Released(Devil's Blaze MC 3)(5)
“Do you love Skull?” she asks, and wow, I guess that’s a way to cut through the bullshit and get right to the point. How on earth do I answer that?
“I don’t think I know who this Skull is,” I tell her, which is the truth in a way. I still love the Skull I knew. I always will, but no one needs to know how stupid I am.
“Fair enough. But what you’ll need to figure out, Beth—and in a hurry—is whether or not you want this Skull, because he’s the one who’s here now. He’s the father of your child, and you need to—”
“I don’t think there’s any way to work this out, Nicole. In complete honesty, Skull hates me, and I’m not exactly sure how I feel about him.”
“There’s a thin line between love and hate, Beth.”
“I’d really rather not talk about this with you. I think I’ll take Gabby back to our…”
“Disappointing,” Nicole says, studying my face.
The word irritates me and I jerk up to give her a look. “Disappointing?”
“How easy you give up. You think you would have learned that’s not the way to handle things by now.”
Her words are like a slap to my face. She doesn’t know me. She doesn’t know anything about me. And yet …
She’s right. I’m really getting tired of that damn voice.
“Listen, I don’t think you have the right—”
“Maybe I’m wrong? Dragon said Skull told him that you saw some pictures and took that as total proof that Skull would send not only you away, but also his daughter—”
“He did! I got a note…”
“A note from the man you love saying he wanted nothing to do with his daughter? Do you think so little of yourself?”
“I… what are you talking about?” I’m definitely annoyed and defensive now.
“Well, I mean you allowed yourself to get pregnant by a man who you obviously thought would be a horrible father,” she says, as if it was completely simple.
My heart stalls in my chest. “I didn’t,” I stutter. “I mean, I didn’t think I did. I got the note and it seemed…”
“With everything you had been through with your father and with Colin and Matthew—not to mention your grandfather—it didn’t occur you to even question the letter? It didn’t occur to your sister?”
My breath stops. It’s not like I haven’t asked the same questions Nicole’s asking. I have. Katie did. It’s just that I’ve never had a third party hit me with the questions. I’ve never had someone ask me pointblank before about my choices.
I find a chair and sit down, looking at this woman. I should hate her, but instead I am swamped with this horrible feeling that I fucked up. It’s one thing to feel it, but another to acknowledge it completely.
“I was scared,” I whisper, my feeble reason.
Nicole’s face changes and she sits down across from me now. “Do you know what you were afraid of?”
I do, but saying it out loud will just sound lame. Because it is.
“I think if there was even the faintest possibility that Dragon had moved on without me, that he was in love with another woman, I would want to run away from ever seeing it.”
I swallow, because that’s it in a nutshell. “You would?”
“Definitely. It would kill me to confront that.”
“But you would. Confront it, I mean.”
I know I’m right. She’s too confident, too self-assured. She’s everything I’ve never been.
“Probably. But then again, I wasn’t pregnant and alone at the age of nineteen. Betrayed by my father, who I thought was dead, then confronted by a sister that, again, I thought was dead.”
“You know everything?”
“I know everything Skull told Dragon. It’s just that I’m not a man, so I see things they miss, or they don’t understand.”
“You’re on my side?”
She studies me carefully. “Skull is my friend. I want to see him happy.”
“I see, so you don’t—”
“I happen to think having his family together would achieve that.”
My heart speeds up. But then, why? There’s no way that’s going to happen and I don’t know if I want it to, now. This Skull is not the man I remember. Plus, he has moved on…
“It doesn’t matter. It’s too late,” I tell Nicole, occupying myself with playing with my daughter’s beautiful hair. She’s smiling and playing with her little set of plastic keys. She looks so much like her father that it physically hurts sometimes.
“I guess it is. Especially if you’re not willing to fight for your family. Like I said, disappointing.”