No reaction. Nothing.
“I’ll be damned if I’ll let you break up this family. Especially when I don’t even know the reason. And if you think I’ll let you walk out on me, you’ve lost your mind.”
“I’m not the one breaking up our family, you big oaf. You are.”
He gritted his teeth. “I can’t fix it, if I don’t know what I did.”
Her eyes flashed to his. “You know what you did. Don’t play the innocent with me.”
His frustration got the best of him. “Fucking hell. Don’t start that ‘you know what you did’ bullshit. You women always think we men know when we’ve fucked up. We fuck up all the time, so no I don’t know what the hell I did. Just fucking tell me, woman!”
She whipped out her phone. He watched with suspicious eyes as she pulled something up and held it out to him.
Christ, he was afraid to look. At a glance, it appeared to be a photo. Fuck, whatever he’d done, she had photographic evidence. He took the phone from her, turned it around and studied the image.
He frowned, trying to place the photo. It was a shot of him, sure enough, bent down next to a car, changing a tire. Who the hell would take a picture of him changing a tire? And why would that piss her off? And then it hit him. Motherfucking Rosalie.
She was the club sweet-butt that Dog had cheated with. It had only lasted a couple of days before he’d ended it, and since then she’d been banned from the club.
“Babe, it’s not what you think.”
“Swipe to the next shot.”
He moved his thumb across pulling up the next shot, a selfie with Rosalie in the foreground making a kissy face to the camera, and him in the background changing her tire. The caption read, my man takes good care of me.
That little bitch, she’d texted this crap to his ol’ lady.
His eyes flashed up to Mary’s. “This is bullshit, Mary.”
Her brows shot up. “That’s not you?”
He blew out a breath, his eyes closing for a moment. “Yeah, it’s me, but I’m not her man. I’m not taking care of her. She’s fucking with you, baby. That’s all this is.”
“Oh, I think somebody’s fucking with somebody, all right.”
“So she feeds you a bunch of bullshit, and I don’t even get the benefit of the doubt, no chance to explain? You don’t come to me with this shit, you just up and leave me?”
“Yup.”
“Babe—”
“I’m done.”
Those were two words she’d never spoken to him. Not in fourteen years.
“Don’t say that, Mary.” He shook his head. “It’s not what you think. It’s not what she’s makin’ this out to be. I saw her broken down on the highway. She had her kid in the car. I put her spare on for her. End of story.”
“Right.”
“Baby, I swear to you, I’m done with her. She’s been banned. I made sure of it. She’s not allowed on club property anymore. You won’t ever see her again. Ask any of the boys, they’ll tell you. And I’ll make sure she never does something like this again.” He tossed her phone on the small side table. “I’ve been done with her for a long fucking time. And we already worked through that.” He touched his jaw. “I’ve got the dental work to prove it.”
She’d knocked his teeth out that time, and now he had five grand worth of dental implants in his
mouth. She’d nearly broken his jaw, and he’d been lucky he hadn’t had to eat through a straw for a month.
“Last time you thought I was fucking around on you, you met me at the door with a baseball bat. This time you just pack your shit and leave? That’s not the woman I know. The woman I know is a fighter. She doesn’t just roll over.”
“Maybe I’ve had enough.”