The Henchmen MC: Renny Part 20

"Well, you'll excuse us, darling," my mother said, standing, straightening her dress, "but your father has a meeting back in New York in three and a half hours. Had we known you were nearby ahead of time, perhaps we could have given you more time."

It took about every drop of willpower to not blurt out- why start now?

So I stood and I accepted the cold kiss to the cheek from my mother and the cup to the shoulder from my father, wished them a good trip back, and watched them leave.

"Sit, sweetheart," Renny's voice said, his hand touching my thigh, making me realize I had been watching the closed door for a long minute after they walked out it.

I looked down at him, at his perfect, beautiful face and his amazing, impossibly light blue eyes, his charmingly copper-red hair, and the pain to my stomach almost doubled me over.

"Don't call me sweetheart," I demanded, pulling away from him and tearing through the store and onto the street, making my way on foot back toward the compound where I knew I could find a car and a way back to Hailstorm. Renny caught up to me just a couple storefronts after.

"Mina, let me..."

"You probably shouldn't be on the street right now," I cut him off. "Some people might be upset if someone put a bullet in your heart. Not me, of course," I added, viciously, too hurt, too offended, too shocked to be anything other than cruel, "but some people."

"Mina, I thought..."

"You thought what?" I snapped as we came up toward the gates of the compound. I turned to face him, finding his face remorseful. But it was too late for that. There were some screw ups that couldn't be wiped away by sad eyes. "You thought that I would somehow allow you to press my b.u.t.tons and watch me squirm while you jotted down notes about me?" I almost shrieked. "For someone who loathes his parents so much, you sure fit into their shoes perfectly!"

That was a bit of a low blow and I could see the impact it made when he winced.

"You won't talk to me," he said oddly, a long second later.

"I talk to you all the time! When we aren't having s.e.x, we're talking."

"You talk about Hailstorm and your friends there. You talk about the places you've seen, the profiles you've done, the foods you hate and the movies you love. You don't tell me anything."

"Has it ever occurred to you, Renny, that we are more than our pasts? Our f.u.c.ked up childhoods? That that is only a small part of the whole picture? All the other parts- my friends, my travels, my preferences, my job- those things make up a bigger part of who I am than the fact that my parents don't f.u.c.king love me!"

That last part was said on a scream that had the guys at the gates stop pretending to not be listening and fully gave us their attention as I slammed my hands into his chest, pushing him back against the gate.

"I think you're fooling yourself if you don't think that them not loving you doesn't have a huge, life-altering impact on your life."

"Oh for f.u.c.k's sake, Renny. It hasn't stunted me. I love people. I love Lo and Janie and Malcolm and Ashley and..."

"You love people platonically," he cut me off. "You don't love anyone intimately."

I felt myself jerk back from that, from the truth of it.

Because, fact of the matter was, I did love people who, if my love was not reciprocated or if their love was stripped from me, it wouldn't devastate me. It was an easy love.

"Have you ever been in love, Mina?" he asked, knowing d.a.m.n well he knew the answer to that already. "Or have you been too afraid that no matter what you did, they could never love you back?"

"I have never been with someone long enough to love them," I defended, knowing it was true. It was always easy, casual. Not quite one-night stands, but not quite relationships either. Dalliances. Flings. That was what I allowed men to be to me. If I was able to trivialize their presence in my life, it made it easier to refuse to allow my feelings toward them to be anything other than that- trivial.

"Why? Because you wouldn't let them? Because they got tired of waiting around for you to let them in? To give them pieces of yourself?"

"Because I didn't want them to be a bigger part of my life, Renny. Not every woman needs to have a man all the time. I have gotten along without one just fine for a long time."

"Sure, baby, but why the f.u.c.k would you ever settle for 'just fine' when you could have more?"

"Have more... what? This? Arguing?" I shot back. "This is so much fun and so d.a.m.n fulfilling!" I added dryly.

"It's f.u.c.king real at least," Renny countered. "It's not carefully chosen words that fit the carefully constructed puzzle you want your life to be, everything neat and tidy and in its place."

"It's ugly," I said, shaking my head. "You see that you did that, right?" I asked, swallowing back a sob that tried to escape me. "You took something that had been nice, it had been good and kind and mutually beneficial, and you made it something else entirely."

