once she’s left, glancing uncomfortably at the men around us, some of whom are watching us.
“‘Course I should have.” I open my mouth to argue and he waves a hand. “You gotta learn not to give a shit so much about what others think, Angel. If you don’t, you’ll never be able to make it work here.”
“I—”
“If Spider makes a fuss, send him to talk to me,” he growls, his voice obtaining a hint of force. “You saved my life. It’s the least I can do.”
Feeling a lot less guilty, I sit back, relaxing in the seat and feeling as if I’ve just been wrapped in a warm blanket on a cold night.
“Now,” he says, taking a swig of beer and wiping a bit of foam off of his mouth. “Tell me how you’re really doing.”
The message in his words is clear. Don’t give him the canned and patented answer I just gave him. He wants me to give it to him like it really is.
I look at the table, rubbing at a scuffed spot on it with my thumb, a myriad of emotions swirling through me, none of which I feel right expressing to him. Cap is close to Spider. Confiding in him not only feels wrong, it makes me feel almost scared. I settle for a shrug.
Cap watches me over his mug. He isn’t looking at the marks on my chest, and I can feel him avoiding them as intensely as if he was staring at them. I get the impression he’s thinking.
How much does he know? I shift in my seat, unable to get my gaze to go above his beard.
“It gets easier, Angel.”
“Does it?” I wince at how sharply that came out. I glance around at the bar packed full of armed men, criminals who don’t seem to think twice about whatever violence or trouble they get up to every day. How many of these men have taken a life?
“Which part?” I ask him, hoping he understands the question I can’t bring myself to put into words.
Is he talking about the dangerous life he and Spider lead, the idea of being with a man who leads that life, or about the darkness in Spider that constantly seeks to swallow me whole?
“All of it,” Cap says, drinking down more of his amber draft.
He opens his mouth to continue but pauses while Monica sets down a plate of thick steak slathered with onions and mushrooms for each of us. There’s a baked potato, sliced open and steaming. Pats of butter and sour cream in a small cup are on each plate. I inhale deeply and hum in appreciation.
When she leaves again, he slathers the butter and sour cream onto his potato. I copy him.
“You find your place in this life, Angel. It starts to feel normal. It becomes part of you after a while.”
I shake my head, cutting into my steak. He makes it all sound so easy.
“And if it doesn’t?” I ask, slipping the tender steak into my mouth. “If I don’t?”
His chest expands, and he looks at his plate for a second. “Normally, I would say, then it doesn’t, and you don’t. That’s when you know the MC is not in you, and you get the hell out before you’re in too deep, before you know too much. There is no half in, half out. It’s all or nothing, or you die. Except, you can’t do that, can you?”
My eyes flick to his, catching his one eye on Spider’s handiwork for an instant before he focuses on his plate and takes a big bite of steak. Those cuts feel as if they’re suddenly stinging, a brand freshly pressed into the skin. They’ve never felt so permanent, like a tattoo marking me as Spider’s property.
My stomach tightens.
I almost tell him, no, I can’t, but I stop the words before they come out. Saying them is too much like giving up.
“You will find your place here, and things will get easier,” he says firmly.
“How? How can you know that?”
“The same way I know that you are meant to save him. You are tougher than you think. The club is in you. I know it. I saw it when you were patching me up. When you knew not to call an ambulance. When you called Dragon even though you were terrified of him.”
It’s unsettling that my heart lifts with his words. That as scared as I am of what it means to be entrenched in this MC, part of