Page 35 of Making Choices

I type out two words, then delete them.

How can I tell her I’m sorry for lashing out at her when I’m not sure it’s true?

8

LILY

The moment Zeke steps into the bathroom while I’m rinsing my hair, I feel the air change. Whatever he’s been up to with Slash has brought out his dark side, and I’m not sure if I’m ready for it tonight. With all that’s to come tomorrow, I thought we could love each other tonight.

Instead of that, it looks like I’m in for a fight if I want to bring Zeke back to me.

One of my biggest secrets is that I like to keep the two sides of Ezekiel Miles separate in my head. On one side is Zeke. Fierce. Protective. Kind. Determined to fix everything around him. Then there’s Venom. Possessive. Prideful. Hard. Capable of wrecking everything and everyone in his way to get what he wants.

I’ve never told anyone that I’m a little bit scared of Venom.

The closest I’ve come to admitting this to anyone but myself is when I told Zeke yesterday that I take the good and the bad that comes from loving an outlaw and affix them to the different sides of his personality.

Because there is two of him.

Not that I think he’s mentally ill, per se…

It’s a symptom of his mother’s abandonment. Until a year before she died, Zeke’s mum popped in and out of his life whenever her career allowed it. Now that’s not necessarily a bad thing—lots of children live with parents who go away to work for months at a time. It isn’t usually a recipe for life-long trauma either.

The way she went about it was wrong.

She’d get a new job, and she’d be off again.

Zeke would go to school with Betty Homemaker waving him off, then come home to an empty house. His mum had left again, without a goodbye, a return date, or even bothering to tell Hades or the Shamrocks that she was departing. Of course, being almost eight years younger, I don’t remember the full extent of Zeke’s turmoil back then, but I’ve heard the stories of nights spent alone in their big, rambling farmhouse because Hades was away on a run and didn’t know his wife had disappeared again.

Always gracious and prone to offer everyone the benefit of doubt, my mother used to say Chantal Miles was a complicated woman who couldn’t help the way she behaved. With Crystal, she stepped up and mothered Zeke like he was her own, and together, they made excuses for Chantal’s lack of care and the effect it had on her son.

In the same way that I hate the mother of Slash’s son for what she did, I’m not quite so charitable in my assessment of Zeke’s mum.

Sure, Chantal dreamt of dancing all over the world, and she pursued it with the same single-mindedness Venom demonstrates when he’s causing carnage. That’s not a crime. Dipping out on your kid without an explanation is in my books. Her callousness broke my man before he truly understood unconditional love, and she then compounded it with her return once she was diagnosed with breast cancer.

The selfish bitch literally only came home to die.

She allowed the teenage son she barely knew and her estranged husband to nurse her while she refused treatment and faded away.

When the awards and accolades died out, they were finally good enough for her.

Chantal showed me as an eleven-year-old that blind ambition hurts the people left behind.

In some ways, the harsh lesson I learnt watching her break Hades and Zeke led to my downfall with Alex. I faced Alex alone because there was no way in hell I was going to use Zeke as a way out. He meant more to me than an easy escape. He wasn’t my Hail Mary pass. He was my everything. And because of that, protecting Sander from himself became my mission, not only due to my promise to my dying mother to look after my brothers, but so I could prove to Zeke that I wasn’t like his mother.

I didn’t want him for what he could do for me.

I want him because of who he is to me.

And that’s why I’ll never tell him that there’s a part of him that scares me to death.

As he steps into the shower cubicle with me, and his hands slide around my waist to meld my back to his chest, a glimmer of hope sparks within me. His touch is gentle. He drops a kiss to the tattoo between my shoulder blades and my optimism blazes to life.

It’s Zeke. Not Venom.

My assurance is dashed when I finish rinsing my hair and look over my shoulder to greet him. The feral glaze in his eyes makes a liar of my preconception. Wariness replaces hope and the fire his touch ignited takes on a darker edge.

Maybe I was wrong?

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