Her phone wasn’t the best, up-to-date one, but it had a decent camera on it. He turned it over. The case was one of the ones that was shatterproof, so she protected it. He stole a glance at her. The tension in the room had gone up slowly again. She didn’t like her phone in his hands and that annoyed him.
“What’s your passcode?”
She held out her hand. “I’ll do it and get his pictures for you.”
He kept the phone. “You got another man in here or something? You been cheating on me?” The moment he said it he knew he’d screwed up again. He was totally sabotaging himself. Was he that afraid she’d discover what he was inside? He shook his head. “God, baby, pretend I didn’t say that. I don’t know what the fuck is wrong with me. I know who the screwup is, and it isn’t you.” He rubbed the bridge of his nose and then pressed his fingers to the corner of his eyes. “I need another chance here, Bree. Would you mind giving me your passcode?”
“Not at all, if you don’t mind giving me yours.”
It was a challenge, and she should have known better. He didn’t have anything to lose. He didn’t keep women in his phone—with the exception of her. He had quite a few Breezy pictures. He’d kept every single one he’d ever taken of her, including ones, if she saw them, she wouldn’t be happy he’d taken, but he spent a lot of time alone with those particular photographs. Without hesitation, he handed her his phone and gave her his code.
She frowned, that adorable little frown he’d fallen for years earlier, but she reciprocated, giving him her code. “It’s Zane’s birthday,” she added. “My boss gifted me with the phone and I’m on her plan so my name doesn’t show up anywhere.”
He understood why Code had never had her name pop up anywhere. She was smart, and she wasn’t using her own name—something he’d taught her. “Your boss put her name on your apartment?”
“Yes, I was terrified Bridges would find me. He thought I left you, didn’t he?”
“No. I told him straight up I sent your ass away because I was done with you. Told him I wanted you gone, didn’t want to see your face anymore. I made it clear I wanted you banned from every Swords clubhouse. He wasn’t happy, but I was spoiling for a fight and he let it go.”
He saw the relief on her face that he’d protected her enough to tell the truth—he had sent her away. It would have been so easy for him to tell her father she’d run off and Bridges would have sent an army of Swords after her. As it was, he couldn’t do that; Steele had made certain by saying he didn’t want to see her around.
She indicated her phone and he forced himself to look down. His heart stuttered. The boy looked about two. He had wild tawny hair and, just like Bree’d said, his eyes. He looked beautiful. Perfect. Innocent. Everything a child should be. He looked healthy and happy. She’d done that without him. Breezy had given birth to his son and she’d kept him healthy and happy.
He wanted to hold his son. Get on his bike and go after him right at that moment. Yell at Code to hurry up and find Bridges so he could beat out of the man where his child was. The need was so strong in him that he turned toward the door, dropping his hand on the knob. He stood there, head down, breathing in long, deep, calming breaths.
“You have to be going out of your mind, Bree,” he said.
“I have been, but I tried to stay calm and think it through. Not at first,” she admitted. “At first I did a lot of screaming and crying. When I got that out of my system, I thought things through very carefully. I knew I had to get to you, warn you, provide you with evidence that you had a son and hope you’d go after them if I wasn’t able to get him back.”
He turned back to her, looking down at the screen, picture after picture breaking his heart, and yet, at the same time, giving him hope. His son was a miracle. Never, not once, even when he was with Breezy, did he think he could actually have a child.
“Steele.”
Her voice. It was a warning. He tried to keep the grin from his face as he slowly raised his gaze to hers. He let one eyebrow go up. She’d lost this battle and she knew it.
“All of these photographs are of me.”
“You’re my woman.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “Don’t keep saying that to me, not when you crawled out from under a pile of naked women, Steele. That ship has sailed.”
“And circled right back.” He indicated his phone. “No one else is there. You can search it all you want. Only you.”
She suddenly went still, and he knew what she’d found. He moved closer. Her lashes fluttered. Lifted. “When did you take these? Who took them? Oh, my God, Steele. These are so wrong. In every way. I can’t believe you took these. And kept them.”
He reached out and snagged his phone, sure she would delete the pictures. They’d saved him more than one night. “Needed them. Once I knew I was sending you away, I had to have them. Only thing that ever gets me off.”
“He says, after crawling out from under three women,” she repeated. Breezy snapped her fingers. “Give that back to me.”
“Not happenin’. I know exactly what you’ll do. You’re not deleting my photographs. I’m programming me into your phone and taking some of these pictures of Zane.”
“Steele, those pictures are …”
“Beautiful. Fuck, Bree, you’re so beautiful in them I can barely breathe lookin’ at them.”
She rolled her eyes and snapped her fingers at him again. “Hand it over or delete them yourself.”
“Babe. These pictures are going up in my den.”
“They are not.”
“Then in our bedroom.”
“Who took them, because it wasn’t you, and I didn’t give my consent. That’s so wrong.”
She had a point, maybe. He needed those pictures, the proof on her face that she was into him. Completely. She was beautiful when he was inside her. Her face, the way she looked at him. But he had taken them without her consent. He didn’t take them because he was into porn, he took them because of her face. Yes, they were having sex, but he needed to see that look. There was no way to describe it, but love for him was there, completely focused, wholly on display.
“I’ll let you know next time.”
“There isn’t going to be a next time, Steele. Get rid of those pictures.”
“It isn’t happening, so drop the subject.” He needed to make that very clear. He didn’t want her to ever sneak his phone and get rid of the ones he needed so desperately.
“You are the most exasperating man, and we’re not done talking about this.”
“I’m done talking about it. We need to talk about things that matter to you. To us. We have to fix us before we get our son back.”
“There isn’t any fixing us.”
There was that resolve in her voice he liked to hear, just not on this particular subject. He studied her face. How had he not seen how young she was? He’d always thought she looked an innocent angel, she still did. So many of the patch chasers had looked hard and used up. It had been her eyes. He’d stared into them enough to know she was old inside. He found himself swearing again in his own language.
“We’ll get him back,” she assured softly, just as he’d assured her. “I know them so well, Steele, they can’t hide from me forever.”
He should have let it go, but her voice was magic to him. His woman. So beautiful and so damned young. “Why the hell did you have to be a child? Do you have any idea how I felt when I found out? The bottom dropped out of my world.”
She nodded. “Actually, your reaction when I told you my age is something I’ll remember for the rest of my life. You weren’t very nice. In fact, you were a complete bastard. I realized, when you shoved the money into my hands and told me it should cover the year, that you weren’t at all the man I thought you were.”
“I never once called you a whore, Bree,” he said. “I never thought it and I never called you that. I was shocked and angry and a part of me wondered if Bridges deliberately put you up to it in order to blackmail me.”