Strip You Bare (19 page)

But he did care. So he couldn’t.

“Micah, I understand these emotions might be new to you, but you can’t tell other people what they feel.” He could sense the hurt running through the note of steel in her voice. But she wouldn’t break, not in front of him. Not this iron southern belle, who was stronger than most of the badass outlaws he’d met over the years.

Strong enough to tell someone she loved them with no guarantee of that feeling being reciprocated.

So much stronger than he was. Because he couldn’t even return it now that she had spoken the words first.

“All right, maybe I can’t tell you what you feel, but I can tell you how it’s going to be. I’m going back to San Francisco. I have a life there.”

She shrugged, her expression placid. “It so happens I don’t have much of a life here in New Orleans. I might be open to a move.”

He tried to imagine Sarah in San Francisco. It was certainly a city that had its character. Nothing generic or bland about it. But she wouldn’t fit. She was part of the air here. The rich, smoky bayou air. He feared the crisp, clean breezes in California would dry her out.

Like they had him.

“I didn’t invite you, baby.” He shoved his hands in his pockets. “Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed screwing you, but that’s all this ever was. And I never told you different.”

“Things change,” she said, her tone muted. “I certainly have.”

“I haven’t. I’ve been through enough that watching one man shoot himself in the head is hardly going to affect a sea change in who I am. This was just another day in the Quarter for me, princess. You’re a nice girl. A good girl. Sexy. I liked what we had. Don’t ruin it.”

“Hush,” she said, her voice stern. “You’re the one who’s ruining it. You’re the one who’s lying.”

“I haven’t lied,” he said, lying even now. “I told you what I was here for. I told you I was going to leave. I got what I came for. Revenge for Priest. But the reasons I left New Orleans ten years ago are still here. I’m not going to take up with this merry band of outlaws and forget that I earned myself a better life in San Francisco. I’m not going to give up everything to come live in this shithole, where I was treated like nothing from the day I was born. I can’t have what I have there here. I will never be more than my birth here. And I think you underestimate how important things are to me. They call me Prince for a reason. It was because I liked status more than I liked anyone around me. You think those debutantes you hang out with are shallow? They got nothing on me. I want expensive things, a nice house, and a different, beautiful woman in my bed every night. That’s the beginning and end of it. There’s nothing more to me. Nothing more to this.”

Sarah looked at the hollowness in Micah’s eyes and knew he was lying. She had known from the moment he’d walked into the Priory that he was going to lie to her. Somehow, she had just sensed it. And now that he was speaking, it was confirmed. She knew he was lying, but that didn’t make it hurt less. Oh Lord, it didn’t make it hurt less.

“You’re very comfortable talking up what a bad guy you are. The kind that I shouldn’t be with, the kind that I shouldn’t speak to, or touch. You’re so comfortable with that, but you aren’t comfortable admitting all the good things about yourself.”

“Because there is nothing good,” he said, his voice rough.

“That isn’t true. You know it isn’t true. There are other men, plenty of other men, who would have gone about this whole thing differently than you did. Who would have treated me with so much less respect.”

“You think I treated you with respect? Your head is pretty fucked, princess. Because in my memory, I put you up against a wall and had you even when you told me no. I told you you were mine. I called you my possession. There is no respect in that.”

“Maybe not for some men. But I know. Because you’re a different kind of man, but that doesn’t make you less of one.”

A muscle in his jaw jumped, his arms crossed over his chest. “Are you going to beg? You know I like it when you beg, honey, but it compromises your pride a little bit.”

“And a few months ago that would’ve bothered me. Because my pride mattered a hell of a lot more than it does now. Pride gets you where my grandfather is, which is in hell, by the way. Pride fixes nothing. It doesn’t bring happiness, it doesn’t bring fulfillment. Pride is not what I’m looking to satisfy here. For the first time in my life, I just want to satisfy myself. I want to be in love with someone who loves me back.”

“Well, that’s a problem. I’m the wrong audience.”

Liar, liar, liar
. “That isn’t true. You do love me.”

“It doesn’t matter what I feel for you,” he said. “When you hear the truth about why I left New Orleans ten years ago, you’re going to change the way you feel about me.”

