Page 130 of They Break Beauty

“That was different.”

“Because of your connection?”

“Something like that.” She finished the last bite of her pancake breakfast, then dabbed her mouth with a napkin and sat back in her chair. “But from this moment, you and I can put what’s happened with Hex and my strikes against you too behind us. If you’re really willing to in the light of day.”

I sensed Colt looking at me and I could basically feel the anxiousness rolling off him that I might back out now or something.

“Clean slates,” I confirmed to Brianna. “However, we need to discuss Levi.”

I jolted as Colt suddenly slammed down his plate, then shoved himself to his feet. “Fuck, Mason. You say all this bullshit is done with, but now you want to use Brianna to go behind Lev’s back, use her to control him, I’m guessing. That’s putting her in a really fucking awkward position and it’s gonna hurt Lev badly if he finds out. You know he has major trust issues.”

“It’s not what you think. Calm down. Just—”

“You wouldn’t listen to me about all of this before, the hell I’m gonna do you the dignity of hearing you out now.” He rounded the table to head for the door, but pulled up short to tell Brianna in an attempted calmer tone that he didn’t quite pull off, “Sorry, cutie. I can’t. Once this is done, you need me, I’ll be outside songwriting with my guitar, all right? Don’t hesitate.”

“I won’t,” she said, smiling out at him. “But I’ll be fine.”

“Yeah,” he murmured. His eyes blazed at me in ire. “Make damn sure that rings true.”

I rolled my eyes. “Of course I will. Truce, remember? You’re really overreacting, gorgeous.”

“Don’t call me that. We’re not good. You don’t get to go there with me right now. Not until I’m sure you’ve fixed this for real.”

With that, he stormed out without another word, his tight distressed blue jeans doing a great deal to draw attention to his delectable ass.

I blinked and looked away. I needed to focus, and thinking about fucking him really wasn’t conducive to that.

“He doesn’t like it when you and Levi are at odds, huh?”

I looked back at Brianna.

“No, he really doesn’t.”

She leaned forward on the table and propped her elbows on the surface. “I see that it’s a lot of pressure for you, as their leader. It’s much more complicated for you.”

“Yeah,” I murmured.

“My dad operated a lot like you do.”

“Curt Walker was a micromanager with Steel Dawn MC?”

“An extreme version.” She smiled sadly. “It nearly killed him.”

“I’m not—”

“You’re still young. My dad did it for decades and it really wore on him. The pressure and stress of it led to him suffering from two heart attacks before he was even forty. He never learned. The only thing that saved him was having to give up his club. And that wasn’t exactly a good thing at the time for him and he didn’t consider it as such for several years. It was painful. You have the chance now to recognize how detrimental your current way of doing things is before it’s set in stone and you can’t escape it.”

I stared at her, shocked.

I’d thought she was going to go into a fierce defense on Levi’s behalf.

But she’d gone another way entirely.

She was actually expressing concern for me.

Understanding that I wasn’t used to.

Humanity.

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