They ended their journey looking into his.
“It all go okay?” she asked.
“Girls asleep?” he asked back.
“For about two more seconds,” she replied.
Deacon grinned again. “Call Milagros,” he ordered.
“And I’m doing that…why?” she sassed.
“She’s lookin’ after our babies tonight. We’re spendin’ the night in cabin eleven.”
Her eyes changed. They went soft, and with that look, she reminded him what she made him feel, always, even when he wasn’t conscious of feeling it. Something he never thought he’d feel again, not in his life, not until she gave it to him. Something he now felt every fucking second of every fucking day he woke up by her side knowing he’d end that day going to sleep the same place.
Warm.
Safe.
Loved.
And happy.
* * * * *
Nick
One and a Half Hours Later
Nick stood on the tarmac leaning against the beat-up old Defender he’d bought, watching the plane taxi toward him.
It stopped well away.
He didn’t move.
He just watched.
The door slowly folded open.
The stairs barely hit the concrete before she came out, quickly and awkwardly, walking sideways down the narrow steps, holding on to the railing, her eyes aimed his way.
Suddenly, after months, Nick could breathe.
She was in pants. A blouse.
They didn’t match.
Suddenly, after months, Nick almost smiled.
And she had on spike heels.
That didn’t stop her.
He finally pushed away from the truck when he saw her begin running.
He started toward her swiftly but had to stop as she picked up speed.
He braced for impact, which was good since, when she hit him, she nearly knocked him off his feet.
Her hands were wrapped around the back of his skull, her head tipped back, her hair streaming down the arms he’d curled around her, he got one look into her shining green eyes. A look that obliterated the cold dead he’d last seen in them, which was a look that had tortured him for months. A look that was so gone, he got half a second to wonder if he’d actually seen it before she was up on her toes and her mouth was pressed to his.
He had words he wanted to say.
He’d take the kiss.
So he took it.
The sob that tore from her forced its way down his throat as she ripped her lips from his and buried her face in his neck.
He liked that, that emotion from his Livvie, fucking loved it.
But he wasn’t going to give her time. Maybe later.
Now he had to know.
He dipped his head and put his lips to her ear.
“Do you believe, Livvie?”
She nodded immediately, her face moving in his neck, her body trembling in his arms, her fingers digging into his scalp.
“Say it.”
He felt her swallow. He knew by the feel it was painful.
But she did it.
Her head dropped back and her shining eyes came again to his.
“I believe, Nicky.”
Nicky.
Yeah, finally, he could breathe.
Before, she’d kissed him.
Right then, he kissed her.
When he broke it off, it was Nick who tucked her face back in his neck.
Her sobs were gone. Now her tears were quiet and through them she held on.
He lifted his gaze to his brother standing at the bottom of the steps to the plane.
Knight had his arms crossed on his chest, but even if he wasn’t close, Nick could see his brother’s smile.
Nick held tight to his girl and smiled back.
* * * * *
Anya
Five Hours Later
I opened the door to our condo, peeved.
Knight had gotten home twenty minutes ago, or so his text told me.
His text.
The man was exasperating.
He’d not said how things went with Nick. He just said he “had the girls” and he’d “see you at home, babe.”
That’s it.
Of course, I left the salon immediately after my return text of, “How did it go?” went unanswered, as did my three calls.
I threw my keys and clutch on the table by the door and my heels declared how pissed off I was as they struck the floors on the way down the hall.
When I made it to the end, at a glance, I could see that Kasha was totally bossing whatever was happening in our sunken living room. In this glance, I also saw my man on his ass on the rug by the coffee table, Kat on hers next to and slouched into him. Kasha was on her feet, bossing (of course) but also leaning her front into the other side of her dad, the side that Kat wasn’t occupying.
Of course, the vision of this made me no longer pissed off which in turn immediately pissed me off again because just seeing my man with our girls made me melt and that was tremendously annoying.
I stopped at the top of the steps, looking down, my eyes pinned to Knight.
“Well?” I asked.
His mouth twitched like he was amused.
Oh yeah.
The man was exasperating.
“Babe, been gone hours. It didn’t go good, I would not have been gone hours,” he stated as a belated explanation.
“What went good?” Kasha demanded to know.
“Nothing, baby,” Knight muttered to his baby girl.
“Can we speak in our bedroom?” I asked, starting to move that way.
“You gonna give me shit, I go with you to our bedroom?” Knight asked, making me stop dead and whirl his way again.
“Do not say shit in front of the girls!” I snapped.
“You said shit too, Momma,” Kasha pointed out. “Just now.”
Knight burst out laughing.
I looked to the ceiling, making a frustrated noise.
“No need to go to the bedroom.”
At his words, I rolled my eyes back to my man.
“You remember what I said to you in that kitchen the first time you were in this space?” he asked, tilting his head toward our kitchen.
