It annoyed the living crap out of me that I wanted to argue that point with him but I couldn’t. Deep down, he had a point. But I wasn’t about to acknowledge it or how he wasted hours of his time. Gag, gag, gag. I grit my teeth instead. “I get it, Dex, the point is, I don’t get why me. We’re like oil and water.”

He made a tisking sound with his tongue. “You haven't been payin' any attention, have you?"

I groaned my response, earning a low chuckle.

He set the bowl in his hands aside and shifted over to drop a knee between my legs, straddling my thigh. Dex plucked the bowl from my hands and set it alongside his. He loomed over me, his gaze and face intent, taking my hand and placing it on his chest. "You gotta open those pretty eyes, baby. You're the only one here." He slipped his hand down the center of my chest, straight down to cup the zipper of my jeans. "And I’m sure your romance books will tell you exactly how I feel about me bein’ here.”

I'm pretty sure I wheezed.

"You understand me?" he purred.

The only thing I understood was that I was on the verge of having a heart attack.

His mouth touched the side of my neck. "Iris? You understand what I'm sayin'?"

No. No, I didn't. Not in any way.

Dex's teeth nipped at the same spot he'd kissed a moment before, making me gasp. "Iris."

I nodded, shaky and quickly. "Yeah, I hear you."

He hummed. "But do you understand?" Ohmigod. I could feel that hum all the way to my underwear. "You get it?"

I had to shake my head because the words wouldn’t come.

His nostrils flared. “First time in my life, I think I hate the fact you knew how to suck my dick,” he breathed. “Got this urge to kill whatever guy taught you how to give a blowjob. The f**kin’ idea of you kissin’ somebody else makes me wanna dig a knife into my eye. Let me tell you, babe, never in my life have a given a single f**k about any of that. You get it?” His palm pressed into my jeans harder. Then he laid the atomic bomb on my very existence. "You are not a waste of time to me."

Holy shit. Holy friggin' shit.

"Say it," he murmured into my neck.

“Say what?”

“Say you get it.”

I said it. Without a second thought even though a huge part of me was terrified. I said the three words because nothing and no one in the world had ever made me feel so grounded, so assured that I wouldn’t be forgotten or left behind. I mean, I know most things were out of a person’s control, but Dex happened to be the most controlling and overbearing man I’d ever met.

And a part of me recognized that I should run. That if I gave this man an inch, he’d take a mile. That if I agreed to this, it’d be the beginning of the end.

In his words, I didn’t give a single shit. I said them anyway.

"I get it."

He looked at me with those dark blue eyes as if he was waiting for me to admit something more. Something incriminating, vulnerable and maybe even painful, but I couldn't come up with anything that could be more of any of those things. It wasn't until later, after he promised that he really wouldn't do anything if I slept next to him, that I thought more about it.

I didn't really let anyone in. Ever. After my dad left, and I got sick, and my mom got sick, and... there was always something, something bigger that snowballed from the size of a raindrop into the size of a softball that made me more and more reserved around others. Even with Lanie, I still didn't fully embrace our friendship. How long had it been since I'd spoken to her? Months? If we were best friends, that shouldn't have happened, right?

Yet the idea of not talking to Sonny on a regular basis, or laughing at Slim and Blake's antics, or just anything relating to Dex made me sad. It made me yearn for that easy familiarity. I finally had people that I trusted. So couldn't that be the same thing with the man that shared so many of the same hang-ups I did?

I rolled onto my back in bed next to Dex and looked at him.

He was face-up, one hand tucked under his head and the other was on his bare chest, just to the side of one of the loops that pierced his nipple. He was so damn good looking with all that ink that darkened those sinewy muscles and skin, it was unreal. If I’d seen him on the street back in Florida, I probably would have kept to the edge of the sidewalk. Well, I would have done that while eye-screwing the crap out of him.

I'd never been a big fan of that saying, "Everything happens for a reason," but maybe, sometimes, every once in a while, things coalesced into a complex, intangible reason. With tattoos and piercings and bad words and unfailing loyalty topped with a temper.

And in its own imperfect way, it couldn't have been any better.

Chapter Thirty-One

"I think one of us needs to stage an intervention."

I looked over at Slim as I wiped off the frames by the reception desk and tipped my chin up. "For who?"

The soulless ginger—Blake’s words, not mine—widened his eyes like I was dumb not to know. "Blake, Ris."

"Oh." I went up on my tip-toes and looked around the shop.

The bald man wasn't in the main room, luckily. He had been acting weird. Extremely weird. The day before, he'd spoken maybe five words to all of us, which was completely unlike him. Today had been even worse. He was remote and even someone who didn't know him could sense the desperation pouring out from him.

We'd all tried to give him his space but earlier in the evening, Slim had walked over to me and said he was pretty positive he'd heard Blake crying in the restroom. "I think something's going on with his son," he claimed. "There's nothing else that would make him sour up so much."

His son. The same son that had been in and out of the hospital since before Houston. I had a terrible feeling that it was Seth, also known as Blake Junior, giving his dad so much anxiety. The poor kid was too young to get into real trouble. There was only one thing that would make a grown adult—a parent, a loved one—cry.

Illness.

Shit.

I hoped more than anything that it wasn't the case but it'd be naive to think otherwise. Or maybe I was just that pessimistic.

I blew out a breath. "What do you think we should do?"

He looked pensive for a moment before scrunching up his nose in a way that made his lightning bolt tattoo move. "Let's take him out. You think Dex will be up for it?"

"Maybe." How the heck should I know for sure?

It turned out that Dex was up for it. Right before setting the alarm to the shop, I heard him invite Blake out to Mayhem.

"Not tonight, man. I'm not up for it," was Dumbo's creaky, hoarse answer.

Blake saying no to a drink? Unheard of.

"C'mon," Dex argued back. "My treat."

It took a little more coaxing but eventually, like the freeloader he was, Blake finally agreed. We met up at Mayhem a few minutes later, piling into the same booth we'd used on our last trip to the bar what seemed like forever ago. This time, there were more people—Widows, men who weren't members of the MC, and other random clients. I waved at the handful I recognized and slid into the booth beside Slim, with Dex following after, slinging an arm over the back of the seat.

The guys and Blue blasted through two beers each, with Slim and I carrying the majority of the conversation as he tried to convince me—again—to get a tattoo.