Unbreakable: Unrequited Part Two (Fallen Aces MC Book 2) (37 page)

"And you? You look a little more relaxed than Dad said you were last time you came."

"I'm good." I pick up her bucket of weeds as she dusts off and collects her tools.

"Well, your father will be in soon, so let’s go get some lunch ready, huh?"

I follow Mom around and help her out in the kitchen. Preparing food is a basic task that clears my head, takes me away from the shit going down at the club
—
exactly why I came.

Vince's kid and his friends are working on the sly for us to try and lift a distribution arm out of the hands their buddy dropped it in and return it to Carlos. They fix this wrong
—
I fix our club's finances. It all sounds so simple in premise, but when it involves one of their own going undercover to pose as a dealer and get information for us, there's risk involved.

Yet again, lives are being gambled with, and Carlos is at the center of the whole problem.

What eats at me the most is I know I should tell Elena that our club is involved with Carlos, running drugs for him. Maybe she’d understand why we’re doing it—to save ourselves from bankruptcy—but the woman would be justified in feeling betrayed that I’ve gone into business with the man who almost destroyed us. No telling what she’d do when she finds out all his threats are nothing more than emotional blackmail to keep me in line and remind me who’s in charge. Keeping our business agreement a secret from Elena has the potential to ruin any hope of her sticking around, although with the way she's been behaving, I kind of have to wonder if she's already lost to me.

"Sit down. I'll bring some iced tea over." Mom sets the plate of sandwiches in the center of the table and ushers me to a chair.

I do as I'm told and drop my head to the table between my arms.

"Tell me why you came, Lloyd." The vibration of the pitcher as she sets it on the table tickles my forehead.

"I don’t know."

"You must." The chair beside me scrapes as she sits. "What did you hope to get out of visiting us?"

"Can't I just come see my parents for a bit?"

"You never 'just come see' us anymore."

I sigh and roll my head to the side, moving my left arm so I can see her. "Tell me I'm not doing the wrong thing."

"With what?"

"All of it."

She sighs and reaches out to rest her hand on mine. "I don't know what you're doing to tell you if it's wrong or right." A soft smile graces her lips. "What I can tell you, though, is that I've never doubted your ability to do right by people before."

"Even with Elena?" I ask with a callous laugh.

"Even with her."

"You know she cut me off, right?"

"You alluded to it on one of your visits."

"She said I let her down when she needed me most."

Mom simply shrugs one shoulder. "You did, Son."

"I didn't see it for ages," I say, lifting my head off the table. "But I do now. I want to make it right, but I don’t know how to when she keeps pushing me away."

"She's only doing it because she's hurt. You wounded her; she's bound to be touchy."

"If you were her," I ask, "what would you want me to do?"

Mom leans back, her arms over her chest. "Make up for it, I guess."

"By spending time with her?"

She shakes her head. "Not just
with
her, but
on
her. Don't simply be there in body
—
give her all of you, no distractions, no phone, nothing. Cut off from the club and give her one-on-one."

Could I do it? Cut ties completely and not know at a single touch what was going on within our walls? "It'll be hard."

"It's not the hardest thing you've done, though, is it?" She offers me a weak smile.

The back door rattles as Dad opens it and kicks his boots off. "Long time no see."

"Hey, Dad."

"To what do we owe this pleasure?" He crosses through the kitchen and takes a seat at the table.

"I lost touch with what's important in my life," I admit. "Thought I better go about rectifying that."

He grunts his acceptance.

"He's making a start with us," Mom says, "and then setting things right between him and Elena."

Dad stills with his sandwich halfway to his mouth. "You sure you want to be involved with the likes of her?"

"Pardon?" I frown at him.

"She ran off when things got too hard and took your kid from you, Lloyd. I can’t say I exactly think of her in a glowing light."

Fair enough.
"She had her reasons."

"I'm sure she did." He scoffs back a fast bite. "But do you think she'd do it again?"

"I don't know." Would she run and repeat history? Take Dante with her? "I'm taking precautions to know she can't."

"That so?"

