Haunt (Bayonet Scars #6) (6 page)

“You think this is cute?” he says with a nod to the handcuffs.

“Yeah, don’t you?” The sarcasm in my voice can’t hide the shakiness. There are a few things I don’t doubt—that the two best people on this planet call me mom, and that this flawed man loves me, the kind of true, deep love that consumes you, and that I love him impossibly more than that. Except now, in this moment, I’m questioning that second one. We don’t engage in small talk. Actually, we don’t really
talk
at all. We’ve never needed to. We were always better at showing how we feel through touch.

“What do you want? I got shit to do,” he says without an ounce of emotion in his voice. I have to swallow all the love and hate and fear that threatens to spill out of my mouth while he’s so . . . blank.

“Well, uncuffing me would be a solid start.” I nod my head at the table where Diesel left the key. “Your guy Darius seems to think I don’t uphold my end of a bargain.”

“Diesel cuffed you?” A smile graces his face, and it’s the first time I’ve seen it since we conceived Piper. I miss his smiles. Truth is I miss everything about him except his not-so-fucking-little chemical dependence problem.

“No, asshole. I cuffed myself. Thought it’d be fun to hang out in your cum stains for the evening.”

He moves one foot in front of the other so quickly that I don’t realize he’s thrown himself on the bed. He’s hunched over, his fists and knees planted in the mattress. Wyatt is every bit a predator with his narrowed eyes, calm, even breaths, and taut muscles that would intimidate most men and excite every woman on the planet.

“In this clubhouse, with this club, you are
my
property. I don’t give a fuck where you go or what you do, but goddamn it, woman, when you’re here, you’re gonna act right.”

Oh. Fuck. No. My heart rate speeds up and a thin sheen of sweat covers my forehead. I feel gross having been stuck here for hours, but more than that, I just feel pissed off.

“I may be your property, but you represent me, and no man of mine fucks some whore in
my
bed.”

He inches closer, his fists flanking my legs. His eyes have a laser focus that sends a shiver down my spine. It doesn’t matter how much of a jackass he is—he still affects me the way he always has.

“Bitch, you need to watch yourself.” His words are laced with an angry warning that might scare other women, but I was raised by a man far less loving than Wyatt, so they fall short with me. My man knows how to fight, but I think he’s forgotten who taught him how.

He continues to crawl up my body. I purse my lips and wait until my knee is perfectly aligned with his amazing dick. I fight the urge to tell him what I’m about to do is going to hurt me more than it’s going to hurt him. I don’t make a habit out of lying to people, so I’m not about to start now. In all honesty, I’ve been fantasizing about this for years.

I take a deep breath and clear my mind of every reservation I have about sending his ball sack up his ass and throw my knee straight into his dick, but he’s picked up on the move. In the last second before I make contact, he shoves his huge-ass arm in between my legs, forcing my knee to the side and into his hip instead. He palms my ass, giving it a rough squeeze, and settles his undamaged family jewels in between my legs. His lips hover just an inch above mine, and his hair falls in my face. My wrists ache under the strain of my position—half sitting up and half lying down without a meaningful grip of the headboard railings—but I refuse to ask to be let up.

“That’s no way to treat your old man.” His warm breath washes over my face. He smells of whiskey and cigarettes but nothing else. He can’t have had much to drink yet, because his eyes aren’t bloodshot and he’s not slurring promises of love and devotion that he has no idea how to keep.

God, I just want to stab him with tweezers or something. One day I’d like someone to explain to me how I can love this man so much that my body physically aches to be near him but still want to force him to swallow his own tongue. He’s annoying, insufferable, and by far the absolute most difficult man I’ve ever met. He’s going to make me gray early, and that’s just going to piss me off even more. Of all the dysfunction in my life, Wyatt Strand takes the cake.

It’s on the tip of my tongue—the confession that I’m here to make.

“You teach people how to treat you,” I say. In my head, I’m telling him right now about Zander. In my head, he’s losing his shit on me because I’m still handcuffed and can’t get away. And I chicken out.

