Page 26 of Hard Corps (Selected Sinners MC 7)

“You lied to me,” I said.

“What? Lied to you? I can’t believe…” she began.

“Suzanne, you know that I’ve been trained to interrogate people, right? You realize I can tell when you lie? When I asked what was your most intimate encounter, you made up everything you said. You lied. Now, I’ll ask you one more time, have you ever had his fucking cock in your mouth?” I asked in what she had always described as my mean voice.

And she began to cry.

“Please don’t do anything to him,” she said as she began to sob.

“God fucking damn. Did you fuck him?” I asked.

Her eyes fell to the floor. “Please, don’t do anything to him.”

I couldn’t believe it. I could almost dismiss it if she had fucked some random stranger one night in a hotel while I was gone. But to fuck my best friend, and while I was fighting for the same freedoms that let her be the independent woman that she was…

As my head began to spin and my mind immediately went to violence as a means of resolve, I mentally admitted I had been gone for twelve years on and off, and I fully understood the time I was away had to be extremely tough on her. I needed to be understanding of the difficulties she went through, not quick to condemn or react.

“Alright, listen. Whatever happened, happened. It’s over. Never again. We can get through this. We can,” I said, more in an effort to reassure myself than to reassure her.

I folded my arms in front of my chest and gazed down at the floor. As she continued to cry, I provided no comfort, only serious thought on the matter before us. As I shifted my eyes up toward her face, I had very little sympathy for how she felt. I was sure I felt worse, for many reasons.

“Do you love me?” I asked.

“With all my heart,” she blubbered.

“Well, that’s all we need. We’ll make this work. I’ll talk to him…”

“Don’t hurt him,” she begged.

“I’ll talk to him, that’s all. But you are done seeing him, meeting with him, everything,” I said sternly.

“Do you understand me?” I asked.

She nodded her head.

I inhaled a deep breath and cocked one eyebrow.

She continued to sob. “Yes…Yes, I…I understand.”

“No dinner, no coffee, no secret meetings, no nothing,” I said.

“Okay,” she murmured.

That night, as I stared up at the ceiling of our bedroom, I wondered just how separated from me she had become in the twelve years I was at war. Regardless, I convinced myself we could get through it. Because in the end, I still loved her.

And love was the most powerful thing in my arsenal.