“You heard him,” Mark grunts as he pulls on his shorts. “You acting like everything that’s happened over the last few months is driven by some primitive urge to fuck instead of the love we all have for each other is fucking bullshit and?—”
“Oh my god, really?” Leo laughs while she starts to pace. “Coming from you, that’s real grand.”
Lucky hops toward her as he pulls his pants up, that permanent sneer more intense from how angry he is. “Get off your fucking cross, Leonor. You don’t get to be the only one who’s carrying around guilt and trauma, the only one throwing themselves fucking pity parties because you feel unworthy of what we’vealwayshad.”
I nod and point at the one person who has just as much of a right to say that as the rest of us, more so since he went through it right alongside Leo. “He’s fucking spot on, princess.”
Leo stops dead in her tracks. “What the fuck did you just say to me?”
“You fucking heard me,” I grunt without breaking her stare. “We all carry around baggage from that night but the only goddamn thing any of us would do differently is stay with your ornery ass the second the show ended instead of letting you go backstage alone.”
“Don’t be a fucking martyr, Leo,” Norman says as he joins themisdirected anger club. “Don’t you dare act like you were some puppeteer pulling our strings for well over a decade, that this was all some one sided fog we’ve been wandering around in. You can be selfish with shit like this and it’s ok, it’s normal to put your happiness first, especially when we’realldoing it but don’t use it as a weapon because you can’t handle the goddamn feelings.”
“Oh fuck off, all of you.” Leo starts for the door in nothing but that T-shirt and we all practically trip over ourselves to cut her off.
Lucky grabs her around the waist and marches toward the bed, tossing her in the middle of it before pointing a long tattooed finger at her. “You fuck off. You fuck right the fuck off, Leonor. I know how fucked up that night was, I know what you went through, I was fucking there.” She rolls toward the other side of the bed and tries to get past Norm and Mark, bobbing and weaving like a fucking boxer. “In case you’ve forgotten, I walked in on that bloodbath. I fucking watched that bastard try to take you from me, from us. I relived those moments over and over for months long after you disappeared.”
Jesus, Luck is pissed.
We all are, sure, but this is a long fucking time coming and not just for our healing process as a band or family, it’s beyond needed for Lucius to fully heal becausehewas there.
“Lucky,” I say as I get in front of him, lifting my hands to his chest because I can see his blood pressure rise. “Baby, take a breath.”
He points to his scar as he leans over my shoulder, Leonor staring back at him from somewhere behind me, I’m sure. “This doesn’t mean a damn thing in the grand scheme because if I didn’t have it you wouldn’t fucking be here.” He pokes me in the chest before pointing to Mark and Norm. “The boys, our fucking boys wear their fucking rap sheets like a fucking cape, the termmurdereris like a goddamn crown. You know why?”
I glance at Leo over my shoulder in time to see her blink rapidly and turn away, stepping away from everyone, and that has me concerned.
She’s going to bolt.
We’re going at her hard, forcing her to deal with stuff she might not have been ready to deal with, with us or at all, and this could be the moment we lose her.
I turn to face her while still holding Luck back.
“Because if they hadn’t killed that motherfucker,you wouldn’t be here.”
Mark scrubs a hand over his face and beard before parking both on his hips. “We knew it was going to be hard, knew it was going to be a long ass road to travel down but when you shut us out... Christ, Leonor, that almost destroyed what little of us there was left.”
“If you don’t think for one minute that the four of us don’t somehow blame ourselves for what happened to you, that we don’t carry around a fuckton of baggage and guilt, don’t suffer the same fucking nightmares then you’re the stupid one.” Norm shakes his head and swipes at a tear. “We know you better than you fucking think, Leo, how you operate. We knowyoublame yourself for the way our lives changed, all the shit we went through and whatever you think Franc De la Grange has on you,whatever the hell he convinced you of; you can’t use any of that to keep us away. Not after we’re finally living life the way we should have all along.”
She shakes her head and backs up to the French doors that lead out to Justine’s backyard. “You can’t still feel that way, not after what you just saw.”
Lifting my hands and moving toward her slowly, I drop the bite to my tone and try to be the one to calm her down since the rest of the guys are steaming. “Nothingis going to change how we feel about you, Leonor.”
“You don’t know everything, you can’t say that. I’m still keeping things from you, still lying and hiding.”
“We know enough, princess.” She shakes her head at me but I nod and take another step toward her. “The nightmares and night terrors. The panic attacks.”
Leo shakes her head. “Stop.”
“The insomnia. We know about the blackouts and paranoia.”
“Stop it, please.”
“We know everything that happened to you because we still talked to Justine every fucking day.” I can feel her slipping away from us, I can practically see it happening but if I can just make her understand that we have loved her every second we were apart, through every bit of her pain, maybe she won’t go. “We know about the addiction, the suicide attempts, hospital stays and rehab.”
“Please, Pete, stop.”
Standing right in front of her, I lower my hands and hesitate to reach for hers. “None of that changed how we feel about you because nothing can do that. Especially a bunch of bullshit that happenedto you, not because of you, that was so far out of anyone’s control it couldn’t have been stopped.”
