by Malcom, Anne
It was ridiculous and awesome at the same time.
I nodded to Lily’s question. “I’m okay for the first time in sixteen years.” I paused. “Shit, does that make me an asshole for saying this now?”
Amy reached over and squeezed my hand. “Kind of,” she agreed, winking. “But you’ve got to be at least a little bit of an asshole in order to survive this life.”
Would I survive this life?
Would I stay long enough to survive it after the war?
“I still can’t believe you got Cade to do this,” Macy said, staring around in wonder. “Seriously. I’m getting Hansen to give us one.” She eyed me. “We need one, right?”
We.
She was speaking like I was one of them. Like I was going to stay.
I wanted to stay.
I really fricking wanted to stay and be a part of this family. I wanted to help Macy convince the ultra-masculine Hansen to build a fricking girl cave in a motorcycle club. I wanted to yell at Blake for asking me about things stuck up a woman’s vagina. I wanted to clear out Claw while playing poker. I wanted to watch Macy’s boys grow into mini badasses.
But I did not want to have to watch Liam go out every day, wondering if he would come home. It was one thing trying to imagine the horror of what life would be like without him if he didn’t. But I didn’t have to imagine that. I’d lived it. For fourteen freaking years. And I’d thought it was hard then. I thought it would destroy me. But it didn’t. Not properly. This, this would destroy me. I wasn’t strong enough for this life.
It was that simple.
But I had to lie for now.
Because I couldn’t speak the truth. I could barely think it.
I smiled at Macy. “Yeah, right.”
* * *
After multiple margaritas for those of us who didn’t have children to look after, each of the women had gone—with an escort of course—home to presumably have one last night of peace.
I was now at the bar that wasn’t sleek and full of cocktail making implements. It was old, wooden, scattered with rings, and only had beer or hard liquor. I was okay with that.
The opening of a door caught my eye.
The men filtered out from ‘church’ with forlorn faces, with masks of soldiers I’d seen countless times. Men preparing for death.
Each of the men split off to find the women that made up their hope.
The women around me moved to go to the men who needed something living before they ventured to find death.
I stayed put.
He found me.
I didn’t know if I was Liam’s hope. I didn’t know what I was to Liam. What I was to Jagger. I was a girl from the past, a foreign woman in the present.
“Please,” I said, not even caring that the word came out as a pathetic beg.
Liam didn’t look up from where he was sliding two handguns into shoulder holsters. “I’ve got to go.” I didn’t even know where he was going right now, because from what I’d gathered, it wasn’t happening until tomorrow.
I moved forward, clutching his wrists. “You don’t have to do anything,” I said. “You’ve got a choice. A choice not to run into another war that you might not come back from. One where death is final.”
He sighed. Eyes met mine. They were hard. Resolved. They were Jagger’s eyes. I supposed I shouldn’t have jerked with such surprise, he was Jagger now. I’d just been experiencing too much Liam. I was living in the past.
“I don’t have a choice,” he said, voice harder than his eyes. “This is my club.”
“And what am I, Liam?” I asked, my voice a whisper. “Am I not more important than a club? A patch? A war that isn’t even fucking yours?”
He moved his hands from my grip. “Men that I considered family, men I laughed with, shared beers with, men who saved my fuckin’ life multiple times, men with families, wives, kids, they were killed. Massacred. This war is fuckin’ mine. Don’t ask me to choose. Because I’ve already chosen you over the club. But I can’t choose you over vengeance. That’s not who I am now.”
And then, Jagger slipped on his cut and walked away.
He didn’t look back.
* * *
I was sitting at the bar. The clubhouse wasn’t empty.
Not by a long shot. Most of the women had gone home for one last night in familiar surroundings, before they were all taken here, locked down as the men went to fight.
Because, despite the stories I’d heard from every woman I’d met, it seemed these men still needed to hold onto the notion that they needed protection. That they could protect them.
There was also a scattering of club girls, for the seemingly dwindling number of patched members who didn’t have Old Ladies.
And then there was me.
Sitting at the bar, staring into a chipped glass, for once, not staring into the past, but into the future. One where Liam didn’t come back. Where I buried a coffin that wasn’t empty. It was full of truth, pain, forgotten promises and a ruined past.
Sometime in my contemplation, the previously empty stool beside me was filled.
I glanced to my side to see a woman, beautiful but hard. Cold. Lines around her heavily made-up eyes told parts of her story. But the eyes themselves told more. I knew that because I’d looked into the mirror for well over a decade and saw the same eyes staring back at me.
She was dressed in a more elegant version of biker chic the club girls wore. Silver around her neck, in multiple holes in her ears. Her hands were bare but for a large diamond on her left ring finger. She was wearing all black. Tight. Lace. A bra peeking out under her sheer mesh top. Long boots tucked into tight leather jeans.
She was the biker queen...of the New Mexico charter at least. Evie, Steg’s wife was also around somewhere, barking orders at people. Scaring the absolute shit out of prospects.
This was biker widow, Linda.
I knew it instantly.
