by Anne Malcom
But for the most part, I’d had hope. Maybe not hope that he was coming back, but that wherever he was, he was thinking of me. Missing me. Yearning for me like I was him.
And four orgasms had totally proven that.
Was this the part where I asked him about where he’d been? Who’d he been with? If he’d made good on his promise to murder the man who had ruined his childhood?
Maybe it was. Maybe a strong, independent woman would demand those kinds of answers, those kinds of specifics.
But I already knew the answer to a lot of those questions. Knew that Cody would not have spoken of murder lightly. And he wouldn’t have come back if he hadn’t done what he’d promised himself he was going to do.
He’d killed.
Perhaps done other things to change the core of him.
But I didn’t care.
However right or wrong that was. I didn’t care. He was still Cody. To me, at least.
“So I’m going to need you to do something if you’re really here for good,” I said, my voice raspy from crying out his name the past few hours.
His arms flexed around me before his fingers moved in lazy circles across my bare back.
“Anything, baby,” he murmured.
My heart jumped with that. With those two words. A promise.
“I’m going to need you to marry me,” I said.
His hands froze, his entire body going stiff. “Come again?”
I moved so my forearms rested on his pecs and my eyes locked in on his. “I know you’ve been gone these past years because you needed to be gone. I hated every moment of it, and sure, I wanted to hate you too. But the problem is, I just love you too much.” My eyes ran hungrily over his face then his neck where a heart hung from a chain. My heart. The one I’d given him five years ago.
“I want to make sure it’s harder for you to leave,” I said. “Now, I know that marriage isn’t a guarantee that you’re not going to leave, but I also know that you’re a man of honor. Of your word. So if you give me your word on forever, I’d be much happier.”
Cody stared at me for a long time, his eyes moving over me with hunger, with reverence, with a love that hadn’t dimmed over four years.
“Just to clarify, you’re askin’ me to marry you?” he asked.
I nodded.
Suddenly I was then I was no longer on top of him, Cody moving so I was entirely on the floor, and his body was entirely on mine. He didn’t give me his full weight, though. If he’d done that with all his new muscles, my ribcage might’ve been crushed.
His hand moved to push my hair from my face then he cupped my cheek. “You know I’m meant to do that, right? With some kinda fanfare. A ring?”
“You can give me all of that after. I just need your word. Just need you to give me forever,” I whispered.
His hand moved to the back of my neck. “If there’s one thing in this world I can promise you, it’s forever.”
Then he landed his lips on mine.
And there was a lot of fanfare.
“You’re taking him back.” My mother’s voice was flat but the sounds of the pans clanging together and hitting the counter harder than they needed to told me how she really felt.
Cody leaving me had broken my heart. Though that sounded cliché, too common for what I’d gone through, it was true. I hadn’t been able to get out of bed for a week. Barely ate. Was in what Willow coined my "zombie chic status” for three months.
Naturally, this had worried my parents. My father, definitely. More than anything, it had pissed my mom off. Mostly she’d ranted about how this period of my life seriously jeopardized my college prospects, furious at Cody for doing this to me. But even I saw that it was more than that with my mother.
Once I’d gotten myself out of that funk, gotten myself good enough grades to go to college and had made a really good show of getting on with my life, my mother had decided not to mention Cody’s name again, pretty much pretending he didn’t exist.
So, despite my overwhelming sense of happiness and relief that Cody was back, I’d been dreading telling her. Telling her that I felt whole again.
“I’m not taking him back,” I told her, sipping my coffee as I watched her bang around in the kitchen from my spot at the breakfast bar. “He was always mine, and I was always his.”
Mom turned, a scowl already firmly in place. “Elizabeth, you’re too old for such idiotic romantic thoughts. He almost ruined your future. He will ruin your future if you don’t get smart about this.”
“He won’t ruin my future, mom, he is my future,” I tried to explain. “I’m not asking for your permission or your blessing. I’m an adult now. But I do want you in my life. I want you in our lives. In our children’s. And we are planning to have them.” I held my hand up as the vein in Mom’s head looked like it was about to explode. “You’re not going to change my mind on that, even if you think what I’m doing is idiotic. And I know you had bigger dreams for me, but they weren’t ever my dreams for me. They were ones that you lost. But mom, I’m not losing anything. I’m gaining everything.” I stood up, figuring I might as well peel off the entire Band-Aid. “And he’s patching in to the Sons of Templar MC. I’m going to support him.”
My mother no longer looked furious. She no longer looked anything. Defeated might’ve been a word for it, although that’s never a word I’d ever used to describe my mother.
“You’re giving yourself a harder life than you deserve,” she said quietly, shaking her head. “That club is going to poison what you have. It’s going to ruin your life. And it will take him from you. One way or another.”
Her words chilled me to the bone. Were they some kind of cold premonition? Or just the most logical outcome of the life I was choosing to live? It didn’t much matter, did it?
I straightened my spine. “Well, I’d rather be ruined with him than have to survive without him.”
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Cody asked, his expression stoic.
We were both sober despite the fact that we’d been indulging heavily at the engagement party thrown by the Sons of Templar.