"Yeah." First thing’s first—if she's not in control of her lease, I'm going to know if she breaks it or abandons the place. "I'm keeping a close watch on her from here on out."

"You do what you will," he grumbles. "But I have one request."

I lean back and watch him carefully. "Fire away."

"If she does go again, you don’t bloody chase her. You let her go and dig her own grave."

Like I could ever promise that.

Elena

“You wanted to see me?” I step into King’s office and look around at the pictures on the wall, the tidy folders all lined up on a shelf, and the way the things on his desk are arranged
by size.

“Yeah, I do.” He drops what he’s doing and stands, rounding the desk to stop before me with his arms crossed. “First, though, why is it I need to get one of the boys to round you up like a damn employee?”

“You tell me,” I snap impatiently. My temper’s already thin after yet another run-in with a do-gooder who had more opinions than I could shake a stick at. “Half the time I wonder if you’re even here, so I find it easier to just wait until
you
decide you want to see me.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means, King, that here we are again, except this time we’re under the same roof and yet again I barely see more than an hour of you a day.”

“I was at my parents’ place this morning.” He drops his face to toy with his beard.

“Oh. How are they?” I haven’t heard a thing about them since I walked out on less-than-stellar terms, and I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t wondered how they were.

“They still don’t like you.”

My shoulders curl with the impact of his words. “Ouch, King.”

“It’s warranted.”

“I know.” I slump down into the seat beside me. “That’s what hurts the most.”

He eyes me curiously for a moment before speaking. “How are you, anyway?”

“Alive.” I shrug.

“Dante was happy enough when we hung out yesterday afternoon, but you don’t let me talk with you to know how you are. Why?”

I laugh bitterly at the thought. “Probably because I couldn’t give you an honest answer if I tried.”

“Really?”

“Really.” I drop my chin, fidgeting with my hands in my lap. “Somewhere in the months after I left your parents, it all hit,” I admit. “Everything. The weight of what I’d been through in the escape from Carlos, and dealing with my pregnancy mostly alone . . . everything.”

King shifts to squat beside the seat—as if he’d do anything else. Every time we do this, every time he gets me to open up, this is how we are.

“I wish you’d talk to me about this stuff, baby.”

“Why?” I laugh. “What good does rehashing the most painful part of my life do?”

“Shares the burden.”

I look his way and smile. “You have to admit you haven’t been in the best shape yourself to share any more bad news.”

“Maybe.” He shrugs, those deliciously rounded shoulders tugging at his T-shirt. “But you know I’d rather let it break me than have you suffer another day with it.”

“Even after how I’ve been of late? After how cold I’ve behaved toward you?”

“You could set me in ice, babe, and I’d still thaw that shit out with the warmth I have for you.”

“Why?” I whisper. “Why persist when I keep telling you there’s too much damage?”

He frowns, his lips pursed as he swallows. “When a vehicle gets damaged beyond repair, you know what they do with it?”

“Wreck it?”

“Recycle it. It gets crushed, has massive weight born down on it until it can’t handle any more, and then they take that thing it was and turn it into something else.”

“What are you getting at?”

“Stop beating yourself up because you aren’t who you were anymore. Accept who you are now.”

I swallow hard, pushing the tears away. I don’t have time for remorse or regret—they don’t get me anywhere.

King shifts to his knees and shuffles around the seat to face me front-on. “Tell me honestly: Do you think I’m the same person I was ten years ago?”

“I’ve only known you eight,” I sass. Couldn’t help myself.

He chuckles. “You get what I’m sayin’ though.”

“I do, and no, I think you’ve matured. You’re a bit more worn down by the world, less hopeful and optimistic.”

He frowns and nods. I’ve struck a chord, it seems. “Exactly.” A heavy second hangs between us. “Do you still love me the same as you did, though?”

I stare into his crisp green eyes and delve deep into my thoughts. I don’t want to answer out of haste. I don’t want to give him my knee-jerk reaction and say that I don’t know.

The answer isn’t so hard when I allow myself to see it.

“I love you differently.”

