I clenched my jaw. “You got Dustin a job with Billy?”
“Yes.”
“Why the fuck would you do that?”
She gripped the door as if she was about to slam it in my face. “If you’re going to come here and yell at me without giving me a chance to explain myself, you can leave right now and come back when you’ve calmed down.”
Fuck.
I shoved my fingers through my hair. I needed to rein this anger in, but fuck if I could. Billy being in the mix made sure of that. Taking a step inside, I said, “I’m not leaving. We’re discussing this.” Before she had a chance to argue, I entered her house and made my way to her living room.
She closed the door, loudly. When she met me in the living room, she demanded, “Right, seems as though you’ve decided you’re staying, tell me what you have against Billy.”
Fuck, just his name caused my anger to spike. “Marilyn works for a bank and Billy was a customer there. Had been for a couple of years and over that time he slowly gained her trust and eventually asked her out on a date. She said no, repeatedly, until the day he finally broke her down and got the answer he wanted. They started dating and it made her happier than ever. She smiled and laughed more often and started living her life in a way I’d never seen. It lasted for six months until the night I received a call from Renee to tell me her mother had taken a bottle of pills and was unconscious on the bathroom floor.”
I stopped to take a few short breaths. Remembering that time in our lives was difficult as fuck. I’d thought my sister was dead. It was why I’d been so angry the day I’d found her passed out on my couch recently. And why I’d pushed for her to be admitted to the hospital. I couldn’t lose Lynny.
Tatum’s battle stance softened as she listened to me. “What happened between them?”
“You ever see Billy date?”
She shook her head. “No, he keeps his women separate to work. Doesn’t bring them to the clubs ever.”
“Figures. Marilyn thought she was special to him, thought they were exclusive. Turned out Billy didn’t do exclusive and was seeing another woman at the same time.”
“Nitro, from what I know, Billy is up front about that when he dates. Women know where they stand with him.”
My eyes widened. “Are you fucking defending that motherfucker?”
She reached for my arm, gripping it. “No,” she said calmly. “I’m not saying what I think either way, but I would imagine that Marilyn would have been made aware of what their relationship really was.”
I ripped my arm out of her grasp. “Fuck, Tatum, she tried to kill herself over him. She had a fucking breakdown after that. You’re a woman—how the hell can you stand there and defend a man who treats women that way?”
“So, you’re telling me that you’ve never used women before? Never dated casually or simply screwed random women as you pleased?”
“Don’t fucking turn this around on me! I’m not the one we’re talking about right now.”
“That is true, but can’t you see that you’re being a hypocrite about this?”
I grabbed the back of my neck and rubbed it. Glaring at her, I said, “I’m standing here telling you that he ruined her and all you can say is that I’m a fucking hypocrite? Every woman I’ve ever slept with knew what the score was. I don’t lie about that shit.”
She’d been calm up until that point, but she was beginning to lose her cool. “No, you’re not listening to me. I’m sorry that his actions hurt her and that she harmed herself. You have every right to feel hurt and angry for her too. But Billy didn’t do anything wrong. You can’t hold him responsible for her overdosing. That choice was completely hers.” She moved close to me and placed her hand on my arm again. “Nitro, I get it. I totally get it. I wanted to blame everyone for all the bad shit that happened to me, but in the end, I chose how I reacted to what people did to me. Randall treated me so badly, but it was me who chose to ruin my life over him. He never made me do any of it. Just like Billy never made Marilyn take those pills and swallow them. At some point, we have to take ownership of our choices in life.”
I stared at her in silence. I believed in owning your actions, but I’d never looked at Marilyn like that. I’d always felt the need to protect her. Something had fucked her up at a young age, I was sure of it. She always fobbed me off whenever I asked her. Told me I was wrong. But I wasn’t convinced. As a result, I had always held others accountable when Marilyn was hurt. Looking at it from Tatum’s point of view, it made me consider a different side to the argument.
Scrubbing a hand over my face, I said, “You’re right, we do have to take ownership of our choices, but fuck, Tatum, I find it hard to force that kind of responsibility on Lynny.”
She nodded. “I know,” she said softly.
“That Silver Hell biker? You wanna know what he did to her?”
She closed her eyes and held her breath for a beat. I felt her pain right along with her. That fucking biker stole something from both of us. When she opened her eyes, she nodded. “Yes, but we need to sit for this.”
When we were both sitting on her couch, I said, “Back at the beginning of the year, King took revenge on one of their bikers for shit he did to King’s sister. Killed the asshole. When the club found out, they started a war aga
inst our club. We didn’t realise for a while, though, because it wasn’t in-your-face shit that they did to begin with. They eventually escalated it, hurting our families and killing club members.”
“What did they do?”