Hurrying to the shower, I bathe and then dress in record time. I don’t have to be to work today, but I do have a brunch date, and I better get a move on it or I’m going to be late. I hurry to my crappy, maroon sedan. Well, it’s not so much maroon anymore as it is a lovely, oxidized, former maroon color.
I drive through the city, annoyed at the traffic and wishing I would have never moved back here. I should have stayed in Texas, but there were way too many memories there. Texas holds both good and bad memories. In the end, even the good ones felt tainted, so I left. I came back to the only other place that I’ve called home, Sacramento.
I park the car, shaking off the cloud of memories from the past, sliding out of the driver’s side seat. I then hurry into the little café, where I know my date is waiting for me.
“I’m sorry,” I say in a rush as I walk over to him and press my lips to his cheek.
“You’re late,” he scolds with disapproval before his face completely changes and he gives me a wide smile. “But I could give a shit. You’re here, I’m here, and we have antipasto coming,” Lisandro announces with a flourish of his hand.
I hide my smile, knowing that Lisandro likes to use fancy words, antipasto being one of them, which is just what he calls appetizers.
“Lis, seriously it’s so good to see you,” I whisper, dashing the tear from my eye.
“You need to come and work for me. That attorney you work for is an asshat. Come sell diamonds,” he says, purring the word diamonds as he usually does.
Lisandro is my best friend in the whole world. I’ve known him since the day I moved back to Sacramento. We met at this exact café. I was a pathetic mess, a crying pathetic mess, and he walked right over to me, sat his flamboyant ass down in the seat across from mine, and we’ve been friends ever since.
Three years ago, he fell in love with Theo. When he did, his lover moved him out to Redding, California. Theo is a pharmacist. He took a position in Redding, grabbed onto Lisandro, and they’ve never looked back, except an occasional visit to me and Lisandro’s grandmother. They live two hours away.
Redding isn’t the smallest town in the state, but it’s not the biggest, either. Lisandro became bored as hell, quickly, so he opened a jewelry store.
“He’s an asshat, but working there pays the bills. Honestly, it’s fine,” I sigh.
“He used you, Cleo. He fucked you and then pretended it never happened. Now you’re like this nothing to him, and that’s exactly how he treats you,” Lis growls.
“I was young and stupid. It’s my fault, too,” I whisper.
“You were twenty, still fresh from your failed marriage, and he knew it. He knew how to get into your pretty pink panties, so he did it. He’s twice your age, Cleo,” Lis points out, though I already know the story. I was there.
Just the mention of my failed marriage still sends pain slicing through me as if it happened only yesterday.
“I’ve been there ten years. I can’t just walk away,” I sigh, trying not to think about Paxton.
Though, now that he’s been mentioned, my thoughts will probably drift back to him all day long.
Great.
“You can; and with his clientele, you should,” he states.
It’s true. My boss’ clientele is pretty scary. He’s a criminal defense attorney, and while, usually, his clients are criminals of the white collar variety, that’s not always the case. Still, even the white collar criminals scare me.
To be honest, it doesn’t take much to frighten me. I’m a complete and total wimp. I don’t know how I’ve lived alone almost my entire adult life, not when I’m pretty much terrified of my own freaking shadow.
“It’s not that simple,” I grumble as a waiter brings over our antipasto.
Today, Lis has ordered brie covered in a sweet fruit spread with crackers. Sinfully delicious.
“It is. You walk in, give two week’s notice, and hopefully he lets you go on the spot. You pack your meager belongings, or just your clothes, and you come to my house where I have a guest suite with your name on it. You live there for as long as you wish, or until you can’t handle the way I scream when Theo makes me come. It’s completely up to you,” he shrugs as he spreads brie on his cracker and then pops it into his mouth.
I can’t hold back my giggle at his words. First off, he doesn’t have a guest suite. It’s a small bedroom and nothing else; the bathroom is down the hall. Secondly, his screams would probably drive me out on night one.
“Lis,” I sigh. He shakes his head before pinning me with a serious stare.
