by Leah Wilde
I looked into my love’s eyes while we listened to the pastor and while we said our vows. I knew I wasn’t settling at all. I knew that my life was going to continue to be just as exciting as it had ever been before.
We were not letting go of the MC. We were planning on expanding it with the money we had added to its wealth. I was one of the top six members, and under my watch, we were already expanding to allow women into the MC. They weren’t just the old ladies. Dee had her own colors. She was a full member, and she even had her own motorcycle. So did Lynn. There were several female members of The Forsaken Ones watching us from the pews.
No one was settling for anything in that church. And no one was coming down either. If anything, we were getting ready to take each other higher, together, and we were going to take the MC with us.
Finally, as we came to the end, we looked deep into each other’s eyes, and both of us, fighting back huge smiles and tears of joy, said in turn, “I do.”
As we embraced and kissed in front of the entire MC, the place erupted with cheers and whistles. Hawk shook against me as his groomsmen patted him on the back. My bridesmaids did the same.
It was the loudest, most joyous wedding I had ever been to, but I wasn’t prepared for what was coming next. As we were getting ready to leave the church, everyone lined up outside for me to toss the bouquet. In the melee that ensued after the flowers left my hands, Dee lost her vest. She also caught the flowers, so she stood up and raised the bouquet in one hand and held the other one up just because. She was completely topless in the church parking lot, and everyone loved it.
Then, as we were leaving for the reception, everyone on a motorcycle sat lined up with their bikes purring. As we walked out to the limo—I wasn’t getting on a motorcycle in my wedding dress, thank you very much—they revved up their engines loudly, creating a loud roar in the parking lot and getting the attention of passers-by.
I got into that limousine with my new husband and the first man I had ever really allowed myself to love, I honestly felt like I had a real family for the first time.
As we pulled out of the parking lot, the bikes followed us in pairs. If the two of us riding together in front of that long line of bikers didn’t perfectly sum up our relationship and our future, nothing could have.
The road ahead was ours, and I’d be damned if it wasn’t Forsaken.
THE END
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Chapter 1
Paris
“Excuse me, miss,” came a voice from behind me.
I spun around too fast, startled by the sudden noise breaking my silence and concentration in what had otherwise been a quiet spring day in the park. As I spun, my long blonde hair whipped out in a huge arc and smacked the man who’d spoken right in the face.
“Oh my gosh, I am so sorry!” I cried immediately.
He held a hand over his eye where the ends of my hair had hit him. “It’s fine, it’s fine,” he said, wincing but trying to hide it. “That’s what I get for sneaking up on you like that, anyway.” He sounded genuinely nice and apologetic, even though I was the one who’d caused his eye to sting and water like it was doing.
“Here,” I said, fumbling in my purse for a tissue, “take this.” I handed it to him. I felt horrible, but he was right, he did sneak up on me. I’d been so fiercely concentrated on my biology textbook that I hadn’t even noticed him approaching me.
The boy dabbed at his eye with the tissue I’d given him. I took the time to look him up and down. He was tall, with broad, muscular shoulders and a deep tan, like he spent a lot of time outdoors. He had the easy gait of an athlete, but whereas most of the athletes I knew had horrible skin from all that time spent sweating and running around in pads and helmets, his face was smooth and unblemished. A light beard covered his cheeks and jaw, trimmed neatly, and his eyes were a glistening green. He was, I had to admit, ridiculously hot.
I saw his mouth move and realized he was talking. I blinked hard and refocused on what he was saying. Listen, Paris, I told myself. It was way too easy to get lost in how good looking he was. “I’m sorry, what?” I asked.
“I said, there goes my smooth approach.” He tucked the tissue in his pocket and straightened up. He was well over six feet tall, enough to tower over me. I was only five feet three, so it wasn’t much of an accomplishment, but next to him, I felt tiny and fragile. He could break me in half if he wanted to, I would bet. All I had to do was look at his broad hands to confirm my suspicion.
“I don’t get it,” I said. I immediately regretted my words. In the thirty seconds since he’d walked up to me, I’d hit him in the face, ignored the first thing he said, and completely failed to understand the second thing. This interaction was off to a fantastic start, if I could say so myself.
He grinned, and I felt an immediate lurch in my stomach. I supposed I shouldn’t have been surprised that he had the world’s most beautiful white teeth and a charming, crooked slant to his smile, the kind that was off-center but all the more perfect for its imperfections. I could swear that someone had sculpted this boy out of my dreams and sent him here to interrupt my cramming for exams. Not that I minded, of course.
“Well, I hope I’m not being too forward or cheesy, but I was walking past and I saw you and I thought to myself, ‘Craig, if you don’t ask that beautiful girl out, you’re going to regret it forever.’”
Oh, man, he was really putting on the charm now. His smile was cranked up to full blast, a million megawatts of beautiful man and confidence hotter than the sun. I shifted my weight nervously side to side. Noticing I was wringing my hands in front of me, I clamped down and held them in my lap.