“Good thing I taught my son to treat women better than you treat his mother.”

My son.

I should have said
our son
. It would have been so easy to just say it. Except for the fact that I can barely breathe at the thought of telling Wyatt he has a fourteen-year-old son. You’d think with how many times I’ve told him about Zander that it wouldn’t be hard to do it now—except for the fact that he’s sober now, and he’ll remember this time.

“I can’t have this conversation with you,” he says thoughtfully. His eyes look are so much bluer now and his voice is rougher. The fight blows out of me, and all I have left is the sorrow in the pit of my stomach that never goes away.

“We have to talk about him.” There. Effort. “Like, we
really
have to talk about him.”

“Talk later, fuck now.” Wyatt cups my ass with his hand and kneads. I bite my lip, trying to keep silent, but it’s no use. A soft moan escapes me. I want nothing more than to wrap my arms around him and never let go. But I’m still freaking cuffed.

“You’re not fucking me with these cuffs on,” I say.

He just lifts an eyebrow and smirks in such an incredibly sexy way that I’m left speechless. The few inches that separate us disappears, and Wyatt skims his nose along my jaw. My body buzzes with his touch. It doesn’t even matter how obnoxious or difficult he can be. I won’t deny him because I love him. Because the only thing worse than loving a man like Wyatt Strand is loving him from afar.

“Baby.” The word escapes my lips like a plea or a prayer, I’m not entirely sure which. I want more—so much more—but we really need to talk, and if things keep going down this road, we won’t be doing any talking. I tell Zander all the time that history repeats itself if you don’t learn from your mistakes, but maybe I should be taking my own advice, because with Wyatt and I—we don’t talk, and then when I’m ready to, it’s too late. Every single time.

I’m about to open my mouth when my man brings his lips to my neck. It’s second nature to tilt my head to give him more room. His tongue drags itself over a vein in my neck, from the bottom of my jaw all the way down to the top of my collarbone and back up again. Every hair on my body stands at attention, reveling in every tiny little touch I get and anticipating the next one. Being touched by him, like this, is the kind of gift that can’t be taken for granted.

“What are you thinking?” His breath is hot on my skin.

“I miss you,” I say as honestly as I can. “I miss us.”

“You left me,” he says, reminding me of something I’ve never once forgotten. “Walked out with your kid and left me.” He takes a deep breath and sits up. There’s a flash of regret in his eyes, and I can’t tell if it’s over a history that neither of us really wants to revisit or if this is something new. I don’t say a word as he pulls a key from his pocket and leans over me, unlocking the cuffs and freeing me from my prison. I laugh to myself at the thought of those cuffs being my prison. The only thing that’s ever really bound me is sitting in front of me with a grim look on his face and a sorrow in his eyes that I don’t know I’ll ever be able to fix.

On shaking wrists, I push myself up into a sitting position. My wrists aren’t bruised or anything, but my arms are sore as hell. Still, the discomfort in my body is nothing compared to the discomfort in my soul. Wyatt messed up all those years ago, but I left. I made the choice to walk out, and even if I can’t regret my choice to keep our son safe, I could have tried to mend fences, and I didn’t.

“I have to . . .” I start speaking but can’t finish my thought. “I have to tell you something.”

The only thing worse than having this conversation is the thought of not having it. If Diesel is the one to tell Wyatt about Zander and Piper, the outcome will be way worse. Tears well in my eyes at the thought. Fuck. I hate crying. If my dad saw me crying, he’d grab me by my shoulders and tell me that there are only three things worth crying over—death, your kid, and running out of whiskey. Then he’d hug me, because no matter how old I get or how little we see each other or whose old lady I am, I’m still his kid. But he’s not here. He’s at his house with my kids, who only get to see him once a year or so. This might actually be Piper’s second time seeing him, with the first being the day she was born. My dad may not show up for much, but he’s damn sure been there when his baby is having a baby.

