Page 21

T he front door slams, making the girls jump and me frown.

“Hey, you okay?” I ask when Midnight walks into the living room.

“I’m fine,” He snaps, making me jerk back in surprise.

I don’t know what the fuck happened between this morning and now, but something did. Hell, he was even in a happy mood when I left the shop to go pick up the girls. I went to tell him I was leaving, but he was so deep into a conversation with his rockstar client that I couldn’t bring myself to bother him.

“How was your day, girls?” he asks, trying to be present.

“Good,” they say in unison.

“I made you a plate, it’s in the microwave,” I tell him.

He doesn’t say thank you but nods, acknowledging what I said.

Alrighty then.

For the first time ever, I wish I was closer to Elle. I would text her and ask her if she knew what the hell happened. Surely she would know if something happened after I left, right?

Oh god, what if the cops raided the shop again? It took us so long to get everything put back in its place and for the new supplies to get in that replaced what they damaged. I swear to God, if the cops came in and fucked everything up again so soon, I’ll go down to the station and give them a piece of my mind.

“No, Selena, you’re doing it wrong!” Sienna cries out as she hits her sister’s hand.

“No, I’m not!” Selena yells back.

“Girls…” I warn.

Both girls turn toward me, and Sienna points to her sister.

“She’s ruining it! She won’t listen to me,” Sienna says.

Selena pushes her sister in her chair. “I’m not ruining anything, I’m just not doing it how you want me to!”

“You both need to calm down. Sienna, it’s a group project, which means your sister also gets to do things her way,” I point out.

“But…” she whines.

Midnight raises his voice. “Knock it off, both of you. The last thing I want is to come home after a long day at work and listen to you two fight.”

Both girls look startled, and to be honest, so am I.

“Girls, why don’t you go to your room and get your reading time in?” I tell them calmly, despite the fact that my heart is racing in my chest.

I fucking hate yelling. Something about it makes me want to shut down, but I can’t. I don’t know what happened to Midnight, but I won’t let him take his anger out on his girls. Especially when I know that he will regret it when he calms the hell down.

The girls jump up and head toward their room. When I hear their door click shut softly, I round on him.

“What the hell was that?” I ask quietly.

Midnight’s eyes narrow. “What was what, Lainey?”

I don’t know why, but him using my real name almost feels like a slap in the face.

I cover my hurt and push through. “Tell me what has you so worked up. This isn’t like you.”

Midnight scoffs. “Like you know shit about me.”

“I probably know you better than you think you do. Now spit it out,” I demand.

“You want to know what my fucking problem is, Lainey? It’s women. Women are the fucking problem. You all look sweet and innocent, when really you’re the goddamn devil in disguise. You play men like a fiddle, and as soon as you don’t get your way, you snap and throw a fit. You make our lives hell until we give you what you want, and you don’t care if you kill us in the process.”

I try to choke down the hurt, but I can’t. If I had to guess, I would say something happened with the girls’ mom, but I can’t be sure. I know he wouldn’t tell me if I asked. No, whatever happened, he’s now taking out on the girls and me.

“I have never hurt you,” I say softly.

“Yeah, well, it’s only a matter of fucking time.”

Fuck this. I’m no one’s punching bag.

Hands shaking, I shake my head and start to walk away.

Midnight scoffs. “Typical. Walk away when you hear something you don’t like.”

I turn to face the angry man before me. He almost looks unrecognizable.

“I need you to go outside, drink a beer, and think about the shit you’re spewing. The girls and I did absolutely nothing to you. We don’t deserve your anger.” He opens his mouth, but I cut him off. “I need you to think about something, Midnight. How would you feel if I were Sienna or Selena, and a guy I lived with talked to me the way you just did? Because the man I know, he would never act the way you are right now.”

Before he can say anything, I race down the hall and go into my room. I shut the door quietly and lean against it.

Holy shit.

I try to slow down my breathing, but it’s hard. Body shaking, I slide down to the floor and close my eyes. I thought things were going well, but maybe I was wrong. Maybe I should start looking for a new place to put a little bit of space between us. I can still watch the girls, but when he gets home at night, I could go to my place.

Do I really want to live alone, though?

I don’t. Living alone is the last thing I want, and I don’t want to be someone else who just walks out of the girls’ lives when the going gets rough.

If there’s one thing I know about Midnight, it’s that he’s quick to apologize when he’s wrong, and he’s never afraid to admit when he is either. I can only hope that tomorrow he will wake up feeling regret and will confide in me what set him off, but if he doesn’t, I’ll leave. I’ll take the girls with me if I have to because no one deserves to live in a home where they have to walk on eggshells.

As soon as the bedroom door clicks shut and silence descends upon me, guilt sets in, and I hang my head in shame. I fucked up. I know I did. I never should have come home as angry as I am. I should have sent Lainey a text and told her I would be home late and went for a ride or went to the clubhouse, but for some reason, I came home.

I know I need to apologize to all three girls, but I don’t even know where to start or what to say. I can’t tell my daughters that their mother stopped by and didn’t even ask about them. I can’t tell them that she only cared about the money. Losing that kind of money makes my stomach sour. I know I’ll be able to make it back, but that’s not the point.

I literally paid her off to keep her away, and I’m afraid that it will come back to bite me in the ass sooner rather than later. As long as the blowback doesn’t hurt the girls, it will be fine.

With heavy feet, I head down the hall and lightly knock on their door. For a minute I think they are going to ignore me, and I don’t blame them.

“Come in,” Selena says softly.

Taking a deep breath, I turn the doorknob and step inside. The girls look at me like I’m a ticking time bomb, making my stomach roll. I well and truly fucked up this time.

“Can I talk to you two, please?” I ask gruffly.

Both girls nod and sit down on Selena’s bed.