“Oh, well, um, thank you, that’s super nice of you. I don’t, uh, really know what to say…” I stuttered. I was fully aware that I sounded like a complete idiot, but the ability to talk like a rational adult human being seemed to have utterly abandoned me. I would have thought that eighteen years of life on this planet would be sufficient to get me through this situation, but it looked like I was dead wrong about that.
Of course, like in most aspects of my life, my father was partly to blame. When a girl was cooped up under a father’s watchful eye and forbidden from dating at all, her social skills tended to suffer a bit as a result. Most girls would probably try to rebel, to carry on secret relationships or whatever they thought they might be able to get away with, but then again, most girls weren’t the daughter of the president of the Knives of Fury motorcycle club. Nope, there was only one girl in the world who fit that particular description, and it was the one stammering like a fool while the handsome, ripped boy in the park tried to ask her out on a date.
“You say yes, of course,” he joked.
I looked at his shirt and saw that I was right about the athlete thing. The words Property of UNM Athletics were stamped in bold white block print across the chest. Raising my eyes to meet his, I finally found my voice again.
“I… I, I want to,” I said. “But I’ll have to…” My gaze fell and my voice dropped to a pitiful squeak. I couldn’t believe what I was about to say. “…I’ll have to ask my father,” I finished lamely.
At the upper edge of my vision, I could see a confused cloud pass over his face. “Your father?” he repeated. “But you’re in college. How on earth do you still have to ask him for his permission to go on a date?”
As soon as he saw how embarrassed I was, writhing in place in front of him, his eyes grew huge. “Oh, wow, I can’t believe I said that. That was so rude, I’m sorry. You’ll have to forgive me. Now I feel like an even bigger asshole than I did before.”
“No, no,” I tried to say. I wanted to explain the situation to him, but how could I? I’d been dealing with President Tristan Jenison for my entire life, and even I could barely find the words to describe the situation to someone else.
It’s not that he was a bad dad. He wasn’t, not at all. But ever since my mother had died…
“He’s just protective,” I said simply. That was the easiest thing I could offer. It would have to do for now.
“Gotcha,” Craig said. He was clearly flustered. I felt horrible. This conversation had started bad and only gotten worse since then. His calm poise had been dialed back somewhat. This was obviously not the way he had expected this whole shebang to go, but I didn’t know what else to do.
“It’s not that I don’t want to!” I said. “I do; I really do. You’re beautiful.” I clapped my hands over my mouth as the last sentence flew out unheeded. Just when I thought I’d found the rock bottom of social interaction, I managed to dig myself a little bit deeper. I could feel my cheeks burning. Was there a boulder somewhere nearby I could crawl under and die?
Craig laughed, but his discomfort was growing by the minute. “Um, thanks,” he said. He ran a hand through his long, curly hair. God, it was a gorgeous mane, an unbelievable chestnut color that looked flawless against his tanned skin. I saw his eyes flitting around like he was searching for an exit.
Speak, Paris, I urged myself. Say something. Anything. He’s just standing there. You have to talk. Use. Your. Words.
“Maybe we can exchange numbers?” I somehow managed to squeak out into the awkward silence. It was baffling how my voice could sound so jarring and meek at the same time.
“Yeah, sure,” he said. He pulled out his cell phone and opened up the screen to enter in a new contact. Handing it to me, he stood back and watched as I entered my information before giving it back to him. “Cool, I’ll send you a text with my name so you’ll know who I am.”
I nodded. “Sounds good.” I tried to smile, but it felt all wrong. My cheeks were working too hard; my lips didn’t want to pull back far enough. Oi. What a mess this was.
“Nice to meet you, er…” he said as he looked down at the screen to see what I had typed, “…Paris.” He offered a hand to shake. I reached out and took it. His fingers swallowed mine and the bronze tone of his tan made my skin look pasty white by comparison. He smiled again.
“You too.”
He turned and sauntered off back towards the jogging path that ran in a meandering loop around the outer edge of the park. I sat back down on my blanket with an oomph and put my head in my hands as I muttered out loud to myself.
“Good lord, you are an idiot,” I said. “‘You’re beautiful?’ Did you really just say that to him? They should put you in jail for how dumb you are.”
I sighed and let my hands fall onto the open pages of my textbook. Diagrams of the digestive system were staring back up at me, covered with hundreds of terms and descriptions of chemical reactions that I needed to know by tomorrow but had not even come close to understanding, much less memorizing. I really needed to just bury my head in the book, but that was clearly not happening, not after the train wreck I’d just been a party to. I needed to leave the scene of this social crime immediately.
Packing up my things into my small canvas satchel, I stood and walked towards my car. The breeze was light and warm as it rustled through the treetops. The park was brimming with people walking their dogs or tossing Frisbees back and forth to each other. A few students like me were spread out under the shade of the branches, nose deep in studying for finals. But unlike me, they looked like they were actually getting things done. What a feeling that must be.
