Unbreakable: Unrequited Part Two (Fallen Aces MC Book 2) (25 page)

“Where did you take him?” I ask, my eyes darting between her face and his. “Why
did you leave?”

“Can we come inside?” She gestures to the wind that whips through the trees, stirring up what’s left of the snowdrifts. “He needs to warm up. The heater in the car’s broken, and I haven’t fed him for over an hour so he’s probably hungry.”

Dante.
She named him without me.
Of course, you idiot.
His blue eyes blink against the bright light, and a fat little hand emerges from under the blanket to wrap tiny fingers over the edge.

“Of course you can,” Hooch replies, simultaneously kicking me in the leg with the side of his boot. “We’ll get you comfortable, give you some privacy to feed the little guy.” He reaches out and takes her baby bag from her.

“Thank you.” Elena passes her gaze over me before she follows Hooch indoors.

My chest rises and falls rapidly; the panic grows every step she takes away from me again.
I can’t let her go.
She has to stay. This is it. She’s not leaving again.

Joker returns to his post at the gate, and I hustle to catch up with Elena and Hooch. What do I say to keep her here? Has she come back to patch things up, to try again?
Please tell me she changed her mind.

The step she takes sideways to avoid brushing against me as Hooch clears the sofas in the common room and sets her bag down says no. I drag in her scent, light and summery, and jam my hands in my pockets. I want to hold her, never let her go, but I don’t want to scare her away. I can’t risk doing a single thing that’ll make her run again.

“You can stay while I do this,” she says, settling down on one of the seats and positioning Dante to feed him.

I drop my ass to the arm of the sofa opposite and watch with nothing short of amazement as she latches our boy on and fills his belly with everything he’ll need to grow up healthy and strong. It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. She’s so relaxed, so calm. Everything I’m not.

“How old is he?”

“Twenty-nine days.”

“Wow.” I scrub a hand over my beard and suck in a deep breath. “I wish I’d known. I would have been there.”

“I didn’t try to contact anyone because I didn’t want you to know. I didn’t want you to come.”

Ouch.
“Why did you leave without trying to talk things through, baby?”

She sighs and dips her chin, closing her eyes briefly before she opens them on our creation. “He’s just like you in so many ways, you know.”

I shift across and kneel beside them to get a closer look at the little guy. “How?”

“So happy all the time.” Elena’s eyes glisten. “Sleeps all night, and hardly ever fusses. He’s so perfect, and more than I deserve.”

Her leg stiffens under my touch, but she doesn’t try to move my hand from her knee. “I’m sorry I did things the wrong way, baby. I’m sorry I let you down.”

“No.” She reaches out a hand and places it gently along my jaw. “King, no. You did what you thought was right, and I guess it was for you, but it wasn’t for
us
.”

“How do I make things like they were? How do I make things right again? Tell me, woman, and I’ll do it. I’ll do anythin’ you say.”

“That’s the problem: it was never right, King. You can’t fix something that was broken to begin with.” She lets out a heavy breath and adjusts Dante’s head on her arm. “We had so much working against us; don’t you ever wonder if perhaps we should have heeded the signs?”

“No.” Fuck the signs. All I know is that when I managed to be with her I couldn’t think of any place or time I would have rather been. Everything is her. It always was, and always will be. “Don’t leave again.”

“Your P.I. found me a couple of months ago.”

I rock back on my heels, irritated that the bastard never told me.

“He asked if he could reveal that he’d found me, and I said no.”

What the fuck was I paying this guy for?

“He didn’t tell you?” she asks, reading the expression on my face.

“Nope.” I shake my head. “I wondered why he didn’t charge me last month—fucker was guilty.”

She chuckles, but her smile fades quickly. The room falls quiet around us once again, just the subtle slurps and squeaks of Dante between us.

“I realized though,” she explains, “that I had been wrong to say no. I thought when he asked, that life was good without Carlos knowing where I was, but then it dawned on me that although it might have been safe and pedestrian, it wasn’t
good.”
She twitches a small smile. “I miss you.”

I try to speak, yet her free hand covers my lips.

“Just listen, please.”

I nod, coaxing her to continue.

“I missed you, and so I came to see if it was me or Dante you wanted to find.”

