A Very Cerberus Christmas (Cerberus MC)

“You need to be a man.”

I growl at the motherfucker. “You have a lot of fucking nerve.”

He holds his hands up, and he must not be as fucking stupid as I thought if he can predict how close I am to kicking his teeth in.

“You need to go to her and beg her to stay.”

“Sounds like you’re the fucking coward if you can’t tell her you don’t want her to go.”

I can barely manage the words without yelling them, but calm is my go-to before losing my shit.

“She wouldn’t listen to me if I did that.”

Robbie bends at the waist, and I’m seconds from snapping his neck when he reaches for his pant leg, but he doesn’t grab a weapon. He lifts the denim to show me a tiny bruise on his shin.

“Harley kicked me yesterday when he found out I got a job in Texas.”

I don’t bother to hide my grin. If I ever get the chance to see that kid again, I’ll give him a high-five for the act of violence.

Robbie drops his pant leg, straightening to face me once again. His face is sad, but I don’t have it in me to feel sorry for the sack of shit standing in front of me. He made his choices and living with the consequences are just part of the cards he’s been dealt. As far as I’m concerned, he’s getting off a little too damn easy.

“I want to get to know my son better, Micah, but I don’t want to do it at the expense of him hating me in the end.”

My jaw ticks, but I don’t say a word to him.

“I know you had something to do with getting me that job. The guy I work with mentioned your club, so tell me. Did you do it to get rid of me, or were you trying to get rid of her?”

My knuckles crack when I squeeze my fists. “I love that woman, and I love your son. I don’t want her to suffer because you can’t get your fucking life together.”

He nods as if he expected me to say those words.

“If you love them, you’ll fight to keep them here.”

“I love them enough to let them go.” I watch his face, and I can see the disappointment already forming in his eyes.

But he’s not disappointed in me. He’s already disappointed in himself. He knows he’s going to eventually let them down. He’s already given up on himself. I don’t know if it’s because he’s already starting back down that black hole Lucy was so sure he’d crawled all the way out of or what, but he’s come to the realization that there’s no escape for him. Sooner or later, he’s going to end up exactly where he started, and he doesn’t want either of them to bear witness to his inevitable downfall.

“She’ll end up hating me if I come between you and Harley,” I explain, even though he doesn’t deserve that from me.

I’ll give him the credit that’s due. It takes a lot of balls to show up here and ask this of me, but it still makes him a coward for not sitting her down and explaining all of this to her.

He’s less of a man than I gave him credit for. I didn’t want the man to fail. Harley deserves the best everyone can give him, but it doesn’t look like that’s in the cards for him.

“She’ll hate me if I come between the two of you,” he counters.

I won’t kick the man while he’s down, but I could see that hatred for him already forming in her eyes when she walked away from me last week. That seed was planted long before she showed up on the clubhouse front steps with tears in her eyes. When he made her feel guilty for wanting a little something for herself, when she felt selfish for wanting a little slice of happiness, she started to despise him.

“I guess no one is going to win in this situation,” he mutters before turning and walking away.

Robbie climbs into an old beat-up truck that I know belongs to the man he’s been working for and leaves the property.

“Everyone fucking loses,” I mutter before heading back inside to face the music on the condition I left my bedroom.

Chapter 19

Lucy

“It’s like a picnic!” I tell Harley as he frowns at me for the millionth time.

I’ve gotten nothing but frowns for the last several days. I haven’t seen a smile since Robbie came over and dropped the bomb about going to Texas. He watches television with a blank expression. Even the parts that would normally make his sweet little giggles bounce off the walls have been absent. He didn’t get excited when I told him he’d get to ride on an airplane for the first time, or when I showed him pictures of the house we were going to be living in that Robbie forwarded.