I was aware that the last president had been one of the victims of the Christmas day massacre. I thought I’d been aware of all of the victims.
But I’d missed one.
One sitting on the stool beside me.
She lit up a smoke. “Guess you know who I am,” she said after taking a long drag.
Her voice was husky, evidence of just how many cigarettes she’d smoked over the years. Interestingly, her skin didn’t show that same evidence. Apart from the lines on her face that were natural, her skin was clear. Beautiful.
I nodded in response to her question.
She took another drag. “Figured that. You’re smart enough to find your way into the club as a rat, and survive them findin’ that out, figures you’ll know some shit.”
I didn’t argue her label. In their eyes, I was a rat. I’d been called worse in the pursuit of a story.
She didn’t speak for a long time, just kept smoking beside me. I expected her anger. Her disdain. I got none of that.
“Jagger,” she said finally. “Came here a broken man. And trust me when I say, I’ve seen a lot of men come into this club, broken, lookin’ for somethin’ not to heal them, but for somethin’ to hurt them worse than what brought them to the reaper.” She inhaled. “He had something about him that was beyond that. A hurt that scarred more than anything he wore on his face. Was curious, to say the least.” She eyed me. “I see it now. You’re made of tough stuff. Gotta be to walk into a Sons compound dressed in lies and lace, ready to take them down. Took balls. Doesn’t mean I wouldn’t have happily helped bury your body if you had thought you were gonna succeed, but I respect it. Also respect the fact that what you lost put you on a path to do things like that.” She stared into space. “We go on living out of habit. Then the pain gets too much that we either have to stop the habit or start up some much more dangerous ones.”
Something in her voice disturbed me.
Something in her words disturbed me plenty more.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Gwen
I watched my husband k
iss his daughter, murmur something in her ear that sent her giggle into the air, sweetening it.
That’s what I was used to now.
Sweet.
The bitter, acidic memories of what happened when Cade and I first met, nothing but that.
Memories.
Even remembering Ian came better. With less of that soul-destroying pain that had seemed so permanent at the start. I had healed. My daughter had healed me. My son. I blinked at the man in the motorcycle cut laying a kiss on our son’s head.
Both children had ice blue eyes like their father.
Their father had saved me most of all.
And I knew it was anti-feminist of me to think that. I should’ve considered myself the heroine of my own story. And I was.
But there was also a hero in this one.
The one, after two babies and years of marriage, still made my stomach dip and my cheeks flush when he sent a knowing and hungry look my way.
“When will you be back, Daddy?” Belle asked, her voice musical and like cotton candy for the ears.
Her first word was daddy.
Obviously.
Kingston’s first word was Nigel. Our cat’s name. He loved that sadistic fucker. That was the only reason I hadn’t accidentally run it over in the driveway.
“So soon, my princess,” Cade murmured, lifting both his children into his arms. It was an easy feat for someone like him, with muscles that had not succumbed to that dreaded dad bod.
Actually, the Sons of Templar had created their own version of a dad bod. And it was good. Well, it was good in regards to my husband being hot as fuck.
Not good in regards to my husband being hot as fuck while I welcomed new stretch marks with every new baby.
Not that Cade showed anything but appreciation for the changes my body had gone through since having kids. He had shown nothing but worship.
But still, a girl feels a little self-conscious when her husband is a biker Adonis and she’s trying to figure out how to regain control of her pelvic floor.
Cade did make sure that got a workout too.
Luckily, all the things that hadn’t bounced back after my babies, my vagina was not one of them.
Usually it did things to aforementioned vagina when I saw Cade with our children in his arms, kissing them with a naked vulnerability that he only had with us. Usually it did things for my vagina when I saw Cade, period.
This time was different.
This time Cade was kissing our children goodbye without certainty he’d be back to say hello.
My stomach lurched as it had off and on for weeks.
It was constant morning sickness, this war, this feeling in the air that I thought we’d said goodbye to after everything the club had been through.
But the Sons of Templar never said goodbye to chaos.
Or war.
In that moment, I had an almost overwhelming urge to pack my children, my Adonis husband and my shoes into our car, drive to an airport and go home to New Zealand to a little town that knew nothing of wars, human traffickers or motorcycle clubs. The need to protect my family was that strong that I opened my mouth to say it.
To beg Cade.
I didn’t know his answer. Not for sure. I knew me and the kids were first for him, no matter how dedicated he was to the club.
But me asking him to abandon them when they needed their strong, cold and calculated president just because my kids wanted their vulnerable, beautiful and loving father to come home every night, was that going too far?
I knew everything about the club. Because from the start I told Cade there was no other way this went. So I knew about running guns. I knew about them stopping with the guns to focus on legitimate business. I knew they still farmed themselves out as muscle and hitmen on occasion. And I knew they’d been at war since a human trafficker kidnapped Rosie.
I knew that they had spent years trying to bring him down. Trying to figure out a way to do that that didn’t mean mass graves for those who didn’t survive the ugly way.
And now, after the Christmas massacre, the ugly way was all we had left.
