Strip You Bare (18 page)

“No wonder they all thought I was such a pussy for canceling my wedding just because my husband-to-be was cheating on me,” she said, unsure of where that voice had come from inside her, or why it was using
those
words. “My grandfather would rather kill himself than face any kind of shame. Better to live with a lying spouse than upset the apple cart. Better we die than dishonor the legacy of the Delacroix name.”

“You realize he was the crazy one,” Sophie said. “Not you.”

Sarah nodded. “I know. It’s just . . . I never thought I would have it confirmed quite so spectacularly. The way they clung to legacy and image was wrong. Insane. And I just . . . I was going to sacrifice the only thing that ever made me happy because of my image.”

“What was that?” Alice asked.

“Prince. I had myself convinced that he couldn’t work, because he’s not our kind. Because there’s no place for him in the life that I was raised to value. But I just don’t care about that. Not really. I’m tired of lies. I’m tired of dishonesty. So tired of being told what I should think is important.
He’s
important. He’s important to me. That’s all that matters. I’m tired of letting a family of psychopaths and liars decide who I should be.” She was breathing hard, her heart pounding heavily. “My mother wasn’t like that, just to be clear. But it does seem like there are rather a lot of psychopaths in my family tree.”

“Can’t argue with that,” Sophie said. “Turns out I’m part of it too.”

“What?”

Sophie looked down. “This may not be the best time to bring it up, but I suck at sensitivity. Priest, my father, was one of your grandfather’s sons. A bastard, obviously. One that he never publicly acknowledged. It’s part of why he had my father killed. That makes us cousins. And Blue too.”

Sarah laughed again, because, again, she really couldn’t help it. “So it turns out I have more family in this motorcycle club than I have out of it. At least now.”

Sophie shrugged. “Looks that way.”

Her grandfather was dead. Her whole family was gone now. And there was . . . nothing. Nothing rooting her to her old life. Nothing keeping her in place as Sarah the debutante. Nothing forcing her to stay in a life of pantyhose and pencil skirts.

She looked around the bar, at the people in it. These people who were . . . her family.

“Maybe I do belong here.”

It was another three hours before Micah walked through the door of the Priory. He had expected Sarah to leave, in spite of the fact that he had asked Sophie and Alice to keep her there. Because really, no one could force Sarah to do what she didn’t want to do. Not even a couple of tough biker chicks.

They could use physical force. But he doubted they would.

Well, Sophie might. Alice wouldn’t.

Sarah was staring down at the bar top, her fists pressing dents into her face. It was such a childlike pose. Not at all the stiff, poised position he was used to seeing her in. As if she’d been possessed by some Delacroix spirit that had exited the world when her grandfather had given up the ghost.

“Sarah?” His voice was rough, a stranger’s voice.

She looked up, dark eyes wide, and a tear tracked silently down her cheek. She didn’t bother to wipe it away.

He wanted to go to her, but he didn’t feel he had any right. Not now. Not with all the Delacroix blood staining his hands.

He didn’t deserve to wipe away her tears.

“I’m glad you didn’t get arrested,” she said, her voice thin.

“Well, so am I,” he said.

The police hadn’t had an issue with businessman Micah Carpenter, with a penthouse in San Francisco and a verifiable job. That was why he’d traded in this life. Why he’d left New Orleans behind in the first place.

At least that’s what he’d always told himself.

He’d been a helpless boy here. A hostage of circumstances. Born so far outside of society he’d never had a chance at acceptance. He’d tried to do the right thing. Had told someone at school about his mother’s drug use, about the way she’d beaten him.

They’d talked to him at school. Sent some cops out.

They hadn’t done a damn thing, but it had been enough for his mother to view him as a traitor. He’d broken whatever bond they’d had, and he’d been thrown out on his ass after that. So at fourteen he’d been out on his own. Dealing. Sleeping wherever he could.

He’d tried to get the cops to listen to him. Had tried to do the right thing. It had gotten him jack shit.

So he’d walked even further outside the lines, carried a big gun. He’d found the Deacons. A family that had brought a certain kind of power, a certain security, and for a boy with nothing of the kind, it had been intoxicating.

Pure acceptance. Pure freedom. Bonds that were stronger than blood. The family he’d never had.

Bikers weren’t known for their restraint. They did what they wanted. Said what they wanted. The world was expected to curve around their desires, not the other way around. There was no reason to change to fit a mold.

But in the end, even that security, that family, had proven fallible. He’d made a mistake. One mistake too many and it had cost everyone. He was the reason.

The reason Ajax had gone underground, doing mercenary work. Why Blue had gone off to a swamp somewhere, cut off from the world. From everything. Why Cash had become a fucking computer hacker and moved to fucking Tallahassee.

They’d been a family. Their only family. And he’d destroyed it.

Now he’d destroyed Sarah’s.

