“Never seen a man so in love with someone, never seen what I felt for you inside of somethin’ else. He went home to see them halfway through my tour. Could not stop talkin’ about it.”
He finished the smoke and lit up a new one.
“Then he came back. He didn’t say a word. Something about the way he looked told me not to ask. Something was gone. Somethin’ that made every single guy in my unit afraid of him.”
Liam looked to the pool.
“He never looked at the pictures anymore. He was still best at what he did. But became the best at worse and worse things.”
He turned back to me. “Wasn’t ‘til later that I found out he’d choked his wife so bad she’d been in hospital. Did it because she forgot to iron a shirt. A fucking shirt.”
He shook his head as if to shake out the memories. The futures he likely imagined when he heard that story.
“I left because it’s dangerous to be near me,” he said. “Because I didn’t trust myself around a world like the one I came from. I had to patch into the Sons, because here, I can feed my beast, hurt the right people. If I came back to you, I would’ve hurt the wrong ones.” He got up and still didn’t look at me.
He just walked away.
An hour later, we hit the deadline.
And we road back.
To damnation.
Chapter Eighteen
As much as I was sure Liam wanted to ride hard and fast to get back, we stopped in Texas again. I wasn’t sure if it was out of care for me or because even he, as strong and badass as he was, couldn’t ride for twenty hours straight through three states.
So we stopped at a hotel.
Slightly nicer than the other two we stayed at.
We were silent as we checked into the hotel. Well, I stopped being silent right after we got our keys and turned toward the elevator.
There were people in the lobby, waiting to check in. The fact that the hotel was nicer meant that we got looks for Liam’s cut, tattoos, and the fact our luggage consisted of two Walmart tote bags.
That didn’t bother me.
People who looked down on you were already below you.
No, what bothered me was a woman, well dressed, older, just the type you would expect to get drunk on gin and tonic at four in the afternoon and insult her housekeeper.
She was staring. At first, I thought it was because of the riff-raff that I was sure she tagged us as. But it became apparent exactly what she was staring at.
Liam didn’t seem to notice. Then again, Liam didn’t seem anything. He had his scary, cold and dangerous biker mask on. But only I could see it. Everyone else just saw the scar.
And this woman was staring.
I. Was. Done.
I walked up to her and she narrowed her eyes at me as if she were expecting me to rob her in a hotel lobby or something. “Excuse me, how old are you?” I demanded.
She blinked rapidly. “I don’t think that’s an appropriate question,” she snapped, recovering and jutting her chin up in the way asshole rich people did to try and make themselves seem important.
I laughed. “Well, you know what I don’t think is appropriate? It’s a woman with your advanced years and obvious thoughts of superiority staring at someone like she has the right to. Because I see you think money can buy you a lot, but it obviously doesn’t buy you class.”
“Well, I—”
I held up my finger. “I’m not done,” I interrupted. “You remember that we’re staying in this hotel. When you fall asleep, you remember that. And maybe next time you encounter someone that doesn’t look exactly like you want them to look, you won’t fucking stare.”
I turned on my heel and walked out.
Liam followed me.
He was no longer wearing his mask.
“What did you write?”
I glanced up. “What?”
Despite the slipping of his mask, Liam and I still hadn’t spoken since we arrived in the hotel room. Well, apart from him informing me that he was leaving to get us pizza.
He didn’t ask me what I wanted, he already knew what I liked.
What I liked on my pizza, how I took my coffee, that still hadn’t changed.
I no longer felt uncomfortable in the intimacy of that.
While he was gone, I decided to write in the journal he was now nodding to, standing in the doorway, holding pizza and a six-pack.
“In your notebook. I can’t imagine that you have a lot of things to find yourself grateful for today.”
That wasn’t true. I’d reached five.
I am inhaling and exhaling.
Liam is alive.
I have a nephew.
I have a happy and healthy family.
I finally know the truth.
I had no idea why I let him see it. I’d never let anyone see this. Though, I wasn’t sure if that meant anything since no one but my therapist knew that I kept this diary.