He shook his head. “I have no problem pulling your ass off the bike and across my knee. Right here. Right now. I’m so fuckin’ pissed I can’t think straight and believe me, woman, when I tell you that doesn’t happen to me. The thought of you sitting on all that money, exposing yourself and our baby to this, for the sake of your pride, I want to fucking beat your ass until you can’t sit down for a month. So don’t talk to me right now.” He turned his face away from her.
She took a deep breath, anger rising at his accusation. Unfortunately, she knew he was right. He’d given her thousands of dollars. She could have found a better place, especially once she had Zane, but it hadn’t made sense to waste what she’d had when she would need it when he went to school. She knew that wasn’t the only reason. She’d been hurt, and she’d nursed that hurt. She kept it to the forefront so she wouldn’t go looking for him. For Steele. The love of her life.
She wasn’t the kind of woman to hold a grudge, and she couldn’t sustain anger. Part of that, she knew, was because of her childhood and how helpless she had been. It had never mattered if she’d been angry. She hadn’t dared voice it, or any other protest. She had learned to find other ways to make her life better. Anger hadn’t been an emotion that was useful to her survival, so she’d discarded it early on.
She hadn’t noticed that Steele was angry very often—as in never when they’d been together. She’d had more of a temper than he had in those days. She rubbed her hand on her thigh, wanting to apologize to him, but she didn’t know how to tell him that saving that money had been a form of self-preservation. She’d needed to have pride to survive. Once Zane was born, she’d held on to it for emergencies. With the whole sum intact, she’d known if she ever saw Steele again, she could hand it all to him. So many reasons. None were good enough to risk their child’s life in this neighborhood.
Breezy was almost so distracted by her guilt that she didn’t see the man coming out of the shadows to approach Savage and Keys, who had stopped two buildings along the row. He handed something to Keys and took a small flat package in exchange. Keys gave him a small salute and waited until the man had gone to his own bike and disappeared up the street.
Steele had never turned off his motorcycle and he reached back and caught her hands, jerking them around him before moving forward with the rest of the group to the rows of buildings. They followed Keys and Savage, who drove past the first two rows straight to the middle building in the last row. Behind it was a stream, snaking its way through a deep carved gully and over jagged rocks and boulders.
The moment he shut down the bike, she slipped off, her legs weak and rubbery. She tried to pace away, needing a little space, knowing Steele was that upset with her, but he caught her wrist and pulled her back to him.
“Don’t walk off.”
“I was just going to stretch my legs a little bit.” Her gaze was on Keys as he unlocked the rolling door and lifted it. They pushed their bikes inside and he closed the door as Savage flipped on a light switch.
The first thing she saw were colors proclaiming the space belonged to a club. A skull grinned eerily through a field of black roses and gun shells. Her heart dropped. Involuntarily, she took a step back, right into Steele. Both arms came up to cage her in. he rested a chin on her shoulder.
“I’m sorry I got upset, Bree. I just don’t like the idea of you with a baby in this hellhole. I saw needles on the sidewalk and something in me just went south. It’s called guilt and it’s on me, not you. I drove you away.”
She leaned back against him, hearing the regret in his voice. “To protect me, Steele, because that’s what you do. And you were right. I didn’t want to hear or admit it, but it was pride that kept me from spending money on a decent place. I wanted to keep hurting so I wouldn’t go looking for you like one of those pathetic