Cody still had another ten months of prospecting as did Gage, the man who had appeared in Amber the same time as Cody. I didn’t know where or how they’d met, but my guess was it was somewhere dark. I hadn’t asked Cody much about his time away. Where he’d been, what he’d been doing. I knew a lot of women wouldn’t be able to handle that. Would need to know what had happened. Why he’d left. Why he’d come back. How he’d encountered the tall, foreboding handsome man with ribbons of scars moving from his wrist to shoulder.
Parts of me were desperate for the details. To know where Gage had got his scars, where Cody got the ones I saw behind his eyes. But those scars were from their darkest of yesterdays. Healed as much as they would ever be. I didn’t want to rip them back open for selfish reasons.
Cody had said Gage saved his life, that the man had been near death himself, would’ve met the reaper if he’d left him where he was—wherever that was. I saw the death in Gage’s eyes, he made no effort to hide it. I hoped one day, there would be something, someone for him to live for.
For now, the club was something to guarantee he’d exist tomorrow. A purpose. Even if it was shrouded in criminal acts and bloodshed.
Cody been a friend of the club since he’d started working in their garage at sixteen. Beyond that, Cade and Bull were two of his closest friends, and they were already patched in.
Cody already considered their Prez, Steg, to be a father figure, a mentor of sorts. A mentor who was in charge of a deadly chapter of the notorious one percenter MC, who looked scarier than all hell and always carried a gun.
There had been no question where the party was going to be held. Evie, the matriarch and wife of the president of the MC, had decided it would be at the clubhouse, since she always made the decision with things like this.
“It’s a reason to celebrate,” she’d countered when I’d tried to argue that it was
too much. “Fuck knows we need to hold on to those. So we’re havin’ it here. Don’t want to hear more shit about it.”
So I gave her no more shit.
To say my mother was horrified was an understatement.
We didn’t talk for three weeks after I’d announced my engagement. She’d invited both Cody and I over for dinner, though, I got the feeling that the dinner was not at all her idea. My father rarely tried to tell my mother what to do about much, but when it came to me, he always put his foot down.
I was sure he wasn’t exactly thrilled that I was staying in Amber and marrying Cody, especially with him prospecting. My father likely wanted a steadier life for me. Safer. But he wouldn’t say anything.
“Don’t you want to know?” Cody asked, jerking me back to the moment. The moment consisting of us standing in our bedroom in my bungalow. Cody had moved in. It hadn’t been stated officially, but there was no question about that. There were plenty of questions and arguments about were regarding him taking over the rent. I knew he wasn’t going to earn anything being a prospect, which would take up most of his time. He’d work part-time at the garage, but I didn’t want him spending all his money on the rent when I had enough for it. Cody had alpha maled his way out of the argument, telling me about money he’d earned the past five years. He didn’t say how he’d gotten the money, and I didn’t ask.
I frowned at him. “Do I want to know what?”
“All the terrible things I did when I was gone,” he said. “Horrific. Monstrous. That’s what I am now, Lizzie. Especially since I did all of those things, became this person, then I came back to you. Couldn’t even do you the honor of leaving you alone, letting you live a life that isn’t tainted.”
My eyes watered, my heart shattered. He was still like this from time to time. Full of self-hatred. Full of anger at himself. I tried my best to fight against it, even if my best was just loving him. But it hurt. It killed me to see him like this, knowing there was nothing I could really do. Just wait and hope his wounds would heal. Scab over. Turn into scars.
I reached up to cup his face. He still had the beard. He’d trimmed it a little for the wedding, but he’d kept it. Like it was part of the mask he’d been wearing since he got back because he was afraid I’d run away from what he’d turned into.
“You can tell me all the monstrous things you’ve done if you’d like,” I said. “If it will feel better for you to say them out loud. To give them another home that isn’t the inside of your head. You tell me every detail that you think I can’t handle, and I’ll continue to love you. More, if anything. Because you’ve shown me new spaces, parts of you to love. I’m not afraid of you. Of what you’ve done. Who you are. What you’ve had to do to come back to me. All that matters is that you came. And I promise you right now, if you hadn’t come back, if you’d tried to be that man of honor and stayed away, that’s the only thing I wouldn’t be able to forgive. To love. I’m not going anywhere. I’m not some scared teenage girl. I’m tougher than I look. I can handle you.”
He searched my face, his eyes filled with love, reverence. Emotion that hit every nerve in my body. It was unlike anything to be loved this much. Adored this much. Especially by a man with all the demons Cody had. Demons I had no idea how to slay but hoped to learn to tame. To love.
“Fuck, baby. It might be wrong of me, but I’m never letting you go,” he murmured, lips on my neck.
“We’re getting married tomorrow,” I replied. “You’re never letting me go.”
“Promise,” he murmured.
He kept that promise.
Until he couldn’t.
Chapter 4
One week into prospecting, Cody became Ranger. One of the crazy rites of passage that went with being patched in to the Sons of Templar MC was that you either had to have a seriously badass name—like Cade who was such a badass he was born with it—or someone decided to give you one.
