Craving Absolution

“Uh, yeah.”

  “What’s ‘uh’? What’s going on?”

  “My brother, your baby daddy, is falling-down drunk, or would be if he ever moved from the couch he’s been sitting on for the last few hours.”

  “That piece of shit!” I whispered.

  “What’s going on, Farrah?” she asked seriously, her voice dropping.

  “Nothing,” I mumbled, walking toward the bathroom. “I’m on my way. Can you keep CeeCee when we get there?”

  “Sure . . .?” The word was drawn out, turning it into a question.

  “Okay, give me half an hour.” I hit End on my phone as I stared at myself in the mirror. For the first time since Cecilia had been born, I’d gotten myself dolled up.

  I was wearing the shortest pair of shorts I owned, with a high waist and frayed legs, and a crocheted halter top that left little to the imagination due to the fact that my boobs were still huge from breast-feeding. I’d feathered my hair away from my face, leaving it in long curls down my back, and completed the look with a headband across my forehead, ten bangles, and a toe ring that you could see through my sandals.

  Yep, that should work.

  Cecilia slept the entire way to the club, and didn’t stir as we entered the noisy main room. I felt a little conspicuous as I walked in carrying the baby and all of her stuff, but the smiles I saw as I walked farther into the room put me at ease. It was a long way from the reception I’d gotten the first time I’d walked through those doors.

  “I’ll take her,” Cameron called, rushing to my side to grab Cecilia’s carrier. “Where do you want me to bring her?”

  I searched the room, looking for Callie, but I couldn’t see her. “Can you take her to Grease’s room? I think that’s where Callie and Will are.”

  “Yeah, Will started whining so they just went back there. Want me to take her bag?”

  “Sure, bud. Thank you,” I answered, handing him the diaper bag. “Have you seen Slider?”

  “Yeah, he’s over by the pool tables,” he called back over his shoulder as he made his way through the crowd.

  I watched him go until he hit the back hallway, and then turned toward the tables. There were a group of guys over there that I didn’t know well, but sitting with them were Dragon with Brenna on his lap, Poet, Tommy, and Slider. Shit, I really didn’t want to have to deal with Tommy’s drunk ass. As I got closer to the tables, I saw the back of Cody’s head resting against the couch, his Mohawk flat against his scalp.

  I clenched my jaw in annoyance. “Hey, remember me?” I asked as I rounded the couch.

  “The fuck are you doing here, Farrah?” he asked emotionlessly.

  “Heard there was a party,” I snapped back.

  “Go home. Where’s our kid?”

  “Our kid has a name, dick.”

  “Whatever. Go home.”

  I stood motionless as he looked away. What the hell was his deal?

  “Come home with me,” I said quietly, trying a different tactic. “We can leave your bike here for the night. Come on, handsome.”

  His gaze moved slowly back to where I was standing, his face never losing its composure. “Go home, Farrah. I’ll be home in the morning.”

  Just like that he dismissed me, and my blood boiled. Fuck him.

  He wanted to ignore me? Well, he could sure as hell try.

  I walked over and gave Slider and Brenna a hug hello while Cody kept his face turned away from me, making my irritation grow even stronger. Then I searched the room for Vera. Perfect. She was standing right next to the sound system.

  “You might want to go to your room for a while,” I warned Slider, nudging him with my elbow.

  “Why would I wanna do that?”

  “’Cause I doubt you wanna watch your daughter shaking it on top of the pool table,” I said dryly, making his jaw drop before snapping shut again. I turned my head to Brenna. “Clear the table, would you?”

  Her lips pulled up into a devilish grin while Dragon chuckled, but I ignored them both as I started toward Vera.

  “Hey, girl,” she called out as I got close.

  “Hey, Vera.” She leaned in to give me a hug, and I squeezed her back. It was kind of amazing how far we’d come since the baby was born.

  “Hey, listen. Can you put something on I can dance to?” I asked quietly.

  “Dance?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Not sure we have a whole lotta shit like that, but I’ll see what I can do.” She looked around the room. “There a reason for this?”

