“Stop it, Juliet. You’re gonna hurt yourself.” P.J. told her after a particularly vicious kick hit him in the shins.
His arms were like iron bands around her while she spent out her rage. P.J. picked Juliet up and carried her to the back of the house and kicked open the door to the finished basement. Then still holding Juliet in his arms, he kicked it shut behind him. “I’m gonna let you go once you settle the hell down, but I swear to god Juliet, if you keep this shit up, I’m gonna grab a hold of you again.” It took a few more minutes before the rage had spent all her energy and P.J. felt Juliet slump in his arms.
“Why?” She whispered as she pulled away from him. Her voice ragged with emotion; the fight gone out of her. What was left was an expression of infinite sadness, and that made P.J. feel much worse than her anger had. “Just tell me why.”
“Babe, I’m not even sure what’s going on here.” P.J.’s big arms crossed against his chest, his back against the door, effectively trapping Juliet in.
“You don’t know why my wallet was sitting on that table?” She narrowed her tear swollen eyes at him.
“Alright. The wallet? That was me. I sent it to Jules. But I had just come back from the compound like two minutes before you showed up, he didn’t even have time to explain anything to me yet.”
Juliet’s whole body went numb, and she sat down on the couch in defeat. “What I want to know is why, P.J.? Why was it so damn important to you to stick your nose in where it had no business going? It didn’t matter to you that I didn’t want that, that I didn’t want you to go prying into my past?” Juliet gave him a look filled with sorrow. “You tricked me.”
“Goddamn it, Juliet, I didn’t trick you…”
“You did! You lied to me and you tricked me.” Her face contorted in pain.
“Baby, I didn’t.” P.J. pushed off the door and moved towards her.
“Yes You. Did!” She cried as she moved away and jabbed the air with her tightly gripped wallet. “The first time you made love to me was the night you lied about finding this! I never, never, thought you would do this to me.”
“Okay, so I had my uncle look into you.” P.J. admitted. “And I know that it looks bad from where you’re sitting, and I guess I’d be pissed too…”
“You guess?” Juliet’s eyes went wide with angry incredulity.
“It’s what we do, Juliet.” He told her. “Aside from wanting to get to know you, to protect you from whoever this asshole is that you’re running from …I am a Saint, baby, born and bred and no matter how much of a part of that I tried to leave behind, it’s who I am and where I come from. I won’t…I can’t…bring someone into my life when I don’t know everything there is about them. It’s just too damn risky. So, I waited. I waited and I watched, and I prayed to every damn god there is that you would trust me enough to come clean with me. But you didn’t. When I knew I was falling hard for you, I had to know. I had to know what you were hiding.” P.J. scrubbed a hard hand over his chin. “If that makes me an asshole, then I guess I am one. And if I’m gonna lose you now because of that, then maybe I deserve it. But if that’s where this is going, if that’s how it’s all gonna end with you leaving me, then I think…no, I know…I have the right to know why.”
Juliet searched P.J.’s eyes. If there was any deception there, she couldn’t see it. “You don’t know? You really don’t know?”
“No, there wasn’t enough time for Jules to explain.”
“But he knows.”
“Jules knows everybody’s secrets, and I am willing to bet my left nut that most of them are a hell of a lot worse than yours. As long as those secrets don’t hurt the club, he’ll take them to his grave. On my word, he’ll put everything through the shredder and we’ll never talk about it again.”
“Just like that?”
“Yeah, babe. Just like that. Jules did tell me that you weren’t in any danger from your asshole ex, and that he is not someone to pose a threat to the club, that’s as far as we got, before you came around that corner. So, it’s all good.” P.J. told her. Then added with all the sincerity of a guy head over heels. “I love you, Juliet. Do you love me, too?”
She crossed his arms, glared at him, and said without hesitation. “No, I don’t,”
“Hmm.” P.J. couldn’t help but let out a small grin because his woman had balls. “How about yesterday, did you love me then?”
“Stop it. You’re making a mockery out of this. You hurt me, P.J. You lied to me.” She frowned deeply.
“We just covered that, and I am not gonna spend the rest of my life apologizing for it. Answer the question, Juliet, do you love me?”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Let’s pretend that it is.”
“Yes.” She sighed as if it caused her great misery to admit it. “I think I might.”
P.J. wrapped his arms around Juliet; with reluctance she let him. When he drew her in closer, she rested her head against his chest. Now that the dust had begun to settle, and Juliet had the chance to think more rationally, she realized that she probably was not the only one in this situation who had been lied to. She was pretty sure that when P.J had first made his