"I didn't want f.u.c.king nice from you, Mina. I didn't want you because of your perfections. I wanted you because I just f.u.c.king wanted you, flaws and all. But you wouldn't give them to me. You wouldn't trust me with the things that matter to you."

"You don't under..."

"I don't understand?" he snapped, pushing off the fence and towering over me. "I gave you the whole sordid story of my upbringing. You know s.h.i.t that I have never told another f.u.c.king soul before. You got all my flaws, all my ugly. I trusted you with that. And you wouldn't give me the chance to show you that you could trust me with yours."

"So you... what? You forced me to? You dug up my parents and you dragged them out here and you dangled them in front of me and you made me go in there completely unprepared. I haven't seen them in eight years, Renny! Don't you think I maybe had my reasons? Don't you think I, I don't know, maybe would have liked to have brushed my G.o.dd.a.m.n teeth and straightened my f.u.c.king hair before I saw them again and not gone in there in leggings some teenager would wear that my mother was silently judging me for from the second I walked in that door?"

"Mina, calm down," he said, voice low and soothing and it was just about then that I realized all the probates had walked outside at the very loud scene I was suddenly making.

"Don't tell me to calm down. Don't tell me that I am overreacting. How would you like it if I found your parents and dragged them here? If maybe I fished out a copy of Raising Renny and got to know everything you never wanted anyone to know and then used those facts to get a rise out of you? How would you like that? You know exactly what you would have done, exactly what I am..."

"Don't," he cut me off, shaking his head. And, had my rage not been blinding me, maybe I would have seen the pain in his eyes. "Don't do this, Mina."

"I didn't do this," I said, blinking hard because I felt the tears stinging in my eyes, completely humiliated that they existed at all. "I didn't do this. You did this. You made me do this."

"We can..."

"We can, what? We can work this out? No, actually, we can't. You wanted me to trust you and then you went ahead and did the one thing you could have done to ensure that I could never do that. Did you think this through at all? Or was this one of your 'I'm in a mood and therefore I can get away with anything I want' things? Because, I am not one of your brothers here. I don't have to grin and bear it. I don't have to put up with it. And I won't."

"Don't be a coward, Mina," he said, shaking his head, tone defeated. He knew I was right. He knew he was absolutely in the wrong with what he did. He was even sorry about it.

But there were times in life when sorry, while the only thing a person could say, still wasn't enough.

This was one of those times.

"I'm not being a coward, Renny," I said, feeling one of the tears slide hot and unstoppable down my cheek. "I'm saving myself."

"From what? From me?"

"From someone who would willingly do something he knows will hurt me. If you were just any guy, Renny, maybe I could have looked this over, chalked it up to you being an idiot. But you're not an idiot. And because you are who you are, you knew exactly what you were doing and exactly how much you could hurt me. And you went ahead and did it anyway. You hurt me on purpose. To prove a point. So, yes, Renny, yes. I am saving myself from you."

His face fell at that and he looked away for a long second before looking back, his face accepting. "That's really a shame then, Mina."

I didn't want to ask. The bigger part of me knew I needed to cling to self-preservation above all else right then.

But the words came from somewhere deep, a place I didn't want to a.n.a.lyze because I knew exactly what I would find there.

"Why's that?"

He moved a step closer, making me have to turn my head up to keep eye-contact. His hand raised slowly, tucking my hair behind my ear and gently swiping the trail the tear had left down my cheek.

"Because I f.u.c.king love you, Mina."

With that, his hand dropped and he made his way toward the gates that the guys had already opened, likely antic.i.p.ating one of us at least would be storming that way eventually.

I watched him.

I hated to admit that, but I watched his back as he made his way up toward the front door, punched in the codes, and disappeared inside.

Then and only then did I turn away from the compound.

That was the precise moment that the dam broke too- the tears streaming down frantically, my breathing going shallow, my sobs a strangled little noise from trying to keep them in.

"Come on, babe," came a voice from behind me, very possibly the last voice I expected to hear. I could have antic.i.p.ated Laz with his seemingly big heart. And I could have expected Cyrus with his easy-going sweetness. There was no way I could have guessed that Reeve would be the one to come to me. His hand went to my lower back, putting firm pressure there and pulling, making me fall into step with him as he walked me away from the compound.

"Where... are," I started, my voice breaking before I took a deep breath. "Where are we going?" I asked a little less pathetically.