“Why would I let it? Why would I listen to anything you have to say about yourself?”

“I told you we had to leave because we killed somebody. I told you I was a killer.”

She curled her hands into fists, anger pouring through her. “I told you that wasn’t true.”

“I know you did. That was before I knew
who
we killed. That was before you knew.”

Something cold settled in the pit of Sarah’s stomach. Somehow she had a dark sense of what was coming before the words left his mouth. But even so, when they did, the shock was so severe, so stark, it stole her breath.

“It was your father, Sarah. We killed your father.”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “No, you didn’t. He died in the Quarter during Katrina. It was something to do with a fire, and the roof collapsed. And it was the hurricane.”

“Surprise, baby,” he said, voice rough. “I’m the fucking hurricane.”

Ice flooded her veins, replacing all the blood. All the warmth. All the Delacroix. There was nothing but desolation. Anger. Not hot, but frigid, destructive.

“I don’t believe you.”

“We had gone to do a drop. Drugs. That’s what you’re family was into. That’s what we were into. Your dad didn’t want to pay. A fight broke out.”

She closed her eyes, her pulse throbbing in her temples. “No. Stop.”

“You need to hear this. You need to understand. You need to know the kind of man you think you love. What we did to your life.”

“I don’t want to, Micah. Please.” She was begging now. She didn’t care.

“It wasn’t a fire. I was fighting with him. Hand to hand. It was intense. But I knew what I was doing. He came at me. I shoved him over the balcony, down to the first floor. I broke his neck. I broke
all
of him. I know exactly what happened. I remember clearly what it looked like. Because I caused it. Because I did it. It wasn’t just the Deacons, Sarah. It was me.”

It was all too much. Too big to be contained inside of her. She couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe. And she couldn’t sit still for a moment longer.

She jumped up off the barstool, closed the distance between them, pounding his chest with a closed fist. “Why are you doing this? Why are you doing this to me? To us? I finally found what I want, who I am. Why are you taking it away?”

“I am not taking it away.” He grabbed hold of her wrists, holding them fast. She struggled against him, but her actions were useless. Feeble. “I am telling you the truth. Just like the stain on your family name, revealing it doesn’t make it so. It just makes it visible. This is what I am, and you have to know that. You have to understand what it means to be with me. You want to keep sleeping with the man who killed your father? There are daddy issues, and then there are daddy issues, sweetheart.”

“Stop it,” she said, her voice hoarse.

“You’re brave, Sarah, I’ll give you that. You’re still facing me, still fighting. But it doesn’t change what happened.”

He started to relax his hold on her, and she took advantage of the situation, pulling her wrists out of his grasp, launching herself forward, hitting him again, beating against the solid wall of muscle that was Micah. A wall of muscle she could never defeat, never even hope to. And he just stood there and took it.

“What are you,” she hissed, “a pussy? Or are you a biker?” She slapped him across the face as the words left her lips.

He growled, grabbing hold of her arms, reversing their position, and pressing her against the wall. “You know full well what I am. But I’m not going to prove a point by hitting a woman.”

“Are you saying you have limits? Are you telling me you have a moral compass? Because that’s what I’ve been trying to say this whole time, and you’ve been trying to talk me out of it. But the thing is you
do
have limits. You are a man. You have a soul.”

“Sure, I have a soul. I’m still breathing, aren’t I? It doesn’t mean it’s one worth saving.”

“But I love it already,” she said, the strength leaching out of her suddenly, leaving the weariness behind that she couldn’t combat. “I don’t need you changed. I don’t need you saved. I love you already. And I’ll leave all of it behind for you. Every last thing.”

“No, Sarah,” he said, his voice growing rougher still.

He was lying again.

Not about her father—she believed that, and the revelation. It wasn’t something she could ignore, wasn’t something she could pretend didn’t matter. But at the same time, it didn’t erase her feelings for him. Not by half.

He was flawed, this man, straight down to his bones. But he had given her more love and acceptance than anyone else in her life ever had. He had brought her pieces of herself that had been missing, pieces she hadn’t even known were gone. He had made her a version of herself she could never be in her old world. It had to be here. It had to be with him.

