Deadline to Damnation (Sons of Templar MC 7)

“So that’s what this is, you’re being a good reporter?” Accusation soaked his tone. Accusation that he was not entitled to. That he was not allowed to hurl at me.

I clenched my fists, sinking my nails into the skin that had only just scabbed over. But that’s what it was with Liam, every interaction, was picking at a scab, opening barely healed wounds.

I was always bleeding around him.

“Yes,” I gritted out. “I’m being a good reporter. Since you’re the only one that will answer my questions honestly, for the sake of the story, I’m putting our…personal history aside.”

He glared at me. “We’re a lot of things, Peaches, but we’re not fucking history.”

I couldn’t hide my flinch. Not this time. I sank my nails farther into my skin. “I asked you not to call me that.” I was ashamed at how weak my voice was.

Instead of answering, Liam looked down at my hands and his glare deepened. He snatched them, forcing my palms open and let out a low hiss at the fresh blood covering them. “Jesus, Peaches, what the fuck are you doin’ to yourself?”

I wrenched my hands back, standing. “It’s not me doing anything,” I yelled. “It’s you. You’re cutting me open and you don’t even fucking know. You don’t even fucking care, Jagger.” I spat the word at him before I turned on my heel and stalked off.

Chapter Twelve

Jagger

He watched her walk away and wondered if he should follow her.

But he wasn’t physically capable of following her. He couldn’t move. Couldn’t take a fucking step, bleeding from the wounds he sustained from the short exchange. From seeing her cut her fucking skin open because she couldn’t stand being around him.

He was a sick fuck.

Keeping her here.

In his room.

Forcing her to face his fucked up, scarred face every day. Forcing her to watch as he revealed just what a monster he was. He was doing that to push her away. But he wasn’t letting her go.

So what the fuck was he doing?

He stared at the pictures on the walls. The ones he’d stared at a thirteen years ago, looking for somewhere to lose himself. If he was honest, he was looking to die. Or maybe he was hoping for the club to save him enough to figure out a way to go back to her. Marry her. Make good on the promise he’d made to her father before he asked her to marry him.

His palms were sweating as he took the beer Trevor gave him.

He took it with one hand and wiped the other on his jeans.

Trevor settled on the chair beside him on the porch, looking out onto the street that both he and Caroline grew up on. She wasn’t the girl next door. But she was the girl six houses down. When they got together, they were at each other’s houses so much that their parents knew if one wasn’t home, they’d be at the other’s.

Both of their families took the intensity of their relationship in their stride. Either because they saw what it was, something more than teenage infatuation. Or because they were just good parents who wanted their children to be happy.

Which was what he was hoping from Trevor.

He was hoping he didn’t shoot him with any of the number of guns he kept in the house. This was Alabama, after all.

Trevor, the man who’d snuck him beer since he was sixteen. Though it wasn’t really sneaking, since his first beer was given to him by his father at sixteen at a family BBQ. His philosophy was if he let his son have a beer now and then, then he wouldn’t have a lot all the time.

The theory worked.

Liam liked a beer, but he had no interest in keggers and getting drunk off his ass.

Mainly because whatever parties he was at, Caroline was there too, and no fucking way was he getting drunk off his ass when he had his girl to take care of.

Which was probably why he got a lot of respect—and beer, though he guessed it was the same thing from the man in question—from Trevor. That and because he treated him like his own.

It seemed as if Trevor could sense what Liam was on the porch for. Not that the act itself was an irregular occurrence, they’d sit out here shooting the shit while Caroline was getting ready or whatever.

But Caroline wasn’t home. She was shopping with her mom and sister, then going to a movie.

Her mom was trying to squeeze out all the time she could with her daughter before she moved away to college most likely. Liam knew that because his mom was the same.

It would’ve been annoying as shit if he didn’t love his mom so much.

He didn’t care whatever any asshole said, it didn’t make you a pussy to admit you loved your mom. It made you a man. Because if you can admit you love your mom, you deserve the love of a woman.