Page 109 of Full Throttle

I jerked back at the pain in his eyes—the fear.

“You were in a burning car,” he seethed, baring his white teeth. “I watched the love of my fucking life almost burn to death! Because of him!” His voice bounced off the walls, echoing throughout the loft. He took a step towards me. “Don’t tell me you want to fight beside me, Nik, because I don’t want you beside me. I want you safe. I want you untouched. I want you alive.”

“Babe—”

“I will not watch you get hurt again because of me!” The agony in his voice struck me in the middle of the chest, right in my heart. “Yeah, baby, I’ve been through hell. I had a rough childhood. I don’t care about that anymore. I haven’t thought about my mother in years. Honestly, I hope that bitch is dead. I hope her body is rotting in that fucking house. I don’t care about her. I care about you. I care about Oasis. I care about the family I have here.”

“I know,” I croaked, my voice thick.

“Leaving The Pit was the worst mistake I made.”

“Why did you go?” I asked. I didn’t know the whole story yet. I watched as his neck worked, uncertainty in his eyes. I took a small step towards him. “Did it have something to do with you ending up in a Texas prison?”

He ran his hand over his face as an exhausted sigh left him. “We doing this here?”

“If you stay, we can do it later,” I told him, shifting on my feet.

Cain wasn’t staying. He made that clear as he said, “It was drug run. We got stopped in Texas, and I was arrested.”

“And that’s where you met Leon?” I pressed, trying to piece everything together.

“A few years later, yeah.”

My lips parted. “A—a few years?”

“I was in prison for a good minute, Nik,” he told me.

I inhaled a deep breath, this information racking my brain. Dropping my head, I released the breath on the shudder. “Okay.”

“My life has been shit,” he said, his voice monotone. When I lifted my head, his pale gaze pierced my soul. “You were the one thing that wasn’t shit, and I threw you away.”

“You didn’t—”

“Baby, I was forced into the Bratva to pay a debt that wasn’t mine,” he explained softly. “It was Xander’s.” Shock struck me like lightening, but he wasn’t done. “He got into some bad shit without realizing it, and the night before Leon and I were supposed to bust out of prison, I got approached by some of Kavi’s men. They told me I had two choices: let Xander die or pay off his debt.”

“H-how did they know where to find you?” I blurted out, my mind running in a thousand different directions.

Cain let out a dark chuckle, shaking his head. “Because the drugs I was running were stolen from Kavi.”

“Holy shit,” I breathed.

He looked out the window again, putting his hands into his sweat pockets. "I’ve seen things and done things that shouldn’t touch you, beautiful.”

I took another step. “I can handle it,” I told him.

Slowly, he looked back to me, his jaw hard, his eyes full of a haunting pain. “You need to let me handle this.”

“The days of you handling shit alone are done, Cain,” I shot back.

“You’re staying here.”

“And so are you. We’ll figure this out together.”

He shook his head again. “I’m not arguing with you about this. The decision has been made,” he clipped.

My sweet Cain, always trying to save everyone but himself. He lost years of his life protecting his brother. Xander fucking left the day he turned eighteen and never came back. He turned his back on Cain, leaving him with that awful woman.

“Right, and was that before or after you admitted you loved me?” The question came out as a whisper.

---