He drags me through the house to the hall bathroom, where he shoves my bloody hand into the sink and turns on the faucet. The cool water stings against my torn knuckles, and I try to pull back, but he won’t let me.
“I have to clean it out.” One of his rough fingers pushes into my wounds and fishes around for foreign material he has to pluck out. It hurts, but I don’t say a word. Instead, I bite my lip to keep myself from whimpering. He’s doing his best, just trying to ensure that I don’t end up with an infection or something equally nasty. Still, it really hurts, and I can’t take it anymore.
“Stop!” I shout and pull away from him, barely slipping my wrist through his grasp. He lets me go and takes a step back only to grab my wrist again and pull me to him. With his free hand, he stops the flow of water from the faucet. We don’t move for several breaths. Every instinct in me tells me to apologize for snapping. My voice was too loud and far too demanding. I was bossy, and I need to remember my place.
But I don’t apologize because that’s Alexandra Mancuso, the principessa to the Mancuso crime family, who wants to say she’s sorry. Alex, the small-town biker chick who scored a majorly hot but also majorly moody boyfriend, doesn’t apologize for speaking her mind—at least she tries not to. The weight of my rudeness weighs on me.
“I’m—”
He cuts me off. His warm whiskey-laden breath washes over my face when he says, “You’re not sorry, Cub.”
“No, I’m not.” I’m crap at having a backbone and even worse at lying. “Something’s going on with you, and I don’t know how to help.”
“Explain,” he says.
“My Ryan is short-tempered and quick to jump to conclusions. He’s a serious ass, but then he’s gentle with me. I don’t get the short-tempered asshole, but he’s been showing up lately, and I don’t like it.”
With a heavy sigh, he lets out a breath and bends at his knees to meet my eyes. He leans forward just slightly, his jet-black hair wisps against my forehead.
“What are you making a big deal out of now?” His voice is soft and low. I lift my eyes to find deep pools of gray staring at me intently. His brows are furrowed, and there’s a sadness in his expression. “Life sometimes sucks and shit goes down. I got a lot happening in the city right now, and I don’t got time for this shit. My primary goal is to keep you safe, and I can’t do that if I have to make sure you’re not fucking up your hand by beating on a fucking piece of wood. I can’t take care of club shit and your shit and not fuck them both up. You get what I’m saying?”
“Yeah, I do. You can’t deal with my shit right now.” My stomach drops as I say the words. The last thing I want is for us to fight—again—but it seems inevitable these days. Our fights usually consist of something like this, where he tells me he can’t be bothered with my crap and I end up crying. Except this time I refuse to cry, so I close my eyes and steady my rapidly increasing heartbeat. The moment of peace gives me the strength to pull back the tears, but it’s not enough to keep my mouth shut.
“You had every chance to leave me alone and not deal with my shit. Duke does it, Ian does it—and he’s my brother—and even Jim manages to leave my shit alone. But you? You couldn’t stop yourself from being selfish and forcing me to fall in love with you just so you could shove me aside when you realized how much maintenance it takes to date a chick with fucking feelings!”
Everything hurts, and I don’t care how dramatic I’m being. My knees to my toes and all the way up through my chest to my temples ache with heartbreak. We don’t fight like this. Never this serious. It never feels like we’re severing something between us that I once thought was unbreakable. But I suppose everything breaks. It’s just a matter of when.
Backing away from him, I hold my hand up in front of me and tug my other hand free. It still hurts, though less now, but I’m not up for doing anything with it just yet. I guess I hit the board harder than I thought.
“Don’t walk away from me,” he barks.
I narrow my eyes and shake my head slowly. How dare he order me around. I spent my whole life under the control of a man who oversaw every tiny detail of my existence as best he could. Ryan offered me a life where I could make my own choices. He promised me he wouldn’t become my father. He promised me he’d give me the freedom of choice. But here he is, taking that choice away.
Asshole.
“Or what? You’re going to bully me some more?”
I push past him and rush down the hall toward my room. He’s faster than I am, though, and he catches up quickly. His hands wrap around my upper arms. His grip is firm, but he’s not hurting me. Slowly, I let myself lean back and rest against his chest. The tension in my body slips away the longer we stand here like this. His touch means the world to me. It always has.
“Don’t act like you can’t take it,” he murmurs into my ear. This is sweet for Ryan—the best I can expect from him.