Fire & Dark (The Night Horde SoCal Book 3) (25 page)

“Yeah. For you.”

“Thank you. How’s your dad?” They hadn’t been together in a few days, and every day was a question with Hoosier.

“Same. Mom’s picked up a fever and a nasty cough. They admitted her again. Pneumonia.”

“Fuck. I’m sorry.”

He only sighed.

She looked up into his handsome, somber face. His dark lenses obscured his eyes and made him inscrutable to her. “Connor, we have to fix what’s wrong here. I’m losing my mind. I’ve never felt like this about anyone, I’ve never needed anybody like this. We’re both going through some big shit. We should be dealing with it all together, but we’re not. I feel so fucking lonely.”

He looked over her head, and she knew—she just
knew
—he was looking at Moore. “Seems like you’ve got plenty of support.”

And then Pilar simply snapped. She balled up both her fists and punched him, hard, in the chest. It hurt, but she was glad for the pain, and gladder still that he grunted and stepped back. “You have got to fucking stop with the jealousy. There’s nothing between Moore and me, and I am out of ways to say that. I wanted it to be you holding my hand today. But you weren’t there. So my friend held me instead. So fuck you.”

She punched him again—and then she was tired and done. With all of it. “You say you love me, but between the blame and the jealousy, I don’t know how you have room for any good feelings about me. All I do is piss you off. I can’t deal with this anymore.” She turned abruptly away from him, headed back toward the mourners, figuring she could catch a ride with another of her crew. Guzman, Perez, and Reyes were all lingering up by the cars.

She got three steps, and then his hand had her arm, and he was pulling her back and around to face him.

At first, he just stared at her, his shielded look intense and threatening. Then, in a voice gruff with controlled emotion, he said, “I want to go to your place.”

“To talk? Can we talk this out?”

“I want to go to your place.”

It wasn’t an answer, but it was close enough. Choosing him again, even on this day, she set aside her grandmother, all that remained of her family, and nodded.

“Okay.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

He was just so fucking angry. He was helpless and he was angry, and he could not get control of it. Every day, it got bigger. When they’d taken his mother out of his father’s hospital room in a fucking wheelchair, down to the ER, and then up to her own room, he’d thought his head was going to explode.

It was all his fault, all of it. But it was too much for him to contain, so it flew out of him in waves. He was angry at
everyone
.

His father was gone. The small, frail sack that lay in that bed was
not
his father. Hoosier Elliott was the kind of man who filled a room. He wasn’t an especially big guy, just average height and decently fit, but no behemoth by any stretch. And yet people always took note, stepped back, gave him room. He was a man you respected the minute you met him. You felt his strength, his power, his wisdom.

Yeah, he could be an asshole, too. What man couldn’t? But he owned it. When he was wrong, he always made it right.

Connor had been a rebellious kid. He’d fought against every which kind of authority and had spent as much of his school life in detention and the principal’s office as he had in class. But he had never rebelled against his father. From the time he’d been old enough to think what he’d wanted to do with his life, he’d wanted to follow his father. Never, not once, anything else. He’d never had a boyhood fantasy of being a cowboy or an astronaut. Or a firefighter. He’d wanted a kutte and a bike.

So he was angry, he was
furious
, at that pale sack of bones lying lifeless in a hospital bed, unable even to breathe for itself. That was not his father.

And if it was, Connor was responsible for what had happened to him. He had been falling in love, and he had brought somebody else’s beef to the Horde.

And…God. His mother. If he’d admired his father his whole life, what he felt for his mother was adoration. She drove him crazy, meddling, always having an opinion, somehow knowing absolutely every damn thing about his life and being unabashed about throwing it in his face. It was a bizarre experience to have his own mother always in the know about his sex life, but somehow she always did know, and she was always there with that damn look that said she could read every single thought in his head. She
knew
him. He could tell her anything, because she knew everything.

Most of his brothers did not have parents like he had parents, and he knew how fucking lucky he was to have the father and mother he did.

And he had broken them both.