  “Yep.”

  “You gonna tell me what that is?”

  “You’ll see.”

  “Oh shit.”

  Oh shit was right.

  She started fiddling with the stereo as I walked away, and by the time I’d made my way to the now empty table, Awolnation’s “Sail” was blaring over the surround sound.

  “Oh, this is a good one,” Brenna said as I passed her, making Dragon growl against her neck.

  I pulled myself on top of the pool table, and flicked a glance toward Slider as the men in the clubhouse started to cheer. He was very deliberately looking down at the table in front of him.

  Ha.

  I took a deep breath, and with a glance at Cody, whose eyes were closed, I began to sway my hips. I hadn’t danced for a crowd in a long-ass time, years even, but as the beat of the song rumbled in my chest, it all came back to me. It was like falling into a familiar place, somewhere that you’d gone so many times that nothing surprised you anymore.

  I knew how to catch the attention of a room, and I was fucking good at it.

  The guys watched as I lifted my hands and used my fingers to hold my hair at the top of my head, bending my knees so I was crouched ass to the table. They quieted as I paused there, then roared again as I kept my torso down and straightened my legs, giving them a glimpse of the little half moons of ass peeking out of my shorts.

  Their yelling and high-pitched whistles must have finally caught Cody’s attention, because as soon as I’d lifted back up, he was at the edge of the table, fury darkening his eyes.

  “Get the fuck down.” He growled, his face pulled into a grimace.

  I ignored him as I dropped my hair to fan around my chest and circled my hips, making the men howl once again.

  I was feeling pretty damn sure of myself, working the crowd and throwing smiles toward Vera as she stood across the room, looking worried. Then I looked toward where Cody had been standing to raise my eyebrow at him, as if to say, “Put that in your pipe and smoke it,” but he wasn’t there.

  While I’d been playing the crowd, he’d circled around the edge of the table, and before I could prepare myself, he’d grabbed my wrist and yanked me down—directly over his shoulder.

  I slapped my arm across my chest to keep from flashing my boobs as the crowd laughed.

  He stalked toward the back hallway, and I was surprised he was so steady on his feet.

  “Put me down,” I ordered as we hit the dark hallway, headed toward his room.

  His hand landed on my bare thigh with a sharp and painful slap, but he gave no other indication he’d heard me.

  “Ow, asshole!”

  He slammed open his room’s door and dropped me on his bed. I immediately rolled to my knees as he silently paced back and forth across the room.

  “Well?” I asked, throwing my arms in the air.

  “Well, what, Farrah?”

  “Are you going to tell me what the fuck is going on?” My voice was rising as I realized that my little stunt hadn’t done shit. He was still locked away, refusing to give me a fucking inch.

  “I wanted a night without a freaking screaming baby and you harping on me. That okay with you, Farrah?” He practically spat my name, and that pissed me off.

  I didn’t harp on him. Shit, that was part of our problem! Until that night I hadn’t pushed him at all, and the longer it went on, the more and more he hid from me.

  “You haven’t even seen harping yet,” I said
through clenched teeth, my hands fisting on my thighs.

  “What the fuck do you want from me?” he yelled, his eyes blurry from the whiskey he’d been drinking and his hands clenched in his hair.

  “I want you to fucking talk to me! I want to know what’s bothering you, for Christ’s sake!” I raised my hands in front of me, palms up in supplication. “Why do you keep doing this?”

  “Oh, is life so fucking hard for you, Farrah? I don’t give you what you need? I’ve been home with you for months and you fucking follow me the one night I go out? You wanna put my nuts in your purse too?” He reached down and grabbed his crotch as if to prove his point.

  “Fuck you!” I yelled back. “You know that’s not what this is about! You freaked out when Rob—”

  He stepped forward, startling me by grabbing my face. “Shut your mouth.”

  “What is wrong with you?”

  He pushed me back on the bed and crawled on top of me, looking like I’d slapped him across the face.

  “What’s wrong with me?” he yelled, inches from me.

