“He let his personal jealousy rule him. He decided I was taking something that he thought he owned. But can we own people?” he asks.
My eyes flick over to Della, who is looking to the side and biting her bottom lip. “Yeah, you can,” I point out.
“Nah, not really. You can try, but you can’t ever own another person. You can lay claim, but you don’t own them. You don’t own their thoughts, their feelings, no matter how hard you try. When he didn’t get what he wanted, pissed him off. He took it out on me, on his brother.”
Nodding, I decide not to comment. I have seen men at my father’s club stab each other over a hit of meth. I don’t know what they would do if one decided a woman was theirs and the other took her away.
“This doesn’t bother you?” Pinkie asks, her voice almost a whisper.
Pressing my lips together, I roll them a few times, then I lift a shoulder. “I don’t know. I don’t know that side of him, but my father’s club didn’t own women. Didn’t claim women. I mean, they picked Old Ladies, but sharing was pretty common.”
Della takes a step toward me. She sinks down on her haunches in front of me and looks into my eyes. “That’s not normal,” she says softly. “I mean, some people need it, but in general, not normal. I don’t want you to think that Jaguar is someone healthy you need to hitch your star to.”
I bristle at her words. Her man says her name in a warning tone, obviously thinking that she’s gone too far, probably reading my body language perfectly. I feel defensive, this man that they’re describing, I don’t know him. Not that I know Dylan really well, I don’t, but this man they describe just doesn’t fit him.
He literally saved me from being raped by a dozen men. I was naked on the table, minutes from being completely and totally violated to a point of no return, when he saved me. I saw the gun in his hand, he was going to shoot our way out if he had to.
“I don’t know the same man that you do,” I say.
My words are truthful and I mean them, every single one of them. She knows Jaguar, and maybe he did try to kill this man, his brother. I’m sure he did, but I don’t know that man.
I only know Dylan.
I know the man who was horrified by the way my father ran his club. I know the man who snuck Maci Marshall away. I know the man who promised me that I would not be raped by dozens of men, including my own father, and given to one of them to play with and destroy for the rest of my life.
“I only know the man who saved my life.”
JAGUAR
The doorknob wiggles and I turn around, my back leaning against the wall as I watch it open. My brows rise at the sight of who is visiting me. I wonder if this is it. Is this where and when I die? It would seem fitting. He should be the one to do it, after all.
“You got anything to say for yourself?” he asks.
Shaking my head, I know that I’ve already said my piece. I’m not sure what else he wants to hear from me. Maybe he wants me to go down on my knees and beg his forgiveness, beg for another chance at life.
I should.
But I won’t.
“She’s got it bad for you. Thinks you’re a hero. Even when I told her the truth, wouldn’t believe it.”
I close my eyes, my head falling backward with a thud against the wall. “Ain’t a hero,” I grunt.
“She thinks you are. What the fuck, man? What am I supposed to do about this shit?”
Arching a brow, I don’t answer him immediately. We watch one another, neither of us speaking for a long moment. Then finally, he clears his throat and shakes his head a couple of times.
“Got a wife and a baby, Jag. Got a whole brotherhood, one that you abandoned.”
“Thought she was going to be my wife, thought that was my baby,” I say.
Regret fills me.
I have never regretted anything as much as I do the months that I fucked with Della. The way I treated her. The way that I tried to control and own her. The way I mind-fucked her. I regret everything.
“Yeah,” he rasps. “I get that.”
“But she ain’t mine. That kid ain’t mine and oddly enough, the moment I sank my blade into Charm and ended her life, it all just went away. All that pain, all that need, all that blind rage—it vanished.”
“You vanished,” he points out.
Pushing off of the wall, I walk toward the window. Lifting my hands, I wrap my fingers around the bars again and look out at the now dusk desert. The sun is beginning to set and the sky is full of reds and purples. It’s fuckin’ gorgeous and I never thought I would miss it, but fucking hell, I did.
“I vanished. I did something unforgivable. I did it, but the act itself wasn’t what upset me as much as the fact that I allowed myself to be blinded by rage, to be manipulated into doing that to a man that is supposed to be my brother.”
He doesn’t speak right away and I don’t blame him. What do you even say to that? He should just kill me now, get it over with. Slow or fast, doesn’t matter anymore. I’m going to Hell, so it doesn’t matter how I get there, it’s the only place that will take me. There’s no spot for me anywhere else.
“Yeah, you did something really fucking shitty, hombre,” he says, his voice a deep rumble. “But I ain’t even mad anymore. I was pissed, but only because nobody knew where you were and I was