"My car is down the side street. Figured the last thing you'd want is everyone gawking at you when you're trying to have a moment."

"A... moment?" I asked, reaching up to wipe my hands down my cheeks.

"A strong person like you doesn't have break downs. They have moments. You're having one."

Somehow, that helped.

He had, with just a few words, compartmentalized the entire situation for me, made it easier for me to box it up and seal it, then put it on a shelf to be taken down and dealt with later.

And I knew, I just knew that it was because he, at some time or another, had had a moment of his own, had needed to box up something and seal it and store it.

I had the distinct feeling, too, that he had never taken it back down, that it was still sitting there waiting to be opened.

"Here," he said, letting his hand drop and he bleeped the locks on a black pickup truck that was just a couple years old and dented and dinged. He wasn't one of those guys who made you take off your shoes before you got in. He was one of those 'a car is just a car' guys. I had always much preferred those. "Hop in," he added after he opened the door for me.

And with no other real option and, in that moment, feeling rather close with him, I hopped in and he shut the door and made his way around the hood to hop in himself.

"You need a drive? A drink? Or home?"

I laughed humorlessly at that. I needed them all. "Well, Hailstorm is a thirty minute drive away and it's home and I can have a drink... or five, there."

"Hailstorm it is," he said, throwing the car into reverse, backing out of his spot between two very close cars with an almost careless precision that made me queasy, then started up the road toward the hill that was, for all intents and purposes, home.

"You alright?" he asked a long five minutes of silence later as I stared out the window.

And then I did the d.a.m.nedest thing.

I gave him the truth.

"Not really," I said, looking over at him.

He nodded at that, like he understood exactly how I was feeling. "Well, you will be," he said casually, but with so much certainty that I found myself believing him- this man who was all but a stranger to me, a complete and utter anomaly, someone I didn't even begin to understand, I believed him completely.

I would be okay.

Even if I had just pushed away the only person, I was sure, who had ever actually loved me.

FIFTEEN.

Renny I was such a f.u.c.k.

I knew that.

h.e.l.l, a part of me had probably f.u.c.king known that while I was making the d.a.m.n phone call to her parents.

I don't even know what I thought my endgame was there. I had known going in that there were issues there, especially with her mother. But I had figured maybe her avoiding them had made her intensify them in her head.

I should have known better.

Her mother, for all intents and purposes, was a f.u.c.king ice queen, a stone cold b.i.t.c.h. I didn't like throwing the 'b.i.t.c.h' word around too often, but if there was ever a woman who deserved the term, it was Akari Piek.

I had antic.i.p.ated her being cold and withholding toward Mina. That sounded par for the course. I hadn't exactly expected the judgment and condescension that dripped from every syllable when she spoke.

Dedrick Piek, though, I had him wrong.

I expected a workaholic. I was both right and wrong when I first met her and called her an army brat. Her father wasn't in any army, but he did a lot of contract work with different armies all around the world. His specialty being intelligence extraction.

I hadn't expected him to genuinely not give a s.h.i.t about his daughter. That was a wholly unexpected, unpleasant surprise. I had figured that with a cold and withholding mother, any decent man would step up and try to fill the void. I was completely off on that. Dedrick Piek didn't want children and he didn't care if his offspring knew that.

I could sympathize with the coldness she experienced, having ice cubes for parents myself, but I had always been wanted at least. I was never seen as an inconvenience or made to feel like a ch.o.r.e. If anything, my f.u.c.ked up parents got their kicks raising me.

And, being that my parents read into everything I did, they rarely criticized little things like how I dressed or did my hair, choosing instead to theorize on what made me do such things.

I'll never forget the f.u.c.king look she had on her face when she saw them. All her guards, they all fell away. She was vulnerable. But not in the good way like when I was inside her. It was a raw, awful kind of vulnerability that made it clear exactly how awful she felt and how much she hated me for forcing her to confront those feelings.

I saw the decision before she even did. Her mind was made up the second my hand hit her knee, trying to comfort her. She didn't want me touching her. And, quite frankly, if someone's touch suddenly disgusted you, there was no chance at saving things.

I had tried.

But she was beyond that.

I didn't even wait around to see what response she had to me telling her I loved her. It wasn't some coercion tactic on my part. I just wanted her to know.

Because it was the f.u.c.king truth.

I loved her.