Page 29 of Haze's Jewel
A powerful sense of pride surges in my chest because this gorgeous woman is saying everything my ego needs to hear. She’s chaining my heart to hers without even realizing it. I swallow thickly and finish my thoughts. “You’re nothing like a club girl, Anna. In fact, you’re the kind of woman who makes a man dream of happily ever afters.”
Her hand comes out to cover mine and she opens her mouth to say something profound.
Unfortunately, the moment was interrupted by the server coming to take our order. Since we’d spent our time talking, we both had to scramble to find something on the menu. The server was so polite and patient that I decided right then and there to give her a huge tip.
Once we are alone again, I dare not revisit the conversation of club girls, or of how getting close to Anna makes me want the kind of bonded relationship my other club brothers are slowly finding for themselves. Instead, I turn the conversation in a different direction.
“We’ve spent a lot of time talking about me. How about you tell me about yourself?”
Her expression closes down immediately.
“Surely, it can’t be that bad? You’ve hardly told me anything about your past. You aren’t married or anything like that, are you, and that’s the issue with your ex? Because I get the impression there’s more going on there.”
“Oh God no. I already told you that I’ve never been married. Like a lot of women I have an ex-asshole that I’d like to forget ever existed, but nothing more.”
“I hope he wasn’t physically abusive.”
She sighs and has a pained look on her face. “My family is really fucked up. You wouldn’t understand.”
“Try me,” I fling back. “I’ve been through some serious shit since I’ve been with the Savage Legion. Things you wouldn’t believe. Besides that, you’ve already told me some of what they did, so I’ve got an idea that it wasn’t great for you.”
She folds her arms over her chest. “For starters, my dad divorced my mother when he met another woman. She already had a kid and my dad adopted him. He was raised in luxury while me and my mom scrimped by on limited child support and my mother’s job as a teacher.”
A little bewildered, I tell her, “That’s not all that fucked up. Lots of people end up in weird hybrid families.”
“My stepbrother always saw me as my dad’s property and his personal servant because his mom would make me take care of him and give him anything he wanted during my scheduled visitation with my father.”
“You were parentified? Yeah, now that’s totally fucked. Didn’t your dad do anything to put a stop to it?”
“He tried, but my stepmom and stepbrother would play nice for a while and then go back to ordering me around and treating me like an unpaid maid and child minder. At some point when I was a teen, my stepbrother got it into his mind that he could pair me up with any of his friends who wanted to date me.”
“Fucking hell. And your dad didn’t say anything?” My blood boils to think the little prick thought he could get away with shit like that.
“My dad told me to suck it up because my stepbrother was just looking out for me. He said that as long as they kept their hands to themselves, my stepbrother could set me up with as many potential husbands as he liked. He was convinced my stepbrother had my best interests at heart, and one day I’d end up falling for one his rich friends.”
I found that I was shaking my head without meaning to. “I’m just confused as hell about why he would care so much about your personal life.”
“Oh, he didn’t,” she shoots back. “I honestly think that he just got off on the power of being able to force me to sit through date after date with his insufferable friends who were all total pricks.”
Her expression turns distant as she adds, “It was weird. It’s like they thought that because my dad was rich that getting with me would ensure their financial future, you know help them create their own little dynasty, independent of their parent’s money which always seemed to come with strings attached. Of course, that wasn’t true, but my stepbrother never told them that I was never meant to inherit very much.”
“Okay, that was a seriously fucked up situation. I’m sorry you had to suffer being around rich little assholes on a power trip. You must have been pretty miserable during the time you spent at your father’s home.”
“Yeah, I was always unhappy there. Anyways, my stepbrother’s best friend hung in there the longest. At some point he convinced me that he was different and that he really cared for me. I can’t believe I fell for all his lies, but maybe I was just desperate for any affection.”
“It sounds like you were always between a rock and hard place. Any woman in that situation would be hoping to find someone who really cared about her. Those assholes saw your vulnerability and instead of protecting you, they exploited you.”
“No truer words have ever been spoken,” she responds sadly. “When my father passed and it became clear that I didn’t stand to get much of an inheritance, he got nasty fast.”
“I’d like to spend just ten minutes with that asshole. Strike that, both of those assholes.”
She just shrugs. “I understand why. They are both upper echelon assholes. I suspect that my stepbrother misled him. For the longest time, I didn’t even realize what was going on. Right before I left, things were escalating pretty quickly. He was talking about marrying me, getting his two-point-three kids, and then getting rid of me for some insurance money of his own.”
By this time, there was an inferno raging in my gut. “What the actual fuck? The stupid fucker came right out and told you that?”
“No. I overheard him talking to my stepbrother on speaker phone one day. They were both drunk, talking dumb shit. But it was enough to make me realize that drunk words are sober thoughts, and that meant I needed to get the hell away from them. So that’s why I came to Las Salinas.”
I take both her hands in mine and look her in the eyes. “You are worth a thousand of those assholes. Never forget that, sweetheart.”