“Both of you, baby.”

“Being here, though . . .” She looks around the clubhouse, taking in the details. “It’s overwhelming. I feel exactly like I did before I left. I don’t know if I’m cut out for this life.”

“You don’t have to step foot in here ever again if you don’t want,” I reassure her. “You can live off site and I can come home to you every night.”

She shakes her head, a depth of sadness in her eyes that can’t be washed away with a few kind words. Her mind is made up; I know it. “I can’t be your mistress.”

She frowns, as do I. “Why the fuck would you be my mistress? Are you worried about the property girls that hang around?”

She smiles sadly, rubbing my arm. “I mean, I couldn’t come second to this place. Yes, you’d come home to us, but where would you be most of the time?”

Damn it—she’s right. “Here.”

“I can’t live a life of waiting for you to come back to us, of being expected to be grateful for the few times I got to see you.”

“Isn’t something better than nothing?” I ask. If all I could have were a minutes of Elena each day for the rest of my life, fuck, I’d take it in a heartbeat.

“It is,” she agrees, “but everything Carlos put me through . . . I can’t take much more worry in my life. I couldn’t sit and wonder if the things you do, the things you can’t talk to me about, put you in danger. I couldn’t handle watching you walk out the door every day, wondering if this was the time you never came back.”

“We can work through this,” I whisper, desperation clear as day in my voice. “We’ll find a way to make it work.”

“We tried, King. We tried to make ‘us’ work and your club got in the way then. Why would it be any different now?”

“You’re askin’ me to do something I just can’t do.”

“I’m not asking you to do a thing but let me go and live your life uncomplicated.”

My gaze drops to Dante, so sleepy and undisturbed by all of this. “Hate to break it to you, babe, but we’ve got the biggest complication right here.”

“Let me raise him until he’s old enough to make the decision for himself. It’s safest for him—for us. It’s best.”

“Why? How the fuck can you taking my son away again be ‘best?’” I push up and walk to stand behind the sofa opposite her, resting my hands on the back to avoid punching something. “You’re denyin’ me my right to be a father.”

My anger is reflected in her ten-fold as she loses her patience with the conversation. “You denied me my right to raise a child in a happy, loving family the minute you fucking left me to suffer for the sake of your goddamn club,” she snaps. “Do you have any idea how many times I thought I’d die at Carlos’s hand? Do you have any idea, King, how fucking hard it was to hide this from him for as long as I did?” She shakes her head, her fingers gently stroking the side of Dante’s face despite the fire raging in her eyes. “I lost count of how many times you mended my heart, just to break it all over again. It hurt that much more every time you did it, and I died a little more every time I let you.”

“I never meant to hurt you.”

“But you did. Again and again. All I wanted was somebody to fucking hold me and tell me everything would be okay, but you left me alone. You were the one who taught me that the only person I can rely on is myself.” She hesitates, shaking her head as she catches her breath. “Yes, when I’m with you it’s great, it’s fucking amazing, but it’s all the times I’m not, all the hurt at being rejected for something that’s more important to you than me that I can’t handle.” She cries, something I’ve barely seen her do. “I’m sick of being sad, King. Don’t you get it? I want to be happy, not worried, not sad, not angry . . . happy!”

“I don’t know what you want me to say? I don’t have a problem with balancing the club and you, only you do.” I slam my fist into the sofa cushion, frustrated that she makes life so fucking complicated. I want her—that’s the one constant in all of this. Fuck what else comes with it; fuck what I have to do to get that. Why can’t she be the same way? She says that she doesn’t feel enough because I can’t give her all my time, but
I
don’t feel enough because she’s not grateful for
some
of my time. “Why is it all or nothin’ with you?” I holler. “If you really loved and missed me that much, woman, whatever you got would be enough.”

“I’m sorry,” she wails. “It’s just how I feel—I don’t know why, but it is. I can’t let you put us second. But I also know you can’t put us first. That’s why I’m asking you to leave us alone, stop trying to find us, and let me put Dante first. Let me put our son’s happiness before ours. Please, King.”