I crossed the field into the parking lot and approached my car. Jimmying open the door, I tossed my bag into the passenger’s seat and shut the door behind me. It was silent and peaceful in the musty interior. I closed my eyes just to breathe for a second while dust motes swirled in the sunbeams around me.
The tears took me by surprise. I felt an unexpected catch in my throat, then, before I knew it, water was streaming down my face and I was wrecked with sobs. I rested my head on the steering wheel and wept while my whole body jerked up and down. I couldn’t think or form words; all I could do was unclench and let the tears flow.
After a few long minutes, the crying dried up and the sobs died down into random hiccups. I sat up straight and wiped my eyes. It felt good to cry, although I wasn’t even sure what had prompted this random psychotic breakdown in the middle of a beautiful day.
But when I stopped, I felt silly. It was a picture-perfect spring afternoon, and yet here I was, bawling like a baby alone in my car. And over what? A clumsy interaction with some boy I’d probably never see again. I felt my phone buzz in my lap and I looked down to see a text pop up.
Hey, this is Craig, the guy from the park you called “beautiful” :) Nice to meet you today. Let me know if you’d like to grab dinner sometime.
I rubbed the bridge of my nose between my finger and thumb. As badly as I might want to—and I did—there was no way I could text him back right away. I needed some time to recover and consult with my friends about how to handle the situation before replying to him. Besides, I’d already looked pathetically desperate when we first talked. An immediate response would make it seem like I had been sitting with my phone clutched in my hands, just waiting for him to send me a message.
I texted my best friend, Katy, a short note. Hi. Are you home?
The response was immediate. Yesss come hang out.
Be there in a min xx
As I fired up the car and pulled out of the parking space, I wondered if the crying really was silly after all, or if maybe it was a tiny bit justified. After all, I didn’t know many other girls who were eighteen, in college, and still living at home with a curfew and serious restrictions on what they could do and with whom. Most of the time, I tried to convince myself that my life was normal, that everything was groovy, that I didn’t care if I wasn’t allowed to date or whatever. But every once in a while, just like today, I had a tiny glimpse into how much I chafed at my dad’s rules. It didn’t matter how many times he explained his reasoning to me; I just wanted to go to dinner with Craig, for crying out loud. I’d never even been on a proper date at all, and this was a Greek god of a boy who had texted me even after the hideous display I’d put on.
I decided I would try to talk to Daddy. Maybe this time I’d be able to convince him to let me go.
# # #
“Girl, you have to!” Katy shrieked. “Oh my goodness, are you kidding me? He is gorgeous—drop dead, freaking gorgeous.”
We were an hour deep into some serious social media stalking. Every one of Craig’s profiles was pulled up on the screen of Katy’s laptop, and we were hunched over side by side, oohing and ahhing at his pictures, each more beautiful than the last.
“I know, I know,” I whined. I sounded miserable, even to my own ears. “But you know my dad’s rules.”
“Forget your dad’s rules! Do you see these abs?” She jabbed a finger at the shirtless picture on the screen, her mouth parted in unconcealed desire, and with good reason: they were out of this world.
“Shush,” I said, laughing. “Lower your voice; you’re screaming.”
“I’ve got every right to be screaming! This boy walked straight out of a magazine and into your life. It would be a crime to womankind everywhere if you didn’t go to dinner with him.”
I leaned up and rubbed at a kink in my neck. “I don’t know,” I said. “I just cannot imagine a world where my dad all of the sudden becomes this laidback, lenient parent. You know how he is. He’s been so uptight ever since what happened to my mom.”
Katy’s face softened and she laid a gentle hand on my knee.
“That’s gotta be hard for him, though,” Katy said softly. “I mean, his wife gets brutally murdered and they never even track down who did it? The loss is hard enough, but to have to live with that kind of uncertainty…it must be tough, that’s all I’m saying. Tough for you, too, obviously.”
“Yeah,” I replied noncommittally. It had been three years since my mother’s murder, and I still found myself feeling suddenly upset at random times, although the emotions had mostly calmed down. The hardest part was the lack of closure. No killer had ever been caught, although,
given what my father did for a living, it wasn’t surprising that the police hadn’t looked too hard.
I didn’t know exactly what Daddy’s job was, other than his title and the name of his club. He was extra careful to keep me sheltered far away from anything having to do with the Knives of Fury. From anything having to do with anything, as a matter of fact. I was fifteen when Mom died, and since then, I’d essentially lived under house arrest.
Even college, which was an escape from home for most people my age, was just more of the same for me. I was only allowed to go to the University of New Mexico, right down the street, and the question of where I was going to live during school was answered the second I brought it up at dinner one night.
“Dad,” I’d said cautiously between bites of spaghetti.
