Mess Me Up (Bear Bottom Guardians MC 1)

My father had beat my ass when I was an impressionable teen because I’d refused to help him clean without compensation. Then, when he was done, he’d forced me to go clean anyway.

That day had been hell.

The scrapes on my arm? It was nothin’.

Rome frowned, and when he looked like he was about to ask more, I was thankful that his son called his name.

“Coming,” Rome called, then looked at me solemnly. “If you need anything, we’ll be working on our ABCs.”

Smiling at his words, I went to work, only minorly aware that my wrist was a little more sore than I’d first realized.

But I stuck it out, and I had nearly finished the entire house—sans the empty rooms and the living room because there was no way in hell I’d have time to tackle all ten of them today—when I saw Rome again.

This time, he was coming out of Matias’ room—which I had just cleaned before I started the hall bathroom—closing the door quietly behind him.

I smiled. “Is he asleep?”

Rome looked up and nodded, coming my way before he responded.

“The treatments take a lot out of him. I think he sleeps more than he’s awake nowadays,” he murmured.

I was scared to ask him if they were working or not.

I never got up the nerve to ask Tara, either.

I kept hoping that I’d see improvement in the little boy, but it’d been four months now that I’d been cleaning for them, and I hadn’t seen any sign that he was getting better.

And that just sucked so bad.

I wanted to walk in here one day to that little boy wrapping his arms around my waist and telling me that he was feeling better, instead of seeing him struggle to lift his little head off the couch.

Then again, at least he was on the couch this time and not alone on the bathroom floor.

I’d seen that, too.

Too many times.

Tara would help him there, and then she’d leave him.

Rome? Well, I doubted he even realized how much better he cared for Matias.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I murmured, looking at the closed door. “I’m almost done upstairs. I have the living room downstairs to go, and then I’m done—at least for today. I have another appointment this afternoon that I can’t miss, but if you want me to come back and finish all the bedrooms that I didn’t get to today, I’ll probably need to block off an entire day for you.”

Rome’s light blue eyes—an unusual color that never failed to captivate me, regardless of whether I saw them in person or in a picture—stared at me.

He looked like he was trying to take in everything that he could about me—see inside my soul.

I pulled back and started downstairs, suddenly feeling uncomfortable.

I didn’t want him to know my secrets—they were dark and debilitating.

Even I didn’t examine them anymore.

To acknowledge them gave them power, and nobody would have that power over me ever again—not even me, through my memories.

“Is this all you do, clean houses?” he asked from behind me.

I paused with one foot on the stairs, and the other on the top landing, and gave him a look over my shoulder.

It was the ‘did you just say what I think you just said’ look.

And it wasn’t a nice one.

“Yes,” I answered tightly. “This is all I do.”

He winced.

“That’s not what I meant.” He blew out a breath. “I was…I was…”

The fact that he was tongue-tied had my ire calming almost immediately.

My ex, the second worst man in the world, had said that to me a lot when we’d been together.

Isadora, is this all that you want out of your life? He’d say. To clean up other peoples’ messes? You’re never going to get any money cleaning houses the way you do. Don’t you want to own a house? A car? Something nice one day?

“I was just trying to think about what I was going to do over the next couple of days,” he sounded sick to his stomach. “I…Tara is gone.”

Now that had me turning around to stare at him in astonishment.

“She’s gone?” I asked. “But…why?”

Rome swallowed. “Tara says that she couldn’t handle Ty-Ty’s illness anymore. That it hurt too much to see him so sick.”

It didn’t sound like he believed her excuses, and I wasn’t sure that I did either.

I’d lost the one and only baby that I’d ever had. She was stillborn, and to this day, years later, it still broke my heart. I just couldn’t understand how any woman could leave their child when that child was fighting for his life. I mean, one day would mean the world to me. If I just had one more day with my baby, my soul would be happy.

What I wouldn’t give for just one more day…

But Tara had given him up without a second thought, as though she left him without a care in the world.