Page 24 of Tyrant

“I want you to stay. Even if you’re not mine, I want you in Hart. Want you where I can protect you and your daughter. Want you where I can keep you safe, where I know what’s happening, where I can—”

“Where you can nothing.” I have to stop him before this spirals any further. “I already knew when I left Ohio that it would be for good. I have to take care of things there, but the reality is that I’m going to have to be here. My dad can’t handle the house alone. He’s already half broken. I want to be near my brother again. I’m coming back for family and family alone.”

“We used to be family.”

“No!” I exclaim.

“You never saw me like an older brother?”

“Maybe when I was five. Not when I was twelve. A guardian figure to look up to and idolize, maybe, but I was always very keenly aware that we weren’t related in the slightest.”

“You’d make a fine biker queen. I know you don’t think so, but you’d rule over Satan’s Angels quite nicely. Right at my side, your kindness, tenderness, intelligence, tempering the rough parts of me. Never saw myself having a family until that night and since then, I’ve never stopped thinking about it. Sounds like intuition to me and my gut is never wrong.”

“Get up!” I shout it now, my voice shrill.

At least this time, he obliges.

“I’m not fit to be a queen of anything. I ran away. Yes, okay, I judged you. I already had one brother in prison. The distinct possibility of you getting hurt, killed, or locked up yourself isn’t unthinkable, not by a long shot. I would never want any of those things to happen, but they could. Anyone could set up shop here in Hart and all of a sudden, the club finds itself in a war. I heard you put your father down because he went rabid. What if one day, someone decides that you’re no good for the club and they put you in the ground? What if some rival goes after families and they become collateral? I know you think that none of these things could ever happen, but they could. You could be arrested and locked up for life because some hotshot fed wants to make a name for himself. You could- you…”

I have to stop. I can’t breathe any longer. I’m standing here like a crazy person with my wild eyes, flushed face, and windblown hair. I can’t speak past the fist lodged in my throat. My lungs are burning just thinking about anything happening to this man.

I’ve tortured myself for the past five years waiting for doom. I never once thought it would be okay. Not since my brother was attacked in prison, shivved by some asshole who barely knew him, because he thought he looked at him wrong. It wasn’t gang related in any way and Raiden didn’t even remember ever setting eyes on the guy. I found out I was pregnant a few days before it happened. I was in a never-ending vacuum, paralyzed with indecision. My instincts shouted at me to go to Gray and tell him, but fear held me back. Then… Raiden. His nearly dying sent me reeling and researching. I’d grown up surrounded by bikers, my brother and his best friend being part of the club. I’d romanticized it, but Raiden’s attack brought home the reality of the lifestyle. I realized then, just how much Gray and Raiden had shielded me and how much they hadn’t told me. I romanticized the club and the men in it. I thought I could stand by Gray, but in reality, I had no idea what that meant. Reading the history of biker clubs across the country and even internationally, most didn’t have happy endings. I had looked down that road and made a decision as a mother.

Gray reaches for me, but I shrug him off. Again.

“I want you to leave us alone.” How can I want that so much and hate myself so much at the same time? I really mean it and I don’t mean it at all, and this is the confused, messed up way I’ve felt for the past five years, suspended half in the past, fighting against it to move forward.

“You know I can’t do that. Not if she’s mine.”

“Unless you can promise me that nothing will ever happen to you or to my brother and that nothing would ever happen to us, then—”

“I’m not in charge of the universe to make a promise like that, but if you think for a second I wouldn’t go to battle with god or the devil himself to keep you both safe, my family outside the club and my family inside of it…”

I can’t do this for a second longer. I can’t rightly keep Gray’s own daughter from him.

“You already know! There was never a second that she wasn’t yours. If you’re warrior enough to fight the universe to protect her, then imagine the lengths I would go as her mother. I might not be physically imposing, but I am every bit as fierce a warrior as you when it comes to that little girl!” I’m shouting so loud the whole bar can probably hear me. I need to calm down. “Condemn me if you have to. I’m not afraid of you, and if you come for me, know you will meet with my wrath, and I will fight you with every breath in my—”

Gray steps into my space, larger than life. The pad of his thumb lands on my lips. “Shh. I’m not going to fight you. I don’t agree with your decision and there’s a lot that needs fixing, but I know that you were eighteen and scared. You’re back now and we’re not going to be at war with each other. I’d rather know my daughter with your blessing.”

He keeps his thumb pressed firmly into my bottom lip until it starts to tremble. The desire to taste him eviscerates me. It might be followed by a heady wave of shame, but the spark that existed between us hasn’t died out. It’ll take more than five years filled with silence and lies to extinguish it.

“I don’t want to chase you away. Never wanted that in the first place. You might have heard that I’m a monster, but I’m just a man.” He shakes his head and roughs a hand over his face like he could scrub away the past. “I can’t help it. I want to claim youeven if you’re not mine. I get that it doesn’t matter what I want. I’m not your man, not your king, not even your Gray anymore. Time and healing are what you need.”

If he was reckless, brutal, and commanding, it would be easy to push back. Compassion and understanding? To resist would only makemethe tyrant.

“Let me show you that I’m not a beast and the club isn’t about abusing anyone. Hart is our town and as much criminal shit as we have going on, we do a lot of good here too. No one complains about the funding for a new swimming pool, the rec center, a roof on the school because the old one was near caving in, libraries, food banks, rehab centers with programs, low-income housing, community assistance—”

“I get they don’t care that it’s bad money if it’s used for good. That doesn’t assuage any of my fears.”

“Let me be good to you,” he purrs like I haven’t even spoken, but I know he heard. “Let me be good to your family when they need it most. Not just for you, but for Raiden.”

Thinking about my brother again is too much. All of this is too much.

I expect Gray’s hand to shoot out and grab my arm when I storm off, but he lets me go. Unless I’m going to hitch down the road to get a ride back into town, he’s my ride back.

I can’t just circle the parking lot, muttering to myself.

I head straight for his bike, a clear exclamation mark at the end of our discussion.

---