by Nina Levine
“Yeah, and a grumpy one too.” I reached into my handbag and pulled out some Advil. “Can you please give him these in case he runs out?”
He took the pills. “You really do look after him, don’t you?”
“It’s purely selfish. I want him home in a good mood. If he runs out of those, I’ve no hope of that.”
Chuckling, he nodded. “Sounds about right.” Jerking his chin towards the office, he said, “You want me to get him for you?”
I shook my head. “No. I’m not staying. Just let him know food has arrived.”
“Will do.” With that, he exited the kitchen.
I quickly washed the few dirty mugs in the sink before leaving and was almost finished when Cherie came in. She was Wolf’s old lady and seemed to be on the fence about me. Not quite in the camp of bitches who had it in for me, but wary of accepting me.
“Hey,” I greeted her as I emptied the sink.
“Hi, Lily,” she said as she placed a large box of lamingtons on the counter in the middle of the room. Her tone was cautious, making me think she didn’t want to talk to me.
“Are you on your way to soccer?” I knew her son played every Saturday. Wolf had told me all about how proud he was of Jeremy for his achievements on the team.
Surprise filled her features. “Ah, yeah.” Her words were stilted, like I’d caught her off guard. Cocking her head to the side, she asked, “How did you know that?”
I smiled. “Wolf told me. He’s a proud dad when it comes to your kids.”
Her brows arched and a scowl settled across her face as her shoulders stiffened. “Oh really? That’d be why he never makes it to soccer practice or very many of the games or our daughter’s dance recitals then, wouldn’t it?”
What she said about Wolf didn’t line up with what I’d seen of him so far, but what did I truly know? Some people were good at showing the world what they wanted them to see. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
She crossed her arms, scowl still in place. “Yeah. But you know what?” She settled her weight onto one leg, her body language blazing with attitude. “At least I know it’s because of this club rather than the fact he doesn’t care. At least there’s that.”
I frowned. “What’s the club got to do with it?” I suddenly felt very defensive on King’s behalf.
“Don’t give me that shit, Lily. You’re one of us now; you know what it’s like being with a club member and always coming second to Storm.”
I knew what she was getting at, and yet I didn’t feel the way she did. I’d accepted right from the start of my relationship with King that his club came first. I had no issues with that because he’d never made me feel like I came second. Even when I was frustrated that he’d been called out while we were in the middle of stuff, I knew he didn’t make that choice easily.
“I know what you’re saying, Cherie, but it’s a choice we make when we choose to be with a club member. We can’t pick and choose what we want from them at certain times.” God, King’s words were coming back to me from last night when we’d argued in his office. It irritated me that I’d just used them on her, but damn it, he was right. I’d have to think some more on that later.
“Yeah, I understand that, but it doesn’t mean I have to like it when my man’s feeling the pressure from King to do shit. He’s got family stuff going on at the moment, but I know he’ll never say anything or ask for some time off, because the club makes it clear they always come first. I’d just like a little compassion when it’s needed.” She pointed at the lamingtons she’d brought in. “Let them know these are here. I’d hate for anyone to go hungry while they’re working on a Saturday.”
I didn’t miss her sarcasm and was still working my way through what she’d said as she stalked out of the kitchen. Wolf had seemed weighed down when I’d talked to him yesterday. But it wasn’t my place to ask him about it, so I hadn’t brought it up. And I wasn’t sure if I should mention it to King. Club business wasn’t something I ever wanted to get involved in. But if I knew something that could help King, was that something I should bring to him? Jesus, navigating my way through this was tricky. I was going to need a lot of time in the bath to think about this.
“Lily.”
King.
I locked eyes with him, my core instantly heating from his attention.
He came my way, looking anything but pleased. “I told you not to come.”
“And I told you that you need to eat.”
“Fucking hell,” he growled as he curled his hand around my neck and brought his lips down onto mine. When he ended the kiss, he said, “One day you’ll actually fucking listen to me.”
“I do listen to you, King. I just don’t always do what you want me to do. And I never will, so you better be ready for that if you want to marry me.”
His fingers dug into my skin as he tightened his grip on my neck. “Someone woke with some fucking attitude this morning.”
I scrunched a handful of his shirt and pulled him closer. “You love my attitude, so I’m just giving you what you love.”
His nostrils flared. His eyes blazed with heat. And he kissed me again. This kiss was a much longer one. While I gave him the attitude he craved, King was giving me the hard, rough touch I craved. When we finally came up for air, he rasped, “You won’t be sleeping tonight. Be ready for that.”
He let me go and took a step away from me. After spending a few moments running his eyes down my body, he turned and left the kitchen.
“Fuck,” I muttered, reaching out for the counter to steady myself. That man.
Today was going to be a long day waiting for him.
5
King
Clark Kent eluded us for another fucking day. The address Zane got a hit on turned out to be a dead end. And although I waited all day for further news, no other location materialised. Whoever this Kent asshole was, he had magic fucking skills at hiding.
I arrived home later than I would have preferred, just after 7:00 p.m. The smell of roast chicken filled the house. I found Lily in the kitchen on her knees, ass in the air, as she rummaged in a drawer.