  I whimpered in response as his whiskey-tinged breath hit my face.

  “I joined this fucking club to keep my family safe! Do you know what that was like for me? Do you?” His fist hit the bed near my shoulder and I flinched, but still raised my hand to cup his cheek. I knew he wouldn’t hurt me, no matter how drunk or upset he was.

  “My parents were killed, those fucking drug dealers were gunning for my sister, and I couldn’t do anything!” he yelled again. “I had to stand there and watch some fucker I didn’t know drive off with my sister because I couldn’t fucking protect her!”

  “Okay, baby.” I whispered, regretting ever pushing him to that point.

  “I had to do something! I had to make sure that I could protect Gram and Callie if I needed to.” He was still yelling as I ran my hand over the side of his head.

  “Okay, baby,” I whispered again.

  “I had to protect you! And now it’s all fucked up!” He raised his arm and slapped himself in the side of the head, the movement making me burst into hiccupping sobs.

  “I had to kill that girl, Farrah! I had to kill her!” He pressed his fists into the bed, making my shoulders shake. “How the fuck could I do that? I came here so I could protect my women! How the fuck could I kill one?”

  As he yelled, I heard Cecilia start to cry in Grease’s room next door, and my breasts immediately started to leak, soaking the front of my halter. Seconds later, someone started yelling and pounding on the door to his room, jiggling the locked handle.

  “It’s okay, baby,” I said in a soothing tone, reaching up to try to pull his head down to mine. “It’s okay.”

  “You’re sleeping with a fucking murderer, Farrah!” he bellowed, yanking his head out of my hands.

  He reared back so he was sitting on my hips, and as he did, the door to his room was kicked open, and Slider, Dragon, and Grease came barreling through the doorway.

  Chapter 43

  Farrah

  “Don’t!” I cried as Grease wrapped his arms around Cody, wrenching him from the bed.

  “You okay?” Slider asked, deliberately avoiding looking at where I’d leaked through my white halter, making it practically transparent.

  “I’m fine, we were just talking!” I yelled as Cody went limp against Grease, his eyes on mine. “We’re fine, baby. Right? We were just talking,” I called to him softly.

  The look on his face made my stomach clench in fear.

  “Why don’t you sleep in another room tonight, yeah?” Dragon said quietly to Cody. “Have a cooler head in the morning.”

  I didn’t know why they were so worried, and it annoyed the hell out of me that they’d barged in when they had. Other couples in the club had knock-down, drag-out fights and they didn’t step in, so why the hell were they bothering us? Cody would rather cut off his own arm than take his anger out on a woman; it was the very reason we were yelling in the first place.

  “No, I want you to stay with me!” I cried out, wrapping one arm around my chest as I knelt on the bed, reaching out for him.

  “I’ll see you in the morning, Ladybug,” he told me gently, shrugging off Grease’s arm to come toward me. “You sleep in here with CeeCee. Okay, baby?”

  “I want you to sleep with me,” I whispered back, wrapping my arms around his waist and digging my nails into his cut.

  He shook his head. “Let’s talk again in the morning.”

  “Why won’t you stay with me?” I whimpered, scared as hell for him to leave me with that look on his face. “We’ll just go to sleep, we don’t have to talk.”

  The other men in the room were watching us closely, and I hated that they saw me like that. My mask was gone, it had shattered completely the day I’d given birth to Cecilia, leaving the emotions that I’d always kept hidden were out there for the world to see.

  “I love you. Feed our daughter and get some sleep,” he ordered, leaning down to kiss me softly.

  “I love you too. Please stay.”

  He reached back to pull my hands from his cut and stepped back before turning to walk silently out of the room with Dragon and Grease, leaving Slider and me alone.

  “You sure you’re okay?” he asked, sitting on the bed as Callie walked in with a pissed-off Cecilia in her arms.

  “I told you I was fine,” I replied dully, taking the baby and throwing a receiving blanket over my shoulder before settling her at my breast. “We were just talking.”

  “Yeah, well, it didn’t sound like talking,” he commented as Callie walked silently back out of the room.