For the first time he wondered if escaping to San Francisco and starting over hadn’t been his attempt at legitimacy. If he’d been lying to himself all this time.

He’d told himself, in some ways, that he was continuing the good work Priest had started. Going straight. Turning away from the life they’d been entrenched in.

Outlaws no more, and all that shit.

Now he wondered if his custom suit was his version of a hair shirt. If it was his way of trying to fix everything that was wrong with himself.

What was the opposite of this world? He’d found a world of masks and protocol. Rules. And he’d been so sure he was making it. That he was finally fixing himself. He’d spent a decade telling himself he was grateful for what had happened.

He had found himself in the Deacons. But in the end, he’d destroyed the Deacons. So he’d known he had to destroy everything Deacon in himself too.

It was the only way.

But it wasn’t gone. He knew that now. It wasn’t a part of him that he could remove. It was him. All of him.

“What happened?” she asked, her tone muted.

“I talked to the police. For a while. Stayed there till they were satisfied. Your grandfather killed himself and they had no reason to suspect otherwise. I saw no reason to uncover the past. To . . . sully the Delacroix name,” he said, meeting her eyes.

She snorted. “Don’t spare it on my account. It doesn’t deserve it. Anyway, that isn’t what I mean. I meant what happened before the police came. Before he killed himself.”

He looked away from her, at a spot on the wall behind her. “I took him out of the ballroom, like I told you I would. Took him out to the courtyard. Ajax was there. Blue and Cash. Blade. He confessed to killing Priest. And . . . it turned out Priest was his son.”

He heard Sarah shift positions, but he still didn’t look at her. “I know. Sophie told me.”

“Well, that was fucking helpful of her.”

“She’s very helpful. She also made me a very strong drink. Serious shit. Not one of those touristy slushies.”

“She’s good like that,” he said, forcing a smile, making that spot on the wall his lifeline.

“What else happened?” she asked.

“He wanted to protect the name. Death before dishonor.”

“Yeah. I heard about that too.” She swallowed hard. “So strange . . . I spent all my life trying to guard our family name. Our reputation. And it wasn’t real. It was never real. He built it up tall and strong, like a wall. And I think he figured if he made it tall enough, strong enough, he could build as much corruption up behind it as he wanted. The name was never anything. My whole life was never . . . anything.”

“That’s not true,” he said. “You were born in this. It’s who you are. I put on a suit, got a job, moved away, thought I could make myself into something else, but it wasn’t possible. You . . . you’re the real deal. I just called myself Prince. You were born a princess.”

She laughed, a hollow, brittle sound, and his focus was drawn back to her. “For all the good it did me,” she said. “What has the Delacroix legacy done for me? We aren’t fucking royalty, Prince,” she said. “We’re just people. Bad people, mostly. Biker people, too. But I was going to let that name dictate what I did my entire life. Like it was the most important thing and it was just a . . . a shield.”

“Sarah, the Delacroix name is who you are. What your grandfather did . . .”

“What he hid kept me hiding too,” she said. “I played this stupid game. Lived in this forced, confined little box to conform to something that wasn’t even real. And . . . and, Micah, I was going to let you walk away because of it.”

“Be careful, Sarah,” he said. “You don’t know the rest of the story yet.”

“I don’t really care.” She met his gaze, dark eyes blazing. “When I met you, I would have told you that I was strong. Stronger than you. Stronger than any biker. That’s why I faced you head-on like I did. I didn’t know you, or myself. And it isn’t that I’m not strong, I actually think I’m even stronger. But the truth is I’m weak too. Sometimes I’m wrong. I spent a lot of years being wrong. About what I wanted, about who I was. I imagined myself like iron, and I think that was right. Pounded-out iron that was solid, but thin. Hollow inside. I was just doing things because they were done that way, not out of any conviction. Not out of any desire.”

“I don’t think it had anything to do with meeting me. You’d already called off your wedding.”

She nodded slowly. “I think I already had one foot on the path. Then I met you. And I wanted you more than I wanted to be good. I knew I didn’t want Charlie. I knew I didn’t want a life with a man who lied to me, cheated on me, didn’t love me. I knew what I didn’t want, but I didn’t know what I wanted. Until I saw you sitting in my mansion like a king who’d just found his throne. You, Micah Carpenter. Whether you’re a biker or a man in a suit. I just knew I wanted you. I saw through to whatever was underneath all that, the words you use, the clothes you wore. Saw straight down past your tattoos, past your skin, to who you are. I wanted that. I wanted that man. But I was going to deny myself, because I know the man you are doesn’t fit into my lifestyle. I know you don’t fit in high society. You don’t fit with my friends, with my family. And I was going to choose them over you.” She paused, something dark, dangerous, glittering in her eyes. “For what? For nothing. But now . . . I see how stupid it is. Maybe I needed this to see what I really wanted. You. Over anything. Over everything.”