I had lived beauty for so long, I’d forgotten about the ugly. And now it was staring me in the face in the form of my husband saying goodbye to his kids maybe for the last time. I selfishly wanted beautiful. Just for me. For my kids. My family.
But the club was my family. They saved me too. Cade’s brothers were my own. Their wives were closer than sisters to me. Not just because I didn’t have sisters. The love I had for them and their families closed my mouth.
No, it was because of the love I had for Cade that I closed my mouth. Because if I asked him to run, and I asked him with the desperation and fear I felt to my bones, he would most likely say yes.
He’d survive.
But it’d ruin him.
I couldn’t ruin the man I loved.
Even if that meant I might ruin my family.
“Go and get your brother ready for bed,” Cade instructed Belle, putting them both down and eying me.
He knew me well enough to almost read my mind. In addition to being a sex wizard, Cade was Oz Great and Fucking Powerful in regards to pretty much everything. I couldn’t hide anything from him. Not online shopping orders, not when I got Belle’s ears pierced and not when I was on the verge of having a total fucking mental breakdown.
“I’m a big girl, I can do that,” Belle said seriously, grabbing her brother’s arm and all but dragging him toward their rooms. Although she looked beautiful and delicate like a little doll, our daughter was not gentle with her little brother.
But he held his own.
Cade crossed the distance between us, yanking my hips so my body was flush was his. Despite my utter fucking mental breakdown, I responded.
Like a lot.
Fucking sex wizard.
“Don’t like seeing that pain behind your eyes,” he murmured, moving to stroke the side of my face. “Thought I’d seen the last of it.”
“You made me push two children out of my vagina, I’d say you were certain you hadn’t seen the last of me when you impregnated me. Twice.”
The corner of his mouth twitched. “I seem to recall you having a rather active role in the impregnation process,” he murmured, hands squeezing my hips.
I swallowed roughly as my vagina urged me to forget all unimportant things like the club’s imminent war with a cartel king and the prospect of impending doom and just jump on my husband.
Cade’s mouth twitch disappeared. “I’m comin’ back, babe,” he promised. He was so certain, so strong. My man could control a lot of things, a motorcycle club, the terrible twos, my vagina. But death he could not.
I had too much experience of a strong man making promises in war that he couldn’t keep. My heart constricted at the thought of Ian. At the thought of losing someone else to a war.
“You can’t make promises like that,” I whispered.
His hand tightened. “Yes, I can. I can do anything. I’m Oz the Great and Fucking Powerful.”
I froze. “Nope. You cannot be everything you are and read fucking minds now too. I want a superpower.”
His hands run along my stomach. “You have a superpower. More than one.” He kissed my jaw. “You gave birth to my daughter, my son.” He kissed my neck. “You fought through demons that would ruin most people.” He went back up my neck. “You saved me,” he whispered against my ear.
“I didn’t save you,” I protested.
His eyes met mine. “Yes you did, Gwen. I was a man that only knew bitter. Ugly. A man who was willing to live that because that’s what he thought life came to offer. Then you arrived. In those fuckin’ shoes, with your boxes, with your sweet. Your beauty.” He looked around the house, the one that was no longer a bachelor pad, but a tastefully decorated home with warmth coming from the walls, from the photos, from the memories. His eyes shimmered.
Cade.
My great and powerful hero was being brought to tears.
�
�I’m not just being brought to tears,” he murmured. “I’m being brought to my fucking knees,” he rasped, landing his lips on mine.
And I kissed him back. With everything I had in me. All my beauty. All my ugly. All my fear.
His hands roved over my body, the body he’d touched so many times before, the body he owned, but somehow, it always felt new, dangerous, exciting.
My hunger for him swarmed my mind, destroying the worries that had plagued me seconds ago. Or maybe those worries were the reason for my hunger being so intense. I needed to feel alive in the most carnal way possible. I wanted Cade’s touch bruising my skin.
But a crash and a cry sounded from somewhere in the house.
Cade stopped kissing me with a sigh.
Kids made it kind of hard to have crazy animal sex on the dining room table like I’d been planning on doing a second ago.
He kissed my head. “I got them.”
His hand moved down to the waistband of my jeans and then inside my panties.
I let out a low moan.
“Hold that thought,” he commanded, kissing me once more before stepping back and going in search of whatever Belle had done to her brother now.
I stared at the patch on Cade’s back.
“Wait,” I called.
He turned.
There was so much to say. So much that I didn’t need to say it.
“Did you actually read my mind?” I demanded.
He chuckled, a real chuckle. The sound filled me up, I tried to hold onto it so I could replay it when things didn’t feel as safe as they did now. “Your mind has a way of coming out of your mouth without you realizing it, baby.”
Shit. I hated saying what I was thinking without even knowing it.
“I wouldn’t do well at a murder trial, then,” I muttered.
“No, so leave the murdering to me.” He winked and left.
I was left with his words. And a glass of wine. Because, obviously I had wine. I had two kids and a husband who was president of a motorcycle club at war with one of the most powerful and dangerous criminals in the world.
Wine was what got me through.
No, tequila was what got me through, but I couldn’t exactly slam shots in front of my children.
