“Tanner?” Adelita’s voice was shaking and quiet and just as perfect as I remembered. But that sweetness wasn’t enough to dilute the bitter taste that was building on my tongue.
I met her eyes, those eyes that had once promised me in return everything that I had promised her. The eyes that told me to trust her like she would me. That she’d wait for me while I figured out a way for us to be together. While I fucking left and tried to work out a way for us to escape all the shit that kept us apart.
All this time. All these months of planning and scheming for a way to leave my family, to leave the Klan unscathed, protected by someone stronger and more powerful. To prove my worth to the Hangmen so they would take me on as one of their own . . . all for her. All for this bitch who had upturned my life and fucking changed me, made me want nothing but her. All so we could be together and escape our fucking families that would never let us—would rather see us dead.
As I looked at the woman I loved, the one who had governed my life since the first time I laid eyes on her, all I felt was a fucking thunderstorm of rage, filling my muscles and bones down to their cores. The rage I used to wear every fucking day, the rage I’d learned to control for her, started to break free . . . and I did nothing to fucking stop it. I did nothing to hold it back. Instead I let it flood me, my veins bursting with the darkness that had always lived inside me, put there by my old man and the Klan and all the fucking hatred and venom I was infected with as a kid. And I fucking embraced it.
No deep breath was working. Nothing was gonna stop this. As I looked at that wedding dress, at the white lace covering her arms—arms that had held on to me as she’d promised to someday be my fucking wife—I fucking snapped.
“It was you,” I snarled. My fists clenched so tight I knew they’d draw blood as Adelita’s rose scent filled my nose. That scent I’d dreamed of for two years. The scent I remembered every time I lay in bed. The scent I kept with me all this time. “It was fucking you getting married!” I didn’t phrase it as a question. I didn’t have to. She sat in front of me in a motherfucking wedding dress.
Adelita’s eyes said it all. The guilt was written all over her face. She’d betrayed me. Betrayed us. Her mouth opened, but I didn’t hear what she had to say. I didn’t even know if she actually spoke. My brain shut her out, drowning in the thick fog I was letting in. Taking me back to the day I returned to Mexico. The day I threw everything away. The day I set all this in motion.
The day the White Prince voluntarily fell from his fucking throne . . .
*****
“Only a few more trips like this, Tanner, and we’ll be done,” my father said as we pulled through the gates of the Quintana hacienda. My eyes were fixed on the guards that surrounded the place, just like last time. I tried to focus on them, on what my father was telling me. But my fucking sick head went to only one place.
Adelita fucking Quintana.
Two months. I’d been gone for two months. Two months of being back with my people, my family. I’d fucked pure WASP sluts, trying to remember who the fuck I was. Two months of taking down enemies and burning the fiery cross.
And two months of trying to rid myself of the shame that I’d fucked Quintana’s daughter. And two months to school myself for this moment. The moment I saw her again.
I had to stay the fuck away.
The car stopped and we were led into the hacienda. My hands were balled at my sides as I kept my face staring straight forward. When we arrived at Quintana’s private quarters, I sat down next to my father, then Quintana came into the room. “Gentlemen,” he said in his fucking thick accent. Adelita didn’t speak like he did. Daddy had clearly educated his daughter better than he had been.
I got to my feet and shook his hand. My father and Quintana started making small talk that I quickly zoned