Craving Trix (The Aces' Sons 1)

The night grew darker and darker as the sun set, but I didn’t move from my spot on the ground. I finally climbed to my feet as music started playing inside the house and the living room light switched on.

“Hey,” Leo mumbled, nodding his head slightly as I walked in.

“How you feelin’?” I asked, looking past him toward the kitchen. I couldn’t hear Trix’s voice, but I could hear a couple people moving around in there.

“Where’s Cecil’a?” Leo asked, ignoring my question.

“What?” I turned back to him in surprise.

“She hasn’t been by.” His face was so swollen that I could barely understand a word he’d said.

I opened my mouth to answer him, then closed it again. I had no idea why my sister hadn’t been by to see him. I knew both Farrah and Casper had stopped by at different times as they traded shifts at the hospital with Lily, and I guess I’d just assumed that Cecilia would have come with one of them.

“Haven’t really seen her,” I finally replied, watching him deflate a little.

“No big,” he said, turning his face away from me.

Slender arms wrapped around my waist from behind, and I sighed, leaning back slightly into Trix as she laid her head on my back.

“Pop said you were here,” she said against my cut.

“You ready to go home?”

“To the clubhouse?”

“Not safe for you on the outside yet.”

She stiffened behind me, so I turned to look at her. For a few moments, things had felt almost normal between us, but the instant I got a look at her face, I knew that had been an illusion. She was still wearing the fucked up mask of complacency she’d been hiding behind for days.

“Maybe I should stay here,” she said, glancing at Leo. “My brother is—”

“You belong with me,” I interrupted, cutting her off.

“I’m just saying—”

“Trix,” I warned, losing my patience.

Her eyes shuttered and she nodded jerkily, leaving the room. I stood by the couch and listened to her say her goodbyes in the kitchen, then watched her walk out and whisper something to Leo, making him nod.

I followed her out the door and we walked back to the clubhouse in silence.

I didn’t know what the fuck to say to her.

She was hurting, I knew that. We were fucking mourning, all of us. But that was the thing—we were all mourning. Slider and Vera had helped raise me. I’d lived with Gram, she’d driven me to get my driver’s license, and when I was a teenager, we used to stay up at least once a week playing cards and bullshitting. I loved her like a mother. I’d been there when Mick had taken his first steps and I’d been the one to take the training wheels off his bike when he was three years old. I was hurting, too.

She didn’t get the monopoly on fucking grief. It didn’t work that way. I understood that she was messed up from all that had happened, but I was, too, goddammit.

I’d just spent the day cleaning up after a fucking massacre, digging my family’s blood out of the ground, and she didn’t have one fucking ounce of comfort for me. Not a single word. Not a single touch.

Resentment burned in my gut.

“How you feelin’?” I ground out as we finally made our way into my room. We hadn’t talked about the baby at all, and even though I knew she was glad for the reprieve, I couldn’t keep my mouth shut any longer.

I thought about our kid constantly. It seemed surreal that he was safe inside her—the one person I hadn’t had to worry about in the entire fucked up situation.

“I’m fine.”

“Baby, too?” I asked, pushing her.

“I’d assume so. Everything feels the same.” She began to undress, and I leaned against the wall as she stripped down to her underwear and slipped one of my shirts over her head.

“You need to see a doctor,” I finally said after she’d crawled between the sheets.

“I’m fine, Cam.”

“Didn’t say you weren’t. You still need to see a doctor.”

She didn’t answer me, just rolled over so she was no longer facing in my direction.

I clenched my hands, opening and closing them over and over again until I had my anger under control. I tried to tell myself that she just had to work out whatever it was she was dealing with, that she’d figure it out and start acting like the woman I’d committed to.

But when I got undressed and climbed into bed beside her, all of my understanding flew out the window as I tried to pull her in against me and she jerked away.

I rolled onto my back and breathed heavily through my nose as I pushed down everything I wished I could say to her.

* * *

When I woke up the next morning, Trix wasn’t in bed with me.