I know what would be the right thing to say here: “you aren’t second.” But I know that’s a bald-faced lie. They still are. If I had to divvy up my time between them and the club, I know who’d have the greater percentage. I’m working for presidency, and after the sacrifice and effort I’ve put into aligning myself to be able to finally do right by this club, I’m not giving that up easily. My soul tears in two as I let my gaze roam over her, seated opposite me. She’s as beautiful as ever, even more so as a mother. I think about where I’ll be when I’m too old for this shit, and it’s always her there beside me. Doesn’t matter what I do. Doesn’t matter what anyone tells me. Every time I close my eyes at night and wonder where this road will lead me, she’s always standing at the end, waiting.

And there lies my problem—those are nothing but empty fantasies I create at night to help me sleep. Nothing but lies I tell myself to give reason to the following day. Without the hope, the
chance
that those dreams could one day be true, what’s the point to all of this?

What do
I
get out of it?

Nothing.

“If you need time, I’ll give you time, but I can’t cut ties completely.” My breath whooshes out my nose as I lean on the back of the sofa, my fingers digging into the frame. “You need to promise you’ll stay close. That Dante will know who his father is.”

She nods, lifting our boy to shift him across to her other breast. He settles into feeding again and she tips her head back, resting it on the back of her seat. “I didn’t know if it was the right thing to do to come today. I almost turned around and headed back.”

“What made you stick it out?”

She watches as I move around the sofa again to sit. “I guess I was worried that if I didn’t come to see you, I might never come at all. And I want you to at least have this, to have seen him one time.”

“Yeah, except this won’t be the only time, will it?”

She swallows and looks to her right, staring at the bar.

“Will it, Elena?”

“I don’t know.”

“You’re not disappearing again.”

“I need to. I need more time away from you to work out if I can put my interests second to yours.”

“Can’t you do that close by?” Why does she have to put so much distance between us? I need to hear her say it. “Why do you need to be so far away?”

“Because every time I look at you I’m reminded what love is.”

Hope swells in my chest, the emotion a fist around my lungs. Yet I fight to keep my face neutral, to not show my weakness. “Why do you say ‘was?’ Nothing’s changed about how I feel. I don’t get how you can switch it off.”

“I can’t. That’s the problem.” A lonely tear slides over her cheek. I edge forward, but she holds up a hand to stop me. “Please, don’t touch me again.”

With my palms up in surrender, I slip back onto the worn cushion. “I don’t understand how you think this could be easier on you. If the feelings are there, baby, why do this to yourself?”

“I already told you why.”

“Because you can’t deal with only getting a part of me.”

“Exactly.”

“I think you’re over-exaggerating.”

She scowls at me. “Where are we, King?” She tips her chin up, gesturing to the room around us as she snaps her maternity bra closed. “Where are we sitting?”

“In the common room.”

“Of?”

“My club.”

“Exactly.” Her gaze hardens, something akin to resolution hiding behind the pain. “As long as this is where you want to be, you have no room for us. Admit it.”

“I’d make fuckin’ room,” I growl. “Yes, this is my life. This is who I am. But it’s not the sum of everything that I love.” I point to Dante. “I love him. I love you. I love that we made somethin’ so perfect. And yes, I love the people here almost as much. They’ve been there for me, given me direction, and picked me up when I needed it. I’m not givin’ any of it up: you, him, or them. All you’d have to do is tell me when I’m not spending enough time with you. Help me balance the two things, the two families.”

“And what about Carlos?” She holds Dante out for me to take. “What do you think he’d do if he knew I was here?” Bitterness laces her next words. “I heard he’s still alive.”

I slip my hands underneath the bundle of warmth, my gaze fixed to his sleepy eyes. My chest tightens with equal parts adoration for this little piece of us, and a panic that he could be harmed by something out of my control. I guess this is what being a parent feels like: love and fear all rolled into one. “Why does he have blue eyes?” Hers are brown, mine green. It doesn’t make sense.

“All babies have blue eyes at first. They’ll change as he gets older.”

I cradle him in my right arm and run my index finger over the tip of his button nose and around his chubby face, then push the blanket back to see all of his shock of dark hair. His ears are the same shape as Elena’s, with a little dip in the middle of the shell. But aside from that, I can see the resemblance to my family coming through strong.