She started rubbing her fingertip over the patch again. "I think your days as his wife are over, Keira. I’m sorry to have to tell you that, but I’d prepare myself if I were you for that ‘goodbye, it’s been fun’ talk."
Woodenly, I stared at her. "How long’s it been going on?" I rasped, suddenly feeling the cold sink into my bones, suddenly feeling the dampness from the rain filter through to my skin, making me feel as if I were freezing from the inside out.
"Oh, years," Kendra said airily, wafting her free hand.
My eyes flared wide. "Years?" My temper stirred, the embers starting to flicker into flames at her gumption, but then she nodded, and her tone was a bewildering combination of sorrowful and catty as she told me:
"Yes. While you were busy resting your fat ass in bed, I was keeping my man satisfied. Least you could have done was sucked him off, but nope, you couldn't even do that. Don't worry, I did that for him when you were too lazy to."
My fat ass in bed?
Was she talking about when I’d been put on bedrest? When my pregnancy had turned high risk?
"He should have left you years ago. We had a baby together, you know? No, I don’t suppose you would know, would you?" Her smile was sympathetic, but in her eyes, I saw her scorn. "I had to have an abortion. The baby wasn’t…right. Storm was so sad, but he was there for all of it. He was so supportive; he held my hand and everything.
"I know he wants more kids, but he thinks you’re too weak to have them. We keep trying, but we haven’t been blessed yet." Then, she patted her stomach, and murmured, "Maybe after trying for the past month, we’ll be lucky."
My hands curled into fists as I surged into a standing position. She stopped leaning against the fence, a sudden awareness adding a tension to her form as if she were preparing herself for an attack, but I twisted away from her, and I ran.
Like a child, like that goddamn ostrich with its head in the sand, I ran away, but as I did, she laughed. It echoed in my head, ricocheting around and around, deafening me with her gleeful amusement at my horror.
When my foot got snagged with something on the ground, I wrenched it, growling as I twisted it. The pain was nothing in comparison to the agony inside me.
The cheating… that was one thing.
But he’d gotten her pregnant?
Was trying to get her pregnant again?
My brain wasn’t computing the blows to my system, but that one fact remained—he didn’t want us to have another kid. Hell, we’d argued a few weeks before his birthday about it!
He didn’t want me to have another of his children, but he was okay with Kendra getting pregnant because I was too weak?
Too weak?
I’d been bedridden toward the end of carrying Cyan, but…
I wasn’t weak.
I'd brought my baby girl into this world. I'd stagnated on a mattress for months to save her.
Was that a sign of weakness?
No.
That was a sign of strength. Of love. Of hope. Of faith.
As I hobbled back to my car, the journey seeming to take twice as long as it had been to get to the graveyard, something that had nothing to do with my ankle, my brain whirred.
Storm thought I was weak.
He thought Kendra was the right person to carry his child.
Because I was too fragile. Too delicate.
I thought about when we made love, how he cherished me and was careful with me. Even when I dug my heels into his ass and growled against him, when I tugged on his hair and bit his lip, trying to trigger what he’d shown me that one time after Rene’s passing… But he always calmed things down.
Always.
Because I was weak.
Because he didn’t think I could take him.
All of him.
And maybe he wasn’t wrong—I’d never told him about what happened here at the clubhouse between us. Had never shared that I’d seen a different side of him.
My hands curled into fists as righteous anger washed through me. An anger that was aimed at both of us. An anger that made me feel small and pathetic—exactly like my mom.
I’d turned into her.
Knowing Storm was one thing, completely avoiding the truth because it didn’t suit my narrative was another.
I was her.
Storm was Dad. Cheating. Lying.
Things had turned full circle. Somehow, we’d morphed into them as spouses.
Mind racing as I asked myself if we were like them as parents, I wondered if the toxic stain had already made its way into Cyan’s DNA.
I wanted to be a better mom than mine, but… it had taken Kendra to make me see the woods for the trees. Maybe I was a worse mother. What else was I burying my head in the sand over?
That Cyan could repeat my mistakes had terror whipping at my insides.
That she could be okay with cheating, okay with a man treating her like a second-class citizen—
"No. No," I whispered to myself as I jumped into the SUV, speeding off down the driveway, uncaring if Storm saw me now. "I won’t let that happen, Cyan, I won’t let that happen."
Thirty-Seven
Storm
PRESENT - JULY
Two weeks after Kendra made an appearance in Coshocton, before disappearing like a fucking ghost, North, Giulia and Hawk’s brother, showed up.
At first, I thought it actually was Hawk standing in my doorway, Little behind him, shadowing the fucker like he was haunting him. But then I took in the fact Hawk wasn’t wearing a cut, which would never happen. Hell, I’d worn mine to the school parent-teacher conference.
"What are you doing here?" I demanded, not exactly pleased to see him.
Fucker had run off with his dad’s Old Lady. If that wasn’t the shadiest fucking thing, then I didn’t know what was.
"You know him, Prez?" Little boomed.
"I know him." Unfortunately. Scowling, I waved a hand. "Come in."
Little grunted as North slipped into one of the seats in front of the desk. When the palm frond beside the door got caught as Little closed it, he heaved a sigh, shoved it away, then closed it again. I almost smiled, but the guys already thought it was fucking weird that I had a green thumb—unlike my Old Lady—so I didn’t need to add to the rep.
"Didn’t say you could sit down, but I guess that’s okay," I grumbled. "I repeat, what the fuck are you doing here, North?"
"I wanna be a Sinner again."
"You mean you want to Prospect for the Sinners," I sniped, rocking back into my seat as I watched him.
He nodded. "I do."
"You’re the one who left West Orange, fuckface. You’d be a brother like Hawk now."
His eyes flared with interest, and he leaned forward. "How is he?"
"You coulda called him yourself."
North shook his head. "He’d never understand. Seriously, how is he?"
"Got an Old Lady now."
North’s mouth dropped open. "What? What the fuck? He’s got a woman?"
"And a dog," I mocked. "Probably a couple fucking dozen pets as well."
"I don’t get it." His head swayed slowly from side to side as if he were in a daze. "He wasn’t ready to settle down."