I shove my hands into my pockets and lean against the door. “I owe you two an apology.”

“For?” Selena challenges, not giving me an inch.

“For yelling at you guys as soon as I came home. For the way I talked to Lainey.”

“So basically for the last hour?” Sienna says.

“Yeah, pretty much.” My jaw clenches. “I ran into someone today who I don’t like. They said some things that got under my skin and made me do something I didn’t want to do. I came home and took it out on you when I shouldn’t have. So, I’m sorry.”

“You shouldn’t talk to someone you don’t like,” Selena tells me.

Sienna nods. “And you always say never to do something you don’t want to do.”

Ain’t that the crux of it all. I didn’t want to give Miranda the money, but it was better than giving her the girls or risking her taking them.

“Sometimes we don’t have choices. You two know I love you right?”

“We do,” they say in unison.

“Good. I’m glad. I’m going to try to be better and not take my anger out on you guys either. You don’t deserve it.”

“Are you going to apologize to Lainey?” Selena asks.

“Yeah, we don’t want her to leave,” Sienna adds.

“I’m going to go talk to her as soon as I know you two are okay.”

They share a look before turning back to me.

“We’re okay,” Sienna says.

“Do you two have any questions for me? Is there anything I can do to make this up to you?”

Sienna opens her mouth but Selena cuts her off. “Can we think about it?”

“Sure, just let me know,” I tell them.

The girls nod, and I grab the door handle. “I love you,” I say as I slip out.

“Love you too,” they say as I shut the door behind me.

I take a couple more steps down the hall and knock on my bedroom door softly. Lainey doesn’t tell me I can come in, making my heart drop. I should have known that apologizing to her wouldn’t be as easy as it is with the girls. Testing the doorknob, I’m surprised to find that it’s not locked. I know I shouldn’t let myself in, but I do anyway.

Lainey is laying in the middle of my bed, turned away from me. I have to stop myself from crawling into bed with her and spooning her from behind. My feet carry me forward, and I sit on the edge of the bed. Reaching out, I brush her hair away from her face. Even in the dark, I can tell her eyes are red thanks to the moonlight filtering in through the window, making me feel like a bigger piece of shit.

“I’ll make this right with you. I never should have said the things I did,” I say softly.

Lainey rolls over and looks at me with sad eyes. “If you didn’t mean it, then why did you say it?”

“The heat of the moment got to me.”

She shakes her head. “That’s not an excuse, Midnight, and we both know it. I need you to tell me what’s going on, or I’m done.”

My heart stops. “What do you mean?”

“I won’t let you kiss me in the morning but treat me like shit at night. I’ve had enough people in my life treat me like hell, and I’m not about to let you do the same, and the same goes with your girls. I won’t let you take your anger out on them either. I’ll run away with them if I have to.”

I know it should make me angry that she’s threatening to take my girls, but for some reason when she does it, it makes me want to smile. Maybe it’s because I know she’s doing it to protect them and not because she wants something in return.

“Miranda stopped by today,” I confess, making her freeze.

“I’m sorry, what did you just say? I think you said Miranda came by,” she says slowly.

I feel the corner of my mouth twitching. “That’s because I did.”

“What did she want?”

I tell her about how Miranda wanted money, how she never asked about the girls and only threatened to take them from me…from us…and how I paid her.

“I can’t even…” She trails off, squeezing my hand that she grabbed halfway through the story.

“Exactly.”

“Now I feel like an ass for being mad at you when you had a reason for being angry,” she mutters.

I shake my head. “Don’t say that. I shouldn’t take my anger toward someone else out on you. Ever. Like you said, you aren’t my punching bag.” Lainey bites her lip, and I can tell she wants to ask something but doesn’t know how. “What do you want to know?”

“Was she always like this?” Lainey asks hesitantly.

I rub my jaw and think about it. “Shit, I don’t know, Flower. We were fucking kids when she got pregnant with the girls. She wanted to be my old lady and was fuckin’ pissed I wouldn’t claim her, but it never felt right. When she threw down the final ultimatum, I was ready to admit defeat and do it just so I could keep the girls. When she said it was too late, I was fucking relieved that I wouldn’t be tied to her for life like that. It’s one thing having her as the mother of my daughters but…”

“But you couldn’t make the final move.” She nods, knowingly.

“Exactly.”

“Why didn’t you ever take her to court?”

“Because she has a little book of all my transgressions that she’s been holding over my head. If I ever took her to court, she would use everything she saw in those early years against me, and it probably wouldn’t only be me going down,” I tell her bluntly.

“Are you sure she’s not just threatening you because she knows it will work? What if she doesn’t have anything? I mean, isn’t it worth trying?”

“I can’t risk it.”

She bites her lip as she studies me. “What about the club? Are they helping you?”

“As much as I let them, but I try to keep the club and my personal life as separate as possible.”

Once again it looks like my flower is holding back.

“Spit it out.”

“I think that’s a mistake. They are supposed to be your family, and you’re supposed to trust them, right?”

“They are my family, and I trust them with my life.”

“But you don’t trust them around the girls?”

I open my mouth to tell her she’s wrong and that she doesn’t get it, but nothing comes out. Because she’s not wrong, she’s right. Why shouldn’t my girls know the men I consider brothers? Why shouldn’t they know who I spend my time with outside of them? Hell, I know for a fact that Tara and Natalie would love to get to know them. Have I really been so scared for nothing?

“Think about it. But I think you should start merging both sides of your life together.”

“You’re right.”

“I usually am.” She sighs as she pulls back the covers. “Now are you going to lie down with me, or are you going to go sleep on the couch?”

Letting go of her hand, I stand and begin to strip out of my clothes. I kick them and my boots out of the way before crawling in behind her.

The night might have started out as shit, but it’s gotten better thanks to her.