Page 118 of Reaper's Claim

So I pulled out the chair next to him.

“Tell me what happened.” I turned in the chair to face him, well, his body at least. His eyes hadn’t lifted from the shot glass from when I walked into the room.

“Leave, Abby.” He poured his glass. “Leave before my ugliness ruins you.”

Ugliness?

What was the man talking about?

He reached for his glass and I was quicker, covering it with my hand.

“Kade, what is wrong? You know there isn’t anything I can’t handle.”

I had heard stories darker than the one he was likely to tell me.

Turning his head to the side, he looked at me, and for a moment, I swore I saw the pain in his eyes.

“You’re a good girl, Abby. Go have fun.” The corner of his lip twitched up. “Don’t let me stop you.”

He clearly hadn’t realized, or maybe he didn’t get it, it wasn’t him stopping me; it was me.

I wouldn’t let myself leave.

Opening my clutch, I grabbed my phone and sent Sebastian a very respectable cancellation message. When it came to boys like him, me canceling would only turn him on more and make him chase me harder.

Lifting my hand off Kade’s glass, I reached across the table, grabbing an empty glass and pouring myself a drink.

“I still remember the first time I met you.” I opened up. “How you and those gray eyes pulled me in. I remember clearly how heartbroken I was when I thought you had left me in the motel room. Then when I saw you at Drake’s that morning,”

I ran my finger around the edge of the glass while my mind was pulled back to memories that could never be forgotten.

“You’ve always been there. Sometimes in the shadows, other times in my face, but you’ve always been there.” I gently lifted his head and held it in my hands, making his eyes look into mine. “Now it is my turn to be there for you. There isn’t anything you can or could do that would make me turn my back on you. That’s what unconditional love is, Kade, and that is the type of love I have for you. So just tell me, what’s wrong?”

For a few moments, the glaze lifted from his eyes. “You would understand.”

I nodded my head.

“You could justify it for me.”

Again, I nodded my head.

“You could give me an excuse out, and I don’t deserve that.” He gulped down the remaining of his glass. “Maybe that is what’s truly fucked up about it.”

“Kade, you are being very hard on yourself.”

“This unconditional love you have for me,” He lifted his head from my hands and turned to face me on his own. “It’s the same thing I have for this club.”

I swallowed sharply. “I know that.”

“So everything I do for it, to keep the brotherhood together, is out of love.”

“I suppose.”

“So the two men that I just put in the ground was out of love.” His eyes hardened, “The fact that I just put a bullet in a man’s head that I’ve known my whole life, that I once faithfully looked up to as a brother, father, leader, is out of love?”

I opened my mouth then closed it because I knew he wasn’t finished yet. I could see it boiling up inside him.

“I’m soaked in his blood,” he slightly opened his leather vest, displaying the bloody shirt. “and his brother’s blood.”

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