He was just so fucking angry.

~oOo~

Usually, riding with Pilar was an intensely erotic experience, but this time, Connor was so wrapped up in his head he barely noticed her. And she held him differently this time, with her hands on his hips instead of her arms around his body.

They should just stop. One of them should admit the obvious defeat, and they should break this off. He knew it, could feel the distance and withering happening, but it wouldn’t be him who ended it.

Because he fucking needed her. Even in the anger and cold, that was true. He was being an asshole, treating her like shit, and he knew that was true, too, but he couldn’t get control of himself. He didn’t blame her. He blamed them. He blamed himself and the way his feelings for her—which had been seeded before they’d even gone back for their first fuck—had shifted priorities that should not have been shifted.

He should end it. He should never have let it start. But he couldn’t stand the thought of losing her. So he was making her pay for his own weakness.

And she’d been letting him, accepting the guilt and blame he kept laying on her. As she unlocked her front door and they stepped into her living room, he wondered if she was finally done.

It would probably be for the best if she was.

She dropped her keys into the little bowl by the door, draped her jacket over the back of a chair, and kicked off the black pumps she’d worn to her brother’s funeral. She wore a pair of simple black pants and a dark gold sweater that was the same color as her eyes. Her usual jewelry: gold hoops, the crucifix, nothing else. “You want a beer?”

Taking his sunglasses off and sliding them into the inside pocket of his leather jacket, he nodded. “Yeah.” He shrugged off his jacket and laid it over hers. He loved this room. It was eclectic and warm, like Pilar herself. Today, though, it was dark: she had the heavy drapes drawn across all the windows. Instead of opening them and letting the autumn sun in, she turned on a few lights. When she went back to the kitchen, Connor sat on her sofa and stared at a cluster of three glass and metal lights hanging from the ceiling. They were shaped something like stars and threw intricate patterns onto the walls.

She came back and handed him a bottle of beer. Her own, he saw, was half gone already. So he put his to his lips and caught up.

Instead of sitting next to him on the sofa, she sat on the table in front of him. Her golden eyes were serious and sad. “Connor, what do you want?”

“What do you mean?”

“From me? Or us? I’m not giving you what you want, or need, I guess. I need to know if I even can. Because what we’ve been doing these past couple of weeks…I can’t anymore.”

“I need you.” Even being sure that they should end, he couldn’t get around that bald truth.

But she shook her head. “I don’t know what that means. What is it you need? A scapegoat? An emotional punching bag? Because I can’t be that anymore. I’m sorry for my part in all of this, and I’ve been tearing myself up about it. But the truth is, all I did was ask for help. I didn’t drag you into it. I didn’t force you or even manipulate you. I was honest about all of it.”

He knew that, and he knew he should say so. But all he could do was stare into her eyes.

After a minute, she made a dry noise, like the opposite of a laugh. “And you know what? I need you. My family fell apart, too, Connor. I know you don’t care about my brother. But don’t you care about me?”

“I love you.” Another bald truth that was lately more pain than anything else.

She finished her beer and set the empty bottle next to her on the table. Then she leaned in, resting her elbows on her knees. “Connor, I’m hurting. Whatever you feel about Hugo, he was my little brother. I loved him. I love Nana. And
I’m
hurting. But I’m afraid to feel it, because I’m doing it alone. You won’t get out of your head and help me.”

“You’re not doing it alone. You’re never fucking alone.”

She made a violent, growing sound and raked both hands through her wavy hair. “MOTHERFUCKER. If you don’t let that go, and I mean right now, then you need to fucking leave. Because I can’t—I
won’t
—fight about that with you ever again. I’m not giving up my best friend because you’re an insecure shithead. I’ve told you a hundred times that he is not a threat to you.”

There was a part of him that hated Kyle Moore even more intensely then he hated Hugo. He knew they weren’t fucking. She said it, and he believed it. But that didn’t even matter. His jealousy wasn’t about that at all. Moore was always there, always at her side. She spent so much more time with her best friend than she ever would with Connor. And as the distance grew between them, Moore was filling it. Being a hero with her, being a hero for her.