Resting my hip against the kitchen counter, I crossed my arms and settled in to watch her. I often found her like this. Cleaning out kitchen cupboards and drawers was one of her go-to activities when she was stressed. And while I didn’t like her being stressed, I loved the fuck out of watching her on her knees.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
She didn’t stop what she was doing when she answered me. “My bloody mother is what’s going on.”
“Care to elaborate?” Hannah pushed Lily’s buttons more than I did, and that was saying something, because I pushed the hell out of them at times.
She yanked a Tupperware container out of the drawer and added it to the pile of containers she had on the counter. Pushing up off the floor, she stood and faced me, eyes wild with anger. “Oh, she’s on her way over. You’ll find out soon enough. She thinks you need to make the decisions for our wedding. Apparently, I suck at making the right decisions.”
Lily had been to the hairdresser. Another sign of her stress. She hated going to the hairdresser and either went only when she desperately needed to or in times of stress. Since I knew she’d only just been a couple of weeks ago, this visit was due to her emotional state.
“What decisions?”
She rolled her eyes. “All of them!” Turning back to her containers on the counter, she started muttering shit under her breath I couldn’t make out.
Moving to her, I reached around and placed my hands over hers, stilling her. “Calm down. She’ll come over and I’ll let her know I want nothing to do with any of this shit.”
Her shoulders lifted as she took a deep breath. “You know it’s not that easy with her. She has it in her mind that I made all the wrong choices when I married Linc, and she’s determined to help me make better ones this time around.”
I turned her and found her eyes. “That makes no fucking sense, Lily. What
the fuck does your wedding to Linc have to do with ours?”
She was silent for a few moments before biting her lip. I didn’t miss the tears threatening to fall and wondered what the hell was going on here. Lily wasn’t the kind of woman to cry over much. She was a fucking soldier when it came to life, just getting on with shit. So whatever this was, it was big for her. “She made a comment yesterday that made me think that she thinks I screwed up my marriage to him right from the beginning. And her religious side makes her think some crazy shit, like that if I’d married him in a church, we would have lasted. Stuff like that.” At my disbelieving look, she added, “I know it sounds out there, but you know my mother, King. She’s fucking out there. And she’s driving me to drink with this!”
I studied her for a beat, processing what she’d said. Something was missing here. Lily didn’t cry over shit her mother said, so the fact tears were close led me to believe this wasn’t just about Hannah. “What else is going on here, Lily?”
She frowned. “What? Besides the fact my mother is causing me the kind of stress that—”
“No, I mean what else is going on with you besides what your mother is saying?”
Before we could get to the bottom of this, the front door opened and closed, and Hannah came our way with, “Lily, what happened to the front door mat? It’s raining outside and I couldn’t wipe my feet, so I’m traipsing mud through your house.” She stopped when she saw me. “Oh, King, I’m glad you’re here. We’ve got things to discuss.”
“So Lily tells me.” I jerked my chin at the table. “Sit. We’ll talk, but I’m not guaranteeing you’ll like anything I have to say.”
Lily and her mother were surprisingly alike in some ways, but vastly different in many others. The one thing Lily definitely got from her mother was her tendency to ignore some of the shit I said when she didn’t want anything to do with it. Hannah tended to ignore my tone when I was sending her a warning, and this time was no different. She brushed me off with an “Oh you’re going to love my ideas, King. I just know it.”
Lily sat next to me at the table, and as Hannah opened the folder she’d brought with her, she said, “Perhaps you can tell Mum that we haven’t decided on the location for the wedding yet, but that as soon as we do, she’ll be the first to know.” Her tone dropped to a low, pissy one when she added, “And that this decision is ours to make, not anyone else’s.”
Hannah’s shoulders pushed back. “Lily, there’s no need for—”
“We’ve got some ideas,” I started, “but not one of them involves a fucking church, Hannah.”
Her eyes widened. I made a point not to swear when talking to Lily’s mother; it was a throwback to Margreet’s upbringing. However, it was clear Hannah needed to be jolted into paying attention to Lily and that I was the one who needed to make that happen, so I didn’t hesitate to do what had to be done.
“There’s no need for that language, King,” Hannah chastised.
“There is when you won’t listen to what your daughter is telling you.”
She hit me with an expression of disbelief. “I do listen. Today was the first time it’s been mentioned that you won’t be holding the wedding in a church.”
Lily cut in. “I’ve tried to tell you before, Mum, but King’s right; you just don’t listen.”
The disbelief in Hannah’s eyes turned to hurt and she picked her handbag up and slung it over her shoulder. “It’s fine, Lily. If you don’t want my input on this, I will leave you two alone to make all your decisions. I’ll simply show up on the day.”
I stood and followed her out of the house. “What did you say to Lily about her making the wrong choices when she married Linc?”
She eyed me like I was talking another language. “I didn’t say anything like that to her. Why?”
“Yesterday, you said something to her about screwing her marriage up to him right from the beginning. That her marriage failing was her fault. What was that about?”