“I’m not fucking around, Clee. That guy is an asshole, his clients are fucking terrifying, and you live too far away from me. I have the ability to help you, and I want to. Think about it,” he urges. I gulp as I nod.
“Okay, yeah,” I agree.
“I swear, you’re worse than a toddler,” he chuckles.
“Whatever.”
“Have you been out on any dates?” he asks, changing the subject to another matter that I do not wish to discuss.
“Lis,” I warn.
“It’s been a decade,” he points out.
“It’s not as if I’m sitting around waiting for him to come home. I doubt he even knows where I live. I know that I don’t know where he is. It’s just…”
“He’s your Theo,” he whispers.
“I tried with other men,” I murmur.
“You tried with your asshole boss, that doesn’t count,” he grunts.
“I tried with Brad, too. You remember him, don’t you?”
“He was a pussy. That was you being safe, knowing it wasn’t going to amount to anything,” he points out as he smothers another cracker. I’ve lost my appetite completely with this topic of conversation.
“He was nice,” I defend.
“He was a pussy, and you know it. Don’t try to kid yourself,” he mutters.
Luckily, Lisandro doesn’t mention anything else. Changing the topic to his store, he talks about the new inventory and shows me pictures of the beautiful pieces he’s picked to carry.
When our brunch date is over, we decide to go on a walk and do some shopping. Lis loves to shop, and I just love to be with my best friend.
“You know I didn’t bring up all that shit to be a jerk, right? I do it because I love you, and I want you to be happy,” he whispers later that afternoon, leaning against his car.
It’s late, and he’s going to head back to Redding—back to Theo and his life there. I already feel the loss of my friend, the only person in my life that knows absolutely everything about me—the good, the bad, and the really ugly.
“I know,” I sigh, biting my bottom lip as I look down at my shoes.
“You deserve to be happy, blissfully happy. I’m your best friend, and yet, I’ve never seen you that way,” he continues.
I nod, closing my eyes tightly before he slips his fingers beneath my chin and lifts my head up. Slowly, I open my eyes and look into his dark brown ones, his concerned dark brown ones. He cups the side of my face and brushes his thumb across the apple of my cheek before he rests his forehead against mine.
“You are the most beautiful woman I know. Inside and out, Clee. You deserve so much happiness in your life. I want you to explode with it, sweetheart. You’re breathing, but you’re not living. I fucking hate that for you. Come to Redding, make a new start,” he whispers.
“I tried that when I came back to Sacramento,” I admit.
“No, you didn’t. You came back to a place that was familiar so you could lick your wounds. It’s time, sweetie pie. You have to move past him and move on. He’s not coming back to you; and honestly, I don’t think he should. He’s a piece of shit.” I stiffen at his words, feeling defensive, but refusing to speak out. “He is. He did something unspeakable to you, and then he left you high and dry. He’s not worthy of you.”
“We were young,” I whisper on a tremble.
“But you aren’t young anymore. What’s his excuse now?”
> I shake my head, refusing to speak, knowing that if I do, I’ll cry. Lisandro shakes his head as well, but it has nothing to do with wanting to cry and everything to do with the torch I obviously still hold for my husband, Paxton Hill.
“Talk to you soon, sweetie pie. Stay safe and think about coming to Redding,” he whispers, releasing his hold on my cheek and bending down to brush his lips against my forehead.
I nod and give him a shaky smile as he sits down in his car. I have no intention of moving, though I don’t know why. I really have nothing for me here in Sacramento, except exactly what Lis said—familiarity. My parents are gone; any friends I had as a child have all moved on with their lives; and my boss is a dickhead.
Smiling I hurry to my shitty car and head home, not wishing to be out past dark. I’m a scardy cat, and a homebody all wrapped into one.
Once I’m locked inside of my apartment, I decide to draw a warm bath, pour a glass of wine—which will also be my dinner—and then go to bed. My plans are perfect for this Sunday evening. My plans are also pathetic, but I have no desire to do anything else.
