Page 104 of Snared Rider

I should pull away. I should put distance between us, but I don’t. I can’t. I’m so conflicted. His touch is warm, his eyes are soft, but I find myself wondering if his hands—the hands touching my face—have taken a life. I’m not sure I want to know. It opens my thoughts to questions I can’t deal with.

Has my father killed? Derek? Slade? Jem?

Shit.

Logan holds my cheeks secure as I shake.

“Baby, those deaths had nothing to do with me or the Club. The police thought they could kill two birds with one stone. That’s all.”

I must show my confusion on my face because he adds, “They figured they could solve a number of high-profile murders, while taking down the Club. It was win-win for them. The minute they realised they could do that, it stopped being about gun charges and became about destroying the Lost Saxons. They nearly succeeded too.”

How did I not know any of this was going on? I don’t recall Dad or the patches acting weird that weekend. Dad had gone out early the day after and on Monday. He hadn’t returned on either day until the early hours of the morning, but that wasn’t unusual.

I should have been more alert, but at the time I’d been consumed with the death of my relationship. Nothing had seemed amiss with my father.

Clearly, I am the most self-absorbed person on the planet. Logan and the Club were going through hell and I was moping about like a love-sick teenager. I mean, I was a love-sick teenager, but that is not the point.

God, no wonder Dad didn’t kick up a stink about me going to university; he was probably glad I was getting the hell out of Kingsley and away from the brewing storm.

I expected his confession and the revelation of the truth would set me free somehow, but it doesn’t. If anything, it leaves me feeling hollow because he still gave up on us. He didn’t fight.

I swallow my dismay.

“Well, since you’re sitting in front of me, they clearly failed. And as far as I know you didn’t go to jail, so what happened?”

His fingers rub over my throat, back and forth in a soothing motion. It’s a balm to my soul, but it shouldn’t be. I should not want his hands on me at all.

“Prez made sure we were protected,” Logan says softly. “He got a good legal team and they made the charges disappear.”

I don’t even want to know what they did to make that happen. Ignorance is bliss. That is a lesson I learnt the hard way growing up a Club kid.

“Why didn’t I know about this?”

“No one knew, Beth. Not mum, not Kenzie, not Dorothy, no one outside the patches knew the shit storm brewing behind the scenes. Prez and Slade wanted it kept quiet, so we did.”

Okay, fine, I can understand that Derek would want to keep the old ladies out of it. I get the reasons why it had to be kept under wraps at the time, but after it blew over?

“When you knew you weren’t going to jail, why didn’t you come to me then?”

Would I have taken him back at that point? I don’t know, but I can’t resist asking the question. While I’m getting answers, I want to know everything.

“Because it took months and months to get there—close to a year. I was in fucking limbo, not sure if I was going to be free, or if I was facing life behind bars. By the time it was sorted you’d applied for university, got in and moved away. I wasn’t going to upheave your life again, Beth. I was happy you were doing something normal, something outside the Club.”

His words piss me off. I wasn’t happy. The year after he tossed me aside like I meant nothing to him had been the worst of my life.

“How bloody noble of you,” I mutter, earning a sigh from him.

“I figured you’d be mad at me for a while, but that you’d come around. I didn’t expect you to hold a fucking grudge for a decade.”

I glance up at him, meeting liquid brown eyes.

“You should have told me what was going on.”

“I should have.”

“I could have handled it.”

“You could have,” he agrees again, “but I didn’t want you to handle it. I was nearly twenty-three and my life was looking like it was done. You’d just turned twenty, with everything ahead of you; I wasn’t bringing you into my shit.” He licks his lips. “I made a vow to give up my life for the patch; you didn’t.”

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