.” Half expecting him to ask me to let her visit him, I was about to argue when he murmured, “I miss you as much as you miss me, Keira. Why do you fight this shit?”
My eyes widened at his words, words he’d never uttered when we were together, never mind now we were apart.
For a few seconds, I’d admit to being speechless, simply because I’d never anticipated him telling me anything like that. Storm had never been one to use words to woo me. He’d just used my body against me, a body that responded to him like gas did to the flame from a lighter.
When you had that on your side, soft words, wooing… neither were exactly necessary.
I gritted my teeth though, unable to fathom that he truly missed me because he’d never missed me before, and as stupid as it sounded, as much as I hated that Lodestar could hear this conversation, I whispered what had been my initial reaction to his remark: “You never missed me before.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. I always missed you. I was just too much of a dumb fuck to accept that what I felt for you wasn’t a weakness.”
Anger surged inside me. “I’m sure that’s exactly what you were feeling when you were fucking clubwhores when I was pregnant,” I snarled, the rage spilling out of me in a way that it never had before.
Even when I’d left him, packing up mine and Cyan’s things and slipping out of the house in broad daylight because I knew he wouldn’t be there to stop me, not when he hadn’t come back home in days already, I hadn’t been angry. I’d been resigned.
My mother and father’s dire promises that he was bad news, that he was scum, that he was a Sinner, and in more than just the club he rode for… all the trash they’d spoken about him over the years had echoed in my head.
I’d felt dumb.
So fucking dumb.
But that was nothing to now.
Until my house of cards came tumbling down because Lodestar muttered, “Keira—”
And when I twisted to look at her, I came face to face with Cyan.
Torment was etched into her eyes, and I knew she’d heard every miserable, damning word I’d never, ever meant for her to know about the father she idolized.
Maverick
When someone grabbed my arm while I was asleep, I jerked up, ignoring the soft shriek of surprise as my spare hand went for the fucker’s throat.