“How?”

I sigh. How do I put it so that he doesn’t take offence? “Less lust, more respect.”

“Respect,” he repeats, as though trying it out for himself. “Tell me one last thing, then.”

“What?” I whisper, afraid of what he’s going to ask.

“Why do you think you no longer fit?”

I narrow my gaze for a moment, affronted that he seems to have picked out my greatest fear so easily. “Is that what you think?”

“You shut yourself off from everyone else here,” he says. “You allow Dante to settle in to this life, but you keep yourself at arm’s length. Why?”

“Because if I told you how many times I’ve had people come up to me, people I don’t know from the next patched member, telling me all sorts of theories on why I’m treating you badly and how I need to be the one to do all the sucking up, you wouldn’t believe me.”

He smiles, rocking back on his heels before he stands. “I probably would. They’re a protective bunch ’round here.”

“Are they what,” I murmur.

“Are they right, though?” He jams his hands in his pockets. “Do you need to do some suckin’ up to me?”

I shrug, determined not to admit it. “My indiscretions do seem to outweigh yours.”

“Pfft,” he huffs. “So what? You want to know what I realized in those days upstairs?”

“That life’s kind of boring when you’re confined to four walls?”

He stares at me for a beat, and I realize what I’ve really alluded to—my time stuck at Carlos’s.

“You were saying?” I coax.

“I realized,” he says slowly, “that every time you and I argue, it’s over the same old stuff: the past. We can’t change that. We can’t undo the choices we made, the people we screwed around with, and what happened because of that.”

“No, but?”

“We can start from now.” He rubs a hand over the nape of his neck, looking every part the shy boy I met at a corner store. My heart slips the headphones off and takes notice of what he says next. “Let me take you out for coffee.”

As much as my sentimental side jumps at the idea, I shake my head. “No. If we’re starting again, make it something different.”

“Okay.” He nods. “Like what?”

I nibble on the end of my index finger while I think it over. “We can’t go too far from here, right? Because Carlos still has eyes on us?”

“Not for too long, no.”

Asshole.
Even now, miles away, and having been out of my life for years, he still manages to ruin things for me. I catalogue the safe places we could go, the places I
have
been since Carlos’s men knocked in my door.

“The house,” I blurt out. The idea has me wriggling in the seat. “Show me where it was you started our house.”

His hand tracks a nervous path through his hair. “Are you sure?”

“Yes. Absolutely. If you want us to start afresh, then I want it to be where you saw our future. Show me what you thought our life could have been, King.” I drop my head, subdued by the depth of the moment. “Make me believe it could happen.”

King

Excited isn’t something I want to be at the idea of taking Elena to the section, but if my heart is anything to go by, I’m fucking ecstatic. She agreed to try with a clean slate. She actually agreed. I’d expected argument, reasons why it wouldn’t work, and her trademark stubbornness and reluctance to let herself feel.

But I got none of it. Well, at least not on the subject I thought I would.

“There’s one more thing I wanted to talk to you about.” I tense, knowing how she reacted when I broached the subject a couple of weeks ago.

Her head tips to the side, her ponytail falling free of her shoulder.

“I found you a new place to live.”

Detonation in three, two, one . . .

“You did what?”

“I haven’t signed off on it, but I thought you could take a look.”

She drops her head into her hands and groans. “I’m agreeing to try again, King, to see if I can find what I once felt for you again. But this?” She drops her hands away to reveal wild eyes. “I asked you not to interfere. I asked you to let me figure out how to do this myself.”

“I’m just tryin’ to help,” I say a fraction too loudly.

“Well don’t.” The chair rockets out from underneath her, and she makes a line for the door.

I try to catch her, but it’s too late . . . she’s out in the damn common room with no less than a dozen sets of eyes on her.

“Don’t you think I can do it myself?” she yells, hesitating near the stairs.

“Of course I can.”

“Then why won’t you let me pick where
I
want to be?” She starts toward the stairs.

“Because if it were up to you, you’d fuckin’ run a mile again and I wouldn’t get to see my son.”