“You can’t just . . . change everything I am and then walk away. You can’t.”

“But I did.” He didn’t release his hold on her, didn’t lessen his grip. “Don’t you have any sense of self-preservation, you little idiot?”

“That’s all I’ve had all my life. It doesn’t make you happy. Guess what, Micah? It doesn’t even make you safe. My grandfather had nothing but self-preservation, and he’s still dead. Not only that, he’s dead with no one to mourn his memory. I hate him. I hate him for deceiving me. You know I was already under no illusion that my father was a good man. When I found out about the Deacons owning the mansion, you know he was the first suspect in my head. It isn’t like you’ve destroyed some rose-garden vision I had of my family.”

“But I am a killer.”

“And I won’t let you use that to push me away. So, now what? If you walk out that door, Micah Carpenter, it will not be because I rejected you. It will be because you rejected this. Because you rejected us. Because you rejected
yourself
. You have to understand that. You have to admit it.”

“I don’t think you could handle me, baby.”

“Bullshit,” she said, lifting her chin, her heart pounding hard in her chest. “I can handle everything you throw at me. No matter what you think, I am one hundred percent biker bitch, and I can more than handle you. If you walk away, it’s because you’re the one who’s afraid. You haven’t scared me. You haven’t made me stop loving you. So, now what? Now that I’ve taken all your excuses away. What’s the problem?”

“You shouldn’t—”

“Maybe not. Maybe I shouldn’t love you, because of everything you’ve done. But who you’ve been in these past weeks with me far outweighs whoever you were ten years ago. Fifteen years ago. Twenty years ago. Who I’ve been these past few weeks far outweighs everything. So walk away. But know that it’s because you’re a coward. If you run from this, if you run from what we can have, then you aren’t the man I thought you were.”

“And I’m not,” he said, letting go of her and taking a step back.

“Okay, Prince,” she said, stepping away from him and moving back to the bar, taking a seat on the barstool. “You go back to San Francisco. I’m going to stay here.”

“In the Priory?”

“In the Priory. In the clubhouse. Blue is my cousin. Sophie is my cousin. My family is all here. Everyone else is dead.”

“You understand you’re not going to be a member of the MC,” Micah said, his teeth clenched. “Women are property to the club. Some guy’s gonna put his patch on your back, and if he doesn’t, you’re just going to get used by everybody.”

“I have a feeling Blue will make sure nothing happens to me that I don’t want to have happen.”

“This is the liberation you’re looking for?”

“I just think it might be the family I was looking for. The me I was looking for. If you ever decide the same, you’re welcome to come back.”

“I don’t think so.”

He turned away, and her heart splintered. Everything was wrong. Everything was broken. And sure, Micah was a part of that, but he was also the only thing that made her feel right. The only thing that made her feel like herself. She loved him. And that transcended everything else. It was something she couldn’t explain, something that couldn’t be shaken. But it was sure as hell something that could break her.

“I do love you, Prince. But until you realize that Prince is an all-right person to be? It’s best if you’re gone.”

“You stay here with the filthy bikers. I’m going to go back to the life I made for myself.”

“I guess that’s the problem. This,” she said, waving her hand, indicating the Priory, “is a life that I’m making for myself. It’s that other life, the one that’s full of glitter, the one that’s full of people who tell you what to think, how to act, that’s the life that was created for me. The
persona
that was created for me. And I suppose you feel like that’s what this is for you. I guess maybe we can’t make that work.”

“You’re romanticizing a world I worked really hard to escape,” he said, walking toward the door. “There’s nothing here for me.”

“I think you’re condemning a past that scares you, because it’s more real than any other life you’ve lived. More than that penthouse in San Francisco. More than that life running drugs.” She took a deep breath. “You’re Prince. That’s who you are.”

“I sure as hell hope not,” he said. And this time he did walk out. Leaving her there. Leaving her alone.

But she didn’t feel alone, not really. She had these walls, so full of stories, so full of ghosts, they seemed to contain multitudes within them.