Cruz (Dark and Dirty Sinners' MC #5) - Serena Akeroyd Page 0,80
but fuck, you never knew and I wasn't about to kill someone who didn't deserve my attention—I had some choices to make.
First things first, Storm needed to get his ass back home so he could make things right with his woman and his kid.
Once the threat was out of the picture, that was the priority.
My parents had been torn apart by what had happened to Carly. My mom blaming my dad for not figuring out that his brother was a pedo, dad unable to cope with not only Carly's suicide, but the fact that Kevin was who he was.
Dad, while never overly demonstrative, had been torn to shreds by the fate that had befallen our family, and had drunk himself to death long before his time.
By that point, it'd been a relief for him to pass over. Not only was he a mean fuck, Carly needed someone to protect her in the afterlife, and that was all Dad had wanted.
To be reunited with his baby girl.
I scraped a hand over my jaw as an innate refusal hit me. Whether Storm and Keira liked it or not, the Sinners, as a fucking whole, were going to get them back together again.
I didn't give a fuck if it took a vat of Gorilla Glue or if we had to chain their asses together for a week.
They were going to be a family again. Because Cyan needed that. She deserved that. And I protected kids in more ways than just seeking out predators who sniffed around them.
That was the promise I'd made to Carly a long time ago, and it was one I'd never break.
Ever.
Twelve
Indy
Keira's panic, her frantic terror, all of it resonated with me on another level.
This was love.
This was what it looked like.
I was sure my parents had looked at me like this too, at one point. Back in the day, we'd been pretty close before our worlds had come crashing down around us, and everything had gone to shit.
What had been a pretty tight home life, at least, for a family in an MC, had suddenly begun crumbling down around our ears.
Trouble was, it hadn't been a safe space for me to reveal anything that I'd gone through. With Mom and Dad ricocheting through their lives like they were a pair of cannon balls that had gone wide, arguing and hating on each other, casting blame left and right, I'd just never been able to tell them what I'd gone through.
It was the first time that I realized how special Cruz was.
How much I trusted him to keep me safe, how much I believed in the protective circle he had around me.
We'd made no vows to each other, had basically agreed that we'd start dating out in the open, for all the world to see, which wasn't exactly the equivalent of a marriage proposal, was it? Not that I wanted that, but still, there was no commitment between us.
But trust and commitment were not the same thing.
I trusted my body with him, when I'd never trusted anyone with it before.
And that had let my mind unlock, had let me find my way to opening up to someone for the first time in my life.
I knew when he slipped behind me, when his arms moved around my stomach as I stood, watching Keira and Cyan talking in the front seat of her car.
They hadn't moved since they'd left, and I wasn't sure why she hadn't taken advantage of my offer to stay in the parlor, especially when I'd closed up for the day, my mind definitely not ready to handle the brush with the past as it morphed into the present, but watching them, seeing her talk, trying to get through to Cyan, it made me realize how much my mom had let me down.
"She never asked me if Kevin touched me," I said softly.
"Your mom?"
I nodded. "Never."
He hesitated. "Because she didn't want to know?"
"I think so. Or maybe because she was just so devastated that she couldn't handle knowing he'd touched me too."
"Which do you think?"
"A mixture of both. Things changed after Carly died."
"In what way?" One hand moved from my waist to run up and down my arm. The touch made the tiny hairs there prickle in response, and I registered yet again how my body seemed to sense this was Cruz.
Anyone else who dared touch me right now, even Nyx, maybe even Stone, I'd probably have started shrieking.