Chapter Two
TORCH
Climbing on my bike, I have one mission today, and one only. I’m going to check on Cleo Hill, my wife. Fuck, it’s been so long since I’ve seen her; but with the threats of The Cartel and the unknown of their reach, I have to protect her. I don’t know why I feel the urge to do so right now. It wasn’t as if I protected her during our short time together. I was the one that hurt her.
Fuck.
Just thinking back to that time makes me feel like a piece of goddamn shit. That’s exactly what I was, and what I am. The only excuse I have for myself is—war.
War is so fucking complicated. The shit I saw, the shit I did, and the shit that happened around me was too much for my twenty-year-old brain to process.
Instead of coming home and leaning on Cleo for support, I sabotaged our relationship—or I tried to. When she didn’t completely give up, and I knew deep in my bones that she never would, I left her. I removed myself from the situation at hand, a situation where I knew that I would do nothing but continue to hurt her.
The three-hour ride to her place gives me time to think. I haven’t found very much information about her, just her address and her workplace.
I want to know more, but I don’t deserve to. I don’t know that I can handle knowing she’s got a man, either; something that has been bothering me lately.
The past ten years, I’ve tried to deny myself the thought of her—drinking and fucking bitches until I’m so far gone, I can’t pull up her memory even if I tried. But it never really works. The second I’m sober, the minute I close my eyes and there’s no booze flowing through my system, all I see is her.
When I pull up to her apartment building, I grind my jaw at the sight before me. She lives in a fucking shithole. There is a group of men drinking at the bottom of the staircase, and their eyes are on me. Well, probably more on my bike than me, hoping I’ll park it and walk away from it so they can fuck with it.
Not to-fucking-day.
It’s late afternoon, six in the evening, and I hope she will be arriving home any minute. I know her job is administrative, and she should get off around five. I have nothing better to do, so I wait for her. I don’t have to wait long.
A few minutes later, a shitty, oxidized maroon sedan pulls into a parking spot, and my jaw drops when a sexy as fuck redhead exits.
She’s wearing a tight skirt that skims just above her knees, and a suit jacket that shows off her small waist. Her dark red hair is longer than I remember it being, and her ass fuller— but fuck me, she looks better, even from afar, than she did at eighteen.
I watch as she walks past the pieces of shit at the bottom of the stairs. They all have eyes for her, watching her, and then every single one of them adjusts their dicks as they try to look up her skirt while she climbs the stairs.
She doesn’t notice them, or if she does, she doesn’t acknowledge them. This is normal for her—normal everyday life—and I fucking hate it.
Cleo shoves her key into her door and slips inside, hopefully locking it up behind her. I stay planted in my spot, my eyes drifting from the pieces of shit at the bottom of the stairs to her door for at least an hour. I want to approach her, but I don’t know how.
If she were any other bitch, I wouldn’t hesitate—but I hurt her, and I abandoned her, and I don’t know how to broach that. I’ll have to. I owe her explanations, but those are something that I’ve never given another human being on earth.
The men at the stairs eventually disburse, so I take the opportunity to start my engine and move around to a different spot, trying to find a place where I can hide my bike so it doesn’t get jacked.
This neighborhood is fucking shit, and I cannot believe that my Cleo actually lives here; and as far as I know, she does that alone.
I climb the stairs and walk down the shitty open hallway. I place my hand on the railing and give it a slight shake. My eyes narrow when I realize it’s unstable. With only just a little more pressure, I could break it.
Which means if someone were to lean over it, they’d fall down an entire story into some dead bushes. I scowl at the railing even harder at the thought before I turn around and knock on Cleo’s door.
I don’t even have to strain to hear her moving around inside of her apartment, which proves that the insulation is fucking nonexistent and that she can probably hear every single thing her neighbors do on either side of her, and vice versa. The thought causes my scowl to deepen even more.
Cleo’s foot falls bring her to the door, and I know when she sees me because she gasps. But she doesn’t open the door. I look right at her peephole, she can see my face, and I’ve not changed so much that she doesn’t recognize me.
