SAM
* * *
I was having emotional whiplash. One minute I’m coming all over Mac’s dick, the next I’m quizzing him about his arrest history. They were mad because I hadn’t told them about the break-in, and I’d turned it around and made it about Mac.
Hardin dropped his fingers from my chin and settled back into the chair. “Jesus, this again?” he whispered to himself.
Mac didn’t flinch, didn’t even blink at my question. “Yes.”
He admitted it outright. No diverting, no excuses or prevaricating.
“Where’d you hear about it?” he asked.
“The hospital.” I wasn’t going to give specifics because they were irrelevant. Only what he’d done was.
He frowned, leaned forward and set his forearms on his thighs. He looked so good without a shirt, the tattoos only enhancing his bad-boy image. For once I was taller than he. “Figures,” he grumbled.
I crossed my arms over my chest, waited.
“What else did your source share?” he asked.
“Nothing.”
He shook his head slightly. “Again, figures. You know one part. Will you let me tell you all of it?”
I swallowed, glanced at Hardin, and he offered me a small smile. Would he be here if Mac were a druggie? Would they be friends if he didn’t just look like a bad boy but was one?
I liked data, liked to analyze. Process. I didn’t shy away from facts, from real facts. I wanted to know the truth. Needed to know it.
“When I was sixteen, my mother got ovarian cancer. We didn’t have health insurance even though she worked two jobs. By the time she found out what it was, it was too late for chemo. Stage IV. It got bad quick, and she couldn’t work.”
Oh God. I’d met women battling that stage of cancer, knew their chances were poor.
“I worked part-time after school for the shop. The owner was like a dad to me, but that’s another story. He let me take on as many hours as I could handle to pay for rent, food. The medical bills piled up, the money I earned slipping through my fingers like sand.”
He held up his hand as if imaginary grains were falling to the floor. Mac was intense, but it seemed because he felt intensely. Deeply. The way he looked at me, the way he wanted me wasn’t simple. It wasn’t superficial. It was complex. This guy who looked like Cutthroat’s bad boy wasn’t so bad at all. The tattoos, the dark, growly attitude hid a hurt that wouldn’t go away. Not his kind.
I let my hands fall to my side.
“Toward the end she was in pain. More pain than the pills she’d bee
n prescribed could cut. She was dying, so I told her to take what she needed, not what the label said.”
I hated when people misused prescriptions, but I could understand in this case. She was dying. Overuse of pain meds was the least of her worries.
“I couldn’t sit by and listen to her suffer,” he continued. “The whimpers and moans late at night I could hear through the wall between our bedrooms. God, it was agony for her. For me to know she suffered. So I went in search of pain meds. Found them, but got busted in a sting. Arrested. Sent to juvie for three months.”
My mouth fell open in shock. “Oh my God,” I whispered. “Your mom?”
“She died.” He bit his lip, glanced away, then back. His shoulders drooped as he looked down at the floor between his feet. “I was in juvie. I remember the moment someone told me. The look on the woman’s face. She didn’t have to say a word. Mom never got those extra pain pills, and she died alone.”
The silence hung heavy between us. Hardin hadn’t spoken and wasn’t now. He wasn’t one to talk just to fill a void. They were waiting for me.
“I’m sorry, Mac. What happened to you is awful. You committed a crime—Oxy abuse is destroying our country—but the circumstances should have been taken into account. You were judged wrongly.”
He sucked in a breath, then stood. “Tell me, sweetheart. Did you fuck us for a fun time? A wild ride on a bad boy’s dick?”
His words were harsh, and I felt dirty. Used. But I’d brought it on myself. I swallowed, couldn’t get any words out to respond before he continued.