  “He was yelling, yes. But Cody would never hurt me.”

  “I know that, baby girl.” Slider reached out to pat my knee. “But we heard enough of it. Boy’s got some messed-up shit in his head right now.”

  “He’s—” My voice broke as I rubbed Cecilia’s tiny back. “He’s having a hard time with the stuff that happened in Portland.”

  “Yeah, I figured as much, but tonight proved it.” He shook his head. “Me and the boys’ll have a word with him tonight, see if we can’t knock some sense into him.”

  “You better not touch him or I’ll feed you your balls,” I said, completely serious.

  “Shit, Farrah, I’m not gonna hurt the kid. Just need to get some shit straight with him. That clusterfuck in Portland was not his fault. Not in any way. Ramon’s daughter was a crazy bitch who shot me and would have killed me if she’d had the chance.”

  “Do you think he’ll be okay?” I asked tearfully, wishing that Cody weren’t somewhere else in the club dealing with that shit by himself.

  “He’ll be fine, darlin’. Probably in your bed before morning.” He leaned forward to kiss my head before standing from the bed. “Gonna sleep here at the club for the night if you need me or Vera.”

  “Okay,” I answered as he left the room, pulling the broken door mostly shut behind him.

  I unlatched a sleepy Cecilia, making her cry as I pulled back the blankets and sheets on the bed so I could cover us up. As soon as I’d turned off the light and was comfortable on my side, I cuddled her up next to me and gave her the opposite breast, rubbing her head softly as she latched back on.

  My head throbbed as I worried about Cody and thought about how all the puzzle pieces fit together.

  My man was a protector; there was no doubt about that. I thought about how hard it would have been for him when his parents were killed, knowing that the sister he had been taught to protect was in danger and there wasn’t anything he could do about it. The men they’d been up against would have swatted fifteen-year-old Cody away like a pesky fly, and I gave a quick thank-you to God that he’d been too smart to go against them alone. It must have galled him to leave the protection to Grease while he was away at school, and been scary as hell for him knowing that Gram was still in San Diego where the murderers lived.

  I wondered vaguely if he’d started protecting me during my downward spiral because he k
new it was something he could do. Protect Farrah from herself—piece of cake. Only, I hadn’t made it easy for him. I’d fought him and snuck around and generally made his job infinitely harder whenever I could, determined to prove that I could take care of myself.

  As my mind wandered through the different threads of Cody’s words, I suddenly realized that my best friend, Callie, wasn’t the only one in that family dealing with survivor’s guilt. Cody was obviously feeling it too, but not only for his parents.

  The situation Callie had gone through, my idiocy that he’d witnessed and tried to stop, and not being able to do anything during the attack on Brenna had built up the idea in his head that he wasn’t doing enough. That he was failing somehow at protecting his family.

  Killing Carmella had just been the icing on a shit cake that had been baking for years. No wonder he’d finally lost it.

  I hoped that Slider and the rest of the guys would be able to help him out. They had a ton of experience with problems like that—the ones that kept them up at night because of the things they done and hadn’t done.

  “Your daddy is having a hard time,” I whispered to sleeping Cecilia, pulling my nipple out of her mouth so I could smooth down my halter. “You’re just gonna have to give him lots of love tomorrow, okay? Mama will too.”

  I fell asleep hoping that at some point in the night he’d crawl into bed with me.

  But he didn’t.

  Chapter 44

  Farrah

  Cody’s bike was gone the next day when Cecilia and I woke up.

  Slider told me that they’d had a good talk and he thought they’d gotten shit straightened out, but I didn’t buy it. If Cody had his shit straightened out, he would have come to me. He wouldn’t have left the club without a word at the ass crack of dawn.

  I felt . . . defeated. I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do to help Cody deal with the shit in his head. If the men who knew the life best hadn’t been able to get through to him, I didn’t think anything would.

  “Hey, Farrah!” a voice called behind me as I latched Cecilia’s car seat into the base in the backseat of my car. “You mind giving me and Cameron a ride to our apartment?”