He should interrupt her. He wanted to interrupt her, but he was too much of a coward. Because he needed to hear what she had to say next. Needed to know what she really felt before he told her the truth.

It was a dick move, but he was a dick. So he let her continue.

She met him head-on, her expression one of utter defiance now. “Because I love you.”

Her words, those words, were the words he’d feared most, the words he craved most. He didn’t deserve the love of a woman like Sarah Delacroix. Didn’t deserve the love of anyone. And as he looked back over his life, he wasn’t sure he’d ever had the love of anyone else. What he’d had with the Deacons was different. Brotherhood, sworn bonds of protection. Some might call it love. Ajax probably would. Because for all that he was the hardest motherfucker in the bunch, he was also the one who believed the deepest in the brotherhood.

Blue might call it that too, but Micah suspected he would be more inclined to speak of it in terms of duty, loyalty. Honor.

Still, for Micah it had always been something different. A place to belong, a place to feel a certain measure of security. A place where you didn’t get beaten unless you’d damn well earned it. Love? He never would have called that. Just like he never would’ve called whatever was between himself and his mother love. Because love shouldn’t be so easily disposed of. And his mistakes had broken every bond he’d ever forged in his life.

Down in San Francisco he hadn’t even tried. He’d collected desirable things. Money, wealth, the right clothes, the right words. He found ways to make people desire his presence without giving anything genuine in return. He’d done all he hadn’t managed to do when he’d been in New Orleans. He covered up his emotion, everything he was, and found a place that was in every way
less
.

Less painful, less authentic. Less of himself.

He’d wanted so badly over the last couple months to get back there. To that life, to that job. To the man he was when he was in California. But he didn’t know that man, not now. He wondered if he had been in some kind of vegetative state over the past decade, because standing here now in the Priory in the middle of the Quarter, he couldn’t imagine going back to that life. Couldn’t figure out who that man was, that man who lived in California, who had the successful career and the perfect apartment. That man who had felt he’d transcended his past.

That man was just hiding.

He’d spent the past few months feeling desperate to go back, but he couldn’t fathom why now. Here, there was freedom. Here, there was Sarah.

She loved him.

Except she didn’t know. Didn’t know the final secret that would destroy those feelings completely.

Micah ruined families. He had ruined his own, he had ruined the Deacons, and he had ruined the Delacroix. He had never been one to believe in magic, though in New Orleans he became much more flexible. And looking at his life now, at the pattern, at the way things had come to this beautiful, fucked-up little circle, he could hardly deny the existence of it. As though some voodoo priestess had spied him early on and decided that she would curse him with the sweetest pain imaginable.

One mistake to destroy the Deacons. One mistake to destroy his ultimate chance at happiness. Manipulating a few things here and there to ensure that ten years from the time he’d committed the sin that had disbanded the Deacons, he would meet the daughter of the man he’d killed. The daughter of the man whose death had destroyed all that he’d believed in.

That one mistake would destroy this too. It would destroy everything he’d built.

Hell yeah, when he left New Orleans, he’d been running. And he had never fully appreciated it. But this was the evidence. That he could never outrun his past. That he could never stop being what he was.

It wasn’t the biker he had spent years running from, it was Micah Carpenter. It was
himself
. That little boy in the trailer who had destroyed the one family connection he’d had. Had broken a club that had been long standing before he’d joined. Who had destroyed one of New Orleans’s most respected families, deflowered the innocent granddaughter, had a hand in the death of two patriarchs.

He only knew how to demolish. He didn’t know how to build. And standing there before Sarah, he knew she needed someone who could rebuild the destruction she was sitting in the midst of.

And he was not that man.

He’d tried to hide in the Deacons. He’d tried to hide in San Francisco. Standing here before her now, he was exposed. For the first time in his memory. He wasn’t hiding. He was bleeding. Wanting things he could never have. Loving another person. A person who said she loved him back. And he knew he couldn’t accept that love in return.

“You can’t love me.” The words were emphatic, hard. He had to be hard so that he would keep going. If he softened, even for a moment, he would find himself on his knees in front of her, begging forgiveness instead of doing what he knew he had to do. He wasn’t an honorable man. Not in any portion of his life. When he’d been part of the Deacons, he had been selfish. Self-serving. Engaging in orgies whenever he could, taking his cut of the money from various jobs, and spending it on things that benefited only himself.

In San Francisco, he was no better. He worked to promote himself, to collect things that he shared with no one. He forged no meaningful relationships, because they might inhibit what he was creating for himself, and himself alone.

Right now, he was going to be selfless. Because every part of him wanted to take Sarah, throw her over his shoulder, and carry her upstairs. To stake a claim on her. To have her against a wall. To tell her she would stay with him, always. No matter what he did. No matter what he’d done. To tell her that he was bad for her, and he didn’t care.