Hyde's Absolution (Sydney Storm MC 4)

My eyes widened. “You’re shitting me, aren’t you?”

His lips twitched. “I wish I was, but I’m not. I want nothing more than to fuck you right now, but it’s important to me that we discuss how you feel about last night.”

“Stop it.”

He frowned. “Stop what?”

“Stop saying all the right things. I was so mad at you last night, and I wanna keep feeling entitled to that, but you’re making it hard for that to happen.”

He continued to frown. “You wanna keep feeling mad at me?”

Ugh. Why couldn’t men just read women’s minds? Like, seriously, it would make life a whole lot easier. “No, but I feel so conflicted about you that it would be easier for me to feel like I was right to be mad.” I waved my hand at him. “You coming here and saying stuff like that, about it being important to you to talk about how I feel, well that makes it hard for me to hold onto those feelings of being right.” I mean, how often was it that a man actually wanted to discuss how I felt about the shit he’d done? Most men I dated wanted to move past their fuck-ups as fast as possible.

“You were right to feel mad, Roe. There’re no two ways about that. I don’t want to take that from you. But I do want to know you can move on from it. I’m not a fan of shit being thrown in my face later on in a relationship. We need to deal with this now and then never let it be rehashed in retaliation for something else.”

And that right there made me fall for him a little more. He may not have dated in years, but he certainly knew how to do relationships.

“I can move on from it, Hyde. I wasn’t sure last night because it had just happened, so I appreciated that you gave me the space I asked for.”

“You’re sure now?”

“I’m still concerned about your temper, but you said you would work on that, and I believe you. I’m not the kind of woman to hold a grudge so this won’t be thrown in your face every time we have an argument. And I know you’ll always fight for what you believe in. I just don’t want you to lose your temper over something like a guy checking out my tits or a guy calling me names.”

“I do fight for what I believe in, but I need you to understand exactly what that means.” The way he said that raised red flags, but he was right—I did need to know what I was dealing with here.

“Okay, tell me.”

He watched me with an intensity that showed how serious he was about this conversation. “There will be days I come home from club work with black eyes or broken ribs or bloody clothes. That, I can’t change. Not even for you. I won’t talk about that shit with you and I won’t ever discuss club business with you. We need to settle that before we even begin something. If you can live with that, I’ll work on my temper and do everything in my power not to knock the fuck out of any asshole who comes near you.”

I wasn’t dumb; I knew how bikers worked. What he said didn’t surprise me. What did surprise me, though, was my willingness to accept it. I couldn’t deny it—I wanted Hyde in my life. He desired me for exactly who I was, and he never made me feel like I needed to change myself for him, even when some of the things I said and did frustrated him. To find a man like that was everything as far as I was concerned. The rest could be worked on, but you could never change whether someone wanted you for you. They either did or they didn’t.

I placed my hand against his chest. “I can live with that.”

He watched me quietly for another few moments. I couldn’t read his thoughts, so I wasn’t sure what he would say or do next.

Finally he wrapped his hand around my wrist and moved it to his ass. “Now you can get back to blowing my mind with that mouth of yours.”

Chapter 28

Hyde

I stared at the bottle of whisky on my kitchen counter. I’d been staring at it for the last five minutes. My body screamed for it, but my head told me if I had a

ny chance at getting my shit together, I needed to empty the bottle down the sink. Memories of my mother drinking at six in the morning flashed in my mind. Her passed out on the couch in the afternoons when I’d come home from school. Her yelling at anyone who tried to help her. It was like a goddam assault with these fucking memories. They punched me in the gut and told me I’d become her.

I was an addict and a mean one at that.

Unscrewing the lid, I picked up the bottle and drained it down the sink. My hand shook a little, but I ignored that. I wasn’t a fucking alcoholic. I could live without this shit.

“You kicking your habit?”

I glanced up to find Charlie standing in the kitchen doorway. Her eyes were firmly on the bottle I held. There was no point denying I had a problem. She was a smart kid. “Yeah.”

She came closer, her eyes lifting to mine. “Good.”

We were like two fucking peas in a pod. Both unable to say anything else, but there was a tension or an emotion or some shit surrounding us that I knew we both felt by the way we silently watched the bottle empty.

My heart raced in my chest. I had to kick this fucking habit, if not for myself, for her. Screwing up my relationship with her the way my mother had with me was not something I wanted to do.