“Are you serious?” I asked. I could hardly believe the audacity. He wanted to act like he didn’t know what I was talking about? Like he hadn’t done anything wrong? “We had a meeting with the president of the Empire Club today. The president. About you.”
“Oh, jeez,” Dawson said softly, almost to himself. He propped his elbows on his knees, and then scrubbed his face with his hands.
“Yeah,” I said. “First, I find out that you’ve been hiding out at Tempest drinking—well, that’s one thing, that’s your own business, but running your mouth about Hell’s Ankhor there? Saying Hell’s Ankhor will fight the Empire Club in your honor? Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”
“I didn’t mean anything by it,” Dawson said a little miserably. “I was just running my mouth. I was just drunk and pissed off.”
“It doesn’t matter that you didn’t mean anything by it,” I nearly barked. “You said it. You dragged the entire club into your mess—without even realizing the danger you put everyone in.”
Dawson blinked up at me, his eyes widening as I spoke. He really hadn’t thought about this.
“You could’ve started a turf war between the clubs,” I said. “At the end of the day, Dawson, you’re a civilian, not a member, not a partner—”
“So that’s it?” Dawson asked, sharply. “Not a partner? Then what was Thanksgiving?”
I tugged at my own hair in frustration. “Being my boyfriend is different than being a partner! Being a partner in the club’s eyes is like being married. We weren’t there yet.”
The word spilled out before I could stop it. Yet. It made Dawson pause, too, and his expression fell a little.
I shoved down the twist of pain in my chest. “The point is, you don’t understand how clubs work.”
“Then tell me!” Dawson exclaimed, halfway between angry and desperate.
“You can’t just casually threaten violence like that between clubs,” I said furiously. “There’s real weight behind those words. And it’s only out of the goodness of Shane’s heart that he didn’t escalate it into a war. There could’ve been real hell to pay, you know that? If they wanted, Empire could’ve used this as an opportunity to try to expand their territory into ours.”
“What does that even mean?” Dawson asked.
“It means if they wanted to show up and brawl in the bar, or at the clubhouse, we would’ve had to deal with that,” I said. “People could’ve—would’ve—gotten hurt. Hell’s Ankhor Crew is finally in a period of peace after a long, long fucking time, and you were really quick to throw all that out the window with your little outburst. We have kids in the club now.”
The blood drained from Dawson’s face. He must’ve been thinking about Grace, same as I was.
“Yeah,” I said. “What if Maverick had gotten hurt? He’s not an enforcer, but if there’s a brawl, he’s always on the front lines.”
“I didn’t know,” Dawson said meekly.
“And you didn’t think,” I said.
“What do you want me to say?” he asked. “I was drunk. I get mouthy when I’m drunk. And the Empire guy was an asshole.”
There he was, being defensive again, instead of owning the responsibility and consequences of his actions. I scoffed and clenched my hands into fists at my side. He was so fucking frustrating. In AA, I’d worked with guys who were this deep in denial before, but it’d never affected me like this. Usually, I could just walk away until they were ready to face the problem. But Dawson’s behavior hurt me in a way I wasn’t used to. Why couldn’t he see? Why was he so blind to what he was throwing away when he chose booze over us? Over what we could have?
“You don’t just ‘get mouthy when you’re drunk,’” I said. “You have a drinking problem. You’re an alcoholic.”
Dawson sat back on the couch and his expression shuttered closed. “I’m not an alcoholic,” he said immediately. “My mother’s an alcoholic. I’m nothing like her.”
“You can keep telling yourself that.” I sighed. The fight rushed out of me, as quickly as it had arrived. “You’re in denial. Just because your problem looks different than your mother’s doesn’t mean you don’t have a problem.”
“You don’t know a goddamn thing about me,” Dawson said, but his voice wavered.
My heart twisted, a mix of anger and frustration and pain at seeing him so obviously hurting.
“You should think about getting help,” I said. “But not from me, or from the club. You’re off the construction job. Just stay away from the club properties for a while, okay? If Blade sees you, he’ll blow his top.”
“Fuck.” Dawson grimaced hard, rubbed his eyes, and then drove his fist into the soft cushions of his well-worn couch. “Fuck!”
Despite how upset and disappointed I was, part of me still wanted to soothe him. Wanted to drop on the couch next to him, tug him into my arms, kiss him, and work out next steps together. But this wasn’t a problem I could solve. I couldn’t drag Dawson kicking and screaming into recovery. Until he wanted to stop, this was going to keep happening. And I wasn’t going to be involved any further. I should have made this decision before we ever got this far.
It took some effort, but I walked out the door, leaving Dawson alone on the couch in his hangover nest.
I hopped back on my bike without looking back. As I pulled onto the highway, focusing on the hum of the engine and the rush of the wind, I felt a little less overwhelmed. But explaining to Dawson the damage he’d done hadn’t made me feel better. I just felt exhausted, and the anger coiling in my gut had simply melted into melancholy. I didn’t know what the fuck the Empire was going to demand for reparations, and the not knowing created a powerful anxiety in my chest.
And the ache of ending things with Dawson.
I couldn’t focus on that, though. There were more important, pressing tasks at hand—like making sure the club was safe, the reparations dealt with, and that Mal wasn’t going to have my head for making this kind of misstep with Dawson. But despite all that, it still hurt like a knife in my gut to ride away from Dawson’s house.
I’d thought we had something. I’d thought Dawson had been honest with me, that he’d been opening up. I’d thought we were on the way to something real, something deep. Something special.
For the first time since Sienna, I’d really felt a connection with someone else. I’d started to open up to Dawson—had been feeling things for Dawson—in a way I hadn’t in years, not with anyone. It had felt like waking up, thrilling and breathless and magnetic.
And now that was all over.
Because however we fixed things with the Empire Club, my relationship with Dawson couldn’t keep going like this.
16
Dawson
I stared into my mug of coffee, my third—or fourth?—of the day. My head hurt. Even standing in the middle of the kitchen was hard enough work to make my head spin a little.