And that was the thing, wasn’t it? That was it.

That was it.

Moore was a fucking hero. Pilar was a hero. They spent their lives saving people, undoing other people’s wrongs, their mistakes and their evils. Undoing even acts of God. What was Connor? A man who beefed with gangsters, who sat down with drug lords. Who planned assassinations. A killer. A drug runner. An outlaw. A man who brought violence into the world.

And that was all he’d ever wanted to be.

He could never be her hero.

Leaning forward, he set his half-finished beer next to her empty. Then he picked her hands up in his. “I love you. I’ve never felt like this about anybody, either. If there’s such a thing as soulmates, I think you’re probably mine. But I can’t be what I need to be for you.”

“I don’t even know what that means.”

There was no point in explaining. So he lifted one of her hands—so small to be so strong—to his lips and kissed her knuckles. “I’m gonna go. Take care.”

He stood and crossed the room to pick up his jacket. As he reached the door, clasping his hand around the knob, she grabbed his arm in both hands and yanked him back. He was too big for her to turn like that, but he looked over his shoulder, and he let her keep hold of his arm.

She was crying. Yanking on his arm again, she said through her tears, “Fuck you! Just fuck you! You don’t get to tell me I’m your goddamn
soulmate
and then just walk out of  my life. I let you
know
me. I let you in! How do you just fucking walk away from that?”

“Cordero…”

At that, she went ballistic, shoving and punching, even going for his face. “Pilar! I’m Pilar! Fuck you!”

Acting on the instinct of self-protection, he fought through her whirling fists and grabbed her shoulders. Then he spun and shoved her against the wall, fighting until he had her pinned. Their sex had not infrequently begun in such a way, and his cock took notice, despite his mind’s need to get clear of all of this.

They stared furiously at each other while the painful confusion of needing her and needing to be away ripped him up. Finally, he roared and punched the wall he’d shoved her into.

She didn’t flinch. Instead, she turned her head toward the fist that was still pressed to the wall, and then she turned back.

“Hurt me.”

His brain wouldn’t make sense of that. “What?”

Tears had made her eyeliner or whatever it was run, and the effect made her look vulnerable. “You need to hurt me. So hurt me. I need it, too. But my body, not my feelings. I can’t take that anymore.”

“What? No!”

He’d let go of one of her shoulders when he’d punched the wall, and now her left arm was free. She hit him in the chest with the flat of her hand. “Yes! We can’t talk it out, so let’s fuck it out. Hurt me.”

“Jesus! No!” He shoved away from her and crossed to the other side of the room.

But she was right on him, hitting him again, shoving him. “Yes! Come on! I know you want it. You’re hard. So let’s go.”

Again, he grabbed her. This time, instead of putting her on the wall, he closed her up in a bear hug. “I don’t want to hurt you. Stop.”

She fought his hold. “All you’ve done since it happened is hurt me, asshole. I just want you to do it honestly.” Her arm slipped free of his grip, and she slapped him. Hard. The whole side of his face stung.

For the past weeks, his control over anything going on inside him had been tenuous at best. At that slap, it broke entirely. “You want me to hurt you? You want to fuck it out?” he snarled, and then, almost literally, he threw her into the little side room off her living room, a tiny space she called her library.

She wheeled backward and landed on the worn area rug, and he followed after her, dropping most of his weight on her. She fought him, but he overpowered her, grabbing her arms and clasping them together, then tearing at her clothes, yanking her pants down and then flipping her over onto her stomach.

Snatching at his belt and jeans, he released his cock and then lifted her hips and shoved into her. It had been weeks since they’d fucked, and he shouted at the intensity of feeling as her wet pussy closed around him.

He fucked her furious and fast, his hands clenched hard around the parts of her body they held, his hips slamming brutally against her ass.

She came hard, silently, her body tightening fiercely around him, and he followed right after her, the orgasm ripping through his body and brain until he thought he’d die.