“No, that wasn’t what I said. I would never say that it was all Lily’s fault. It wasn’t.”
“Well what the hell did you say? Because she seems to think you said that and that you believe a church wedding is the right way to start a marriage. And as far as I’m concerned, that’s bullshit, and I don’t want Lily stressed over something ridiculous like that. So you and I need to come to an understanding about how you’re going to proceed from here on out.”
Her eyes widened again. “I am her mother, King, and I will not have you talk to me like that.”
“Yes, you’re her mother, and I respect that, but you need to respect the fact I’m going to be her husband, and that her happiness falls on my shoulders. There is nothing I won’t do to ensure that happiness, even if it means I have to tread on your toes. So tell me what I need to know, Hannah, and I will help you two fix your shit.”
She huffed her disapproval but started talking. “Yes, we were discussing her first wedding yesterday. And reflecting on what I said, I may have given her the idea that I wasn’t fond of her wedding choices back then. But I never said they were the wrong choices, just that I would have made different ones.”
“Like getting married in a church?”
“Yes.”
“And what else?”
“What do you mean, what else?”
“Did you say that if she’d married him in a church, her marriage would have lasted?”
“No.” She paused briefly before saying, “The only thing I said about that was that God would look favourably on her for choosing a church wedding.”
Fucking hell.
This religious shit Hannah had going on pissed me off. It wasn’t that I didn’t respect her beliefs; I just had zero patience for where those beliefs sometimes took her and how she tried to force them on her daughters.
“Did he look favourably on you for your church wedding?” I demanded, knowing this was a prick of a question because Hannah’s husband had left her. But fuck, she needed to see her own faulty thinking.
Her lips pursed. “That’s a whole different situation—” she started, but I cut her off, unwilling to listen to her justifications.
“No. It’s not. And I want you to think some more about this before you set foot in this house again.” I stepped back from her. “Lily and I are not getting married in a church and I don’t want to hear another thing about that. Are we clear?”
She stared at me for a long moment before finally nodding. Without another word, she made her way to her car and left.
Fuck, I’d forgotten what it was like to deal with family who got in between a relationship. And while it was a headache I didn’t need, I’d go to battle for Lily every day if I had to.
“Has she gone?” Lily asked when I entered the kitchen again.
“Yeah. And you and I need to finish our conversation from before.”
“We did finish it.”
“No, we didn’t. You told me that you think your mum blames you for your marriage not lasting. She just told me she doesn’t.”
“I can assure you she did tell me that.”
“No, I don’t think she did.”
She stared at me like she couldn’t believe I was disagreeing with her. “Are you kidding me right now? You know what my mother is like.”
“Yeah, and I also know what you’re like. She says one thing and you hear another. And usually that’s because you’re not feeling confident about whatever it is she’s going on about.” I moved closer to her. “I think you’re worried our marriage isn’t going to last. I think you’ve somehow convinced yourself that you failed once, so you’ll fail again. And I need you to know that’s a load of fucking bullshit.”
Her eyes shined with the tears that hadn’t fallen earlier and she swallowed hard. When she spoke, her voice cracked. “It’s not a load of bullshit, King. I did fail at marriage, so it’s not beyond belief that I could fail again.” She gripped my shirt. “I don’t want us to not work out. It would kill me if I lost you.”
&n
bsp; Fuck.
“You’re not going to lose me, Lily. I’m staying right the fuck here. With you. In good times and fucking bad.”
“That’s easy to say now. Before shit gets hard. Trust me, I’ve lived through a shitty marriage, and it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. Some days I felt like I was being crushed by the weight of it. Like I couldn’t breathe.” Her first tear fell as she added on a broken whisper, “Like I didn’t want to breathe.”
“I know that feeling, too. I’ve been there, and I’m telling you right now, hand on my fucking heart, there is no fucking way I’ll allow us to ever get to that point.”
“Because you love me?”
“Yes, because I fucking love you.”
“And what if love isn’t enough, King? What if my neurotic ways and your asshole moods turn out to be too much for us to cope with?”
I grasped her neck, pulling her to me. “I am marrying you and making you mine, and I’m not a man who ever lets go of what is his. You can lose your shit at me, over and over, and I will never let you go. And as for my moods, I’m fairly fucking sure you’re the only person alive who has any chance of telling me to fuck off without fear of suffering consequences. I have no doubt we’ll fight our way through shit, but at the end of the day, I’m committed to you in a way I’ve never been committed to anyone. So just try and leave me, Lily, and you’ll see that divorce is not something in our future.” I bent and kissed her before adding, “I will never give up on this marriage.”
Her hands came to my neck and she grasped it while hooking her leg around my body so she could climb me. I placed a hand under her ass and helped lift her while backing her up against the wall.
I needed her naked and I needed to be inside her.
When I finally thrust inside her, I growled deeply with the relief I felt. Because that’s what being with Lily felt like to me.
She was my respite from the demons clawing me.
She was my comfort, my peace.
If she ever thought I could live without her, she had no fucking idea.
I would choose death over living without her.