Of course, Cody didn’t tell me he’d gotten one of his own, I heard it at one of the first MC barbeques I attended. It was nerve wracking. I knew the Sons of Templar and everyone connected to them my whole life, but this was different. I was attending as an Old Lady of a prospect. I knew that meant something. Especially since there were very few prospects, or patched members for that matter, with Old Ladies.
There were plenty of beautiful, scantily clad women around, making it so most of the brothers didn’t feel the need to have a relationship. Why would they want that complication when there were loose women ready to suck their cocks at a moment’s notice?
I’d handled it well, I thought.
Evie hadn’t done anything like rip my face off. She’d just sat down beside me, chain smoking and chatting.
Though, her version of chatter was every curse word known to man and letting me know what I was in for.
“He’s going to come home late,” she said, inhaling. “Or he’s not gonna come home at all. He’ll have to leave in the middle of the night, not tell you where he’s going. You’re gonna have to deal with that, if you want him.”
She nodded to one of the women leaning just a little too fucking close to my husband for my liking. “You’re going to have to deal with them too. Now, you can show them what’s yours. And you can show him what happens if he decides he wants to indulge in that shit. A lot of the time it might feel like you don’t have power or control over this shit. That you have to embody a role that feels like a time in the past where you don’t have a vote.” She sucked on her smoke. “But you don’t. Not in there, at least,” she nodded toward the clubhouse. “Which can piss you off until you figure out the ways to get what you want. Not the same ways as women who have men who don’t wear that cut, but the same process. Every woman learns the tricks to get her way. Ours is just a little different.” She glanced to me. “And you’ve got a family behind you now. Hold you over during the tough times. There’s gonna be some of those, I can feel it. You love him?”
I nodded. “More than anything.”
“Well, buckle in, honey. It’s gonna get rough.”
And it did.
Get rough.
Everything Evie said came to pass. The late nights. Unreturned phone calls. The not coming home at all. Blood stains on his shirts. Something changing about him, in his eyes, his mannerisms. The way he touched me. Fucked me.
That’s what it was. Fucking. Not making love. Not gentle. No, it was desperate, furious, like he was trying to lose himself inside of me. Like it was the last time he was going to touch me.
I changed too.
There was no choice. I was an Old Lady. I’d made that choice, so I leaned into it. I learned how to deal with the uncertainty, the fear, the long nights alone. The club girls.
Evie was my lifeline. An unconventional one, to be sure, but she held me steady, poured me drinks. Invited me over to her place for dinner when the men were out doing... whatever they were doing.
Rosie, Lucy and Ashley were always around too. They were only a little younger than me and definitely bat shit crazy, Rosie the self-proclaimed leader of the trio. I liked being around them, even if they scared me just the littlest bit. Cade tried his best to rein his sister Rosie in, but that was like trying to use an umbrella in a hurricane.
Fucking useless.
There were many nights at Rosie’s place with cocktails and all sorts of plans made, butI always crept home before those plans were executed.
Laurie was there too. Of course she was. She was my best friend. But it was different with her because she was different now. We were in this together, of course, because we’d been friends all our lives..
It didn’t touch her. Zane—he was Bull now, to everyone except Laurie—didn’t let it touch her. His duty was to the club, like the rest of the members, but Laurie was always his first priority. Protecting her was what he was put on this earth for.
I liked that for my friend. Loved it. But I was also jealous. Cody would protect me from anything in this world, except the Sons of Templar. He could
n’t protect me from the MC or their lifestyle.
The first year of Cody prospecting was hard. On me. On him. On us. I’d thought I knew what I was getting into. The club had been a presence in Amber since before I could remember. My mother respected them, but she didn’t approve. She’d raised me bedtime stories about the big, bad bikers and what would happen to me if I found myself embroiled in their world.
Which was exactly where I was.
Despite the fear, the danger, the loneliness, I liked our lifestyle. Loved the family we had. Loved that Cody seemed to have found his peace.
But to find that peace, Cody had left himself behind. He was no longer Cody. He was Ranger. First to the club, then to himself, then to me.
Five Years Later
I stared at the two lines on the stick in my shaking hand.
Were my hands shaking out of happiness or fear?
We’d agreed that we didn’t want kids until Ranger had patched in, been in the club for a good amount of time. We were going to wait for the chaos to settle down, until things weren’t so dark for the club. Until we could save enough money to afford a baby. Ranger had enough money to buy us a small bungalow with a view of the beach, near Cade’s newly purchased house. Cade and Brock were already members when Ranger got back from… wherever he’d been. Five years married and he still hadn’t told me where he’d been or how he’d come across Gage.
Gage was broken in ways that Ranger wasn’t. There was a violence to him that should’ve scared me, but instead, I wanted to protect him. I made him come over to the house for dinner at least twice a week and didn’t force him to speak if he didn’t want to. I didn’t want him to be alone.
I didn’t ask him about his past, just like I didn’t ask Ranger where he’d been or how he had the money to buy us the beachfront bungalow. I wanted to know, but I wanted him to have peace more. As much as I wanted him to share all of his darkness with me, I trusted him to tell me if he needed to, and I wouldn’t push it if it meant that whatever had brought him back to me would go away.