“Babe, just say it.” Wyatt’s voice is gentle.
Too gentle
. I don’t deserve this kind of sweet from him. Part of me wants to start sobbing and play the victim, telling him I’m afraid he’ll hate me and how very sorry I am. But that’s fucked, and old ladies don’t act like that. The club didn’t vote me in so I could manipulate my man. They voted me in because I know how to take my hits, and I can do it without acting like a pathetic little bitch.

“I lied to you. When I left—I lied.” I suck in a deep breath, hoping it helps calm me some. It doesn’t. “I told you what I had to in order to get our son out safely.”

Wyatt’s eyes bore into mine, completely unmoving, like he’s trying to read between the lines but failing miserably. He’s smart, though. I know he knows. Somewhere, deep in his heart, he has to have thought about it. Or maybe I just don’t want to believe he’d ever buy that I cheated on him. Either way, it definitely doesn’t matter, because I left and he never came after me and I never took the opportunity to come home.

Until now.

When Wyatt finally reacts, it’s with a simple nod. I lower my eyes, unable to watch his eyes as the wheels turn in his brain. He’s working through it all—fourteen years of lies and betrayal all unmasked with a single word.

Our
.

“I can’t believe a fucking word you say.” His words are barely audible, coming out on a whisper. He rubs his hands over his face and stares at the wall behind my head. I can’t see the look on his face anymore, just his movements, but it’s enough. Every ounce of fear and regret that’s built up over the years solidifies in my gut, leaving me with a weight that keeps me feeling like I’m being suffocated.

“You were a volatile drug addict, and you scared the shit out of me. I left because you made it clear that the only way I was going to keep Zander safe was if he was away from you.” I let my mouth run with all the thoughts in my head. I don’t give a single second’s thought to the consequences for this kind of honesty. I’ve spent my boy’s entire life in a lie, and I’m done with that life.

“Stop,” Wyatt barks. His voice is edgy, angry, and the muscles in his neck are strained as he speaks. If I don’t say it now, I know I won’t. So I keep going even though I wish I could just shut the hell up already.

“I begged you to lay off the whores, pleaded with you about the drugs and the drinking, and none of it made any difference. I think I would have lived like that, but then you went and threatened me. You were so fucked up, I bet you don’t remember the shit you were spewing, but I do.”

He pushes off the bed so quickly that the movement makes me jump. I watch every little thing he does, from frantically looking around the small room to the way his chest rises and falls quickly despite his attempts to slow his breathing.

“I can’t do this,” he says. He turns for the door, and I know if I don’t make a decision right now, then I won’t have the option anymore. There’s a dangerous aura around him that I remember all too well. His body radiates hate and hurt, all overlapping one another and becoming something entirely different—more desperate, dangerous, and depraved than I’ve ever seen from him in the past.

And because I’m terrified of what his leaving means, I scramble to get to my feet and clear the bed, and in no time I’m wedged between him and the door. This isn’t how it was supposed to go. Not that I’d thought about this a thousand times before. Like the day Zander said his first word, or took his first step. I certainly didn’t think about this moment the first time my boy asked about his daddy—back when he was just barely figuring out what a daddy is—and I definitely didn’t think about this moment when the stick turned blue and I realized Zander was going to be a big brother.

“You’re going to have to, because as much as you hate me, there’s a fourteen-year-old boy out there who needs you, and I’ve fucked up with him enough. I’m not leaving here until you get your shit straight so you can be a father to your son.”

When he finally looks at me, I wish he hadn’t. I don’t see the man I love in his blue-green eyes. A deadness has crept in that worries me. His mouth forms the words
my son
, and no sooner than they’re off his lips is his fist flying at me. I brace myself for the hit that doesn’t come, but my relief is short-lived. Wyatt’s giant fist lands in the wall behind my head with a powerful blow that cracks through the paint and plaster. He leans in, pulls his fist out, pulling sheetrock with it, and does it again. I squeeze my eyes shut and count my breaths.
One. Two. Three.
I know all too well that it doesn’t matter how well you know someone, how much you love them. Violence is a part of this world—something I accepted a damn long time ago. It never gets old, though—the awful pain that comes from a set of knuckles to the face.