Sure, my eyes hold a darkness in them that wasn’t there before, but I’m still clean shaven; my hair’s not cropped, but it’s still short; and although I’ve put on some bulk muscle, that hasn’t changed my looks one bit.
“Open the door, Cleo,” I demand, my voice low.
“What are you doing here?” she asks, not opening the door.
“I’ll tell you when you open the door, babe,” I murmur.
I hear her suck in a breath, and then the door slowly opens. When it does, I’m met with the most magnificent woman I have ever laid eyes on.
Cleo, at the age of thirty, puts the Cleo of eighteen to fucking shame. My eyes scan her face, taking in her red freckles, spattered all over her nose and cheeks and down to her chest.
At the sight of her lush, full tits, I bite my bottom lip, wanting nothing more than to yank her flimsy tank down and look at her naked flesh, knowing those freckles cover them as well.
Her waist is small, but her hips flair out. Looking at her from a distance did not do her justice. Up close, her body is phenomenal.
I press my hand to her belly and push her inside, following and slamming the door behind me. Her chest heaves as her soft brown eyes widen at my move.
I watch as her nostrils flare slightly with her heavy breathing, and she opens her mouth to speak, but then clamps it shut before her eyes narrow on me. Her gaze goes from surprise to anger in an instant.
Anger I’ve fucking earned.
CLEO
With narrowed, angry eyes, I look at him. Paxton Hill, my husband. He’s back. From where, I don’t know, but it’s been over ten years—more like eleven—and he’s suddenly standing in front of me.
Why? I have no clue, but I aim to find out.
I’m not only angry at him because of the way he left me all those years ago, but I’m angry because he looks even sexier than he did back then. And back when I married him, he was the sexiest man I had ever seen in my entire life.
Paxton’s bigger than he was at twenty. His body is ripped with muscles, and his shirt is stretched to capacity trying to contain them. He’s wearing a leather vest, holey jeans, and big black boots.
Damn.
&nbs
p; If I thought he looked hot in his dress blues, and boy did I think he looked hot as sin in those, he’s beyond that in what he’s wearing right now.
“What are you doing here?” I ask again, trying to keep my voice from trembling.
Though I’m not scared to be in his presence, something I don’t understand, I’m trembling for a completely different reason. I feel as though my body is on fire as his light stormy blue eyes scan my body.
Damnit to hell, he’s still absolutely beautiful. I’d kind of hoped he’d gotten fat and gross over the years.
“You live in a shithole,” he announces.
It’s as though he’s doused cold water on me—thankfully, I might add.
“I’m glad you came here after a decade to inform me of something I’m already aware of. Thanks, you can leave now,” I snap.
I watch as his face transforms and his lips tip into a grin. Christ, and here I go again, my body getting hot at the sight.
“Shit ain’t safe for you, Cleo. It fuckin’ kills me, but it’s my fault that it ain’t,” he rumbles.
I blink once and then look back into his blue eyes, wondering what on earth he’s talking about. Before I can ask, he continues on with his speech.
“Not in the Air Force anymore, baby. But the work I do, the men I associate with, it’s not always the good and clean kind. Some guys, they’re trying to get the drop on us, and one way they’re doin’ that is coming after women and children.”
I look at him, confusion surely written all over my face. I honestly have no clue what he’s talking about.
“I’m a Devil, babe,” he says, pointing to a patch on his vest, as though I’m supposed to understand what he’s talking about. “Fuck me. Still my innocent girl, aren’t you?”
“I’m thirty, Paxton, so no, I’m not exactly the same innocent girl I once was,” I spit out. “But I don’t know what a Devil is, so you’ll have to forgive my ignorance on that.”
I watch as he lowers his head slightly and tips it to the side to look into my eyes. He scans my face, then locks in on my gaze again as he clenches his jaw. His nostrils flare and he dips his face a little closer to mine.
The Notorious Devils MC: Complete Collection BoxSet Page 115