My heart skipped as I pressed my lips tight.
I remembered. I remembered every word.
He’d held my face in his hands and said, Wars fought over a face like this. A man would work himself into the ground for it, go down to his knees to beg to keep it, endure torture to protect it, take a bullet for it, poison his brother to possess a face like this.
“My brother found that face,” Knight finished.
Nick hadn’t found that face.
He’d found that woman.
Suffice it to say, I was getting it that all went really well with Nick and his girl.
“Good,” I whispered and watched Knight’s face grow soft.
“What face?” Kasha demanded to know.
“Later, baby,” Knight muttered.
“Is Uncle Nick okay, Daddy?” Kat asked quietly.
“Yeah, beautiful girl, he absolutely is,” Knight answered.
Kat smiled at her father.
“Momma, we’re playin’ Uno! Get down here and play with us,” Kasha bossed.
“We’re not playin’ Uno,” Kat contradicted. “Daddy and I wanna play Operation.”
“Operation is stupid!” Kasha, whose little fingers weren’t as coordinated so the patient’s nose was always glowing red, snapped.
I watched this go down, no longer shocked the intensely masculine, slightly scary, totally badass Knight Sebring was completely cool with playing Uno (but he preferred Operation).
Instead, I watched it remembering that I’d been tormented by bad dreams since my parents died when I was a little girl.
But when Knight entered my life and made me his in a way he told me was forever, then proved that true, I’d not had one dream.
No, in sleep, I never dre
amed.
Now, watching my man with our girls, knowing Nick was somewhere safe and happy…
Life was another story.
* * * * *
Olivia
Fifteen Hours Later
“Livvie.”
I was dreaming.
I felt soft breath on my neck as a gentle finger slid over my shoulder.
“Baby.”
Happy dreaming.
A hand cupped my jaw, a thumb sliding across my cheek, my ear, into my hair.
And a whisper from close.
“Dawn is coming, honey. Open your eyes.”
I was scared.
Terrified.
If I woke up, like so many mornings before, a lifetime of them, it might be gone.
But the promise was too beautiful.
And now, I believed.
I opened my eyes.
And there it was, an inch away.
Swimming in an ocean of blue, a new day dawning.
And me?
I woke up from my dream to a living dream.
Complete, happy…
And loved.
Epilogue
Perfect World
Nick
Three Days Later
Nick opened his eyes and saw the bed empty.
Three days he’d had his Livvie there with him in Tennessee and each morning he’d had to wake her up.
Now she was gone.
He threw back the covers, knifed out of bed and saw the door to the bathroom open. Seeing that, he prowled through the house but stopped when he saw her out in one of the Adirondack chairs on the back deck.
She was sipping coffee and staring at the mountain view.
He drew in breath, let it out, retraced his steps, took a piss, washed his hands, brushed his teeth and headed back out, straight to the coffeepot.
He got his cup and kept his gaze on his girl as he moved out the back door to join her.
She looked over her shoulder at him, her face soft, untroubled, and Nick relaxed more.
Approaching her at the back, he stopped behind her, bent, and kissed the top of her head.
She gave him a small smile as he straightened and she turned back to facing the mountains as he moved to the chair situated close beside her.
He settled.
They sipped.
No words were said.
But she’d been there days and they hadn’t talked much. There were other things to do. Show her the house. The town. Familiarize her with the area. She’d unpacked the surprisingly little she’d brought. They got groceries. They cooked. They slept. They fucked.
Now there were things she had to know.
“We’re covered, baby,” he said to the rim of his cup. “You know I owned that building where my place was. Sold my place and the building. Knight bought out my stake of the club. Hawk Delgado is lookin’ after my boys. He gets a cut, I get my take. And I got healthy investments. We got no worries here. We’re good.”
She held her cup close to her mouth, eyes to the view, and didn’t respond.
“We gotta get you a car,” he continued. “Go into Nashville, get you some more clothes—”
“Stop,” she said in her delicate voice.
Nick stopped.
She didn’t start, she just stared at the view.
“Liv—”
Still in that voice, she cut him off, “My job to make it worth it.”
Nick didn’t like that.
“That’s not how it works,” he stated.
Finally, she turned to face him.
“You’re wrong. It is. I get it now. It was your job to do all that. Now it’s my job to make it worth it.”
“Babe, this is just our life how we gotta live it.”
“Yes,” she agreed. “It’s our life. It’s your purpose in this life to take care of me. And it’s my purpose to give that back.”
He tried to read her, thought he got a bead, and said, “You don’t gotta make any grand gestures.”
But he’d read her wrong.
“You’re right, I don’t. You love me and I have one simple task. To make that worth it.”
“That’s not gonna be hard, baby, you do that by breathing.”
Wet welled in her eyes as she held his.
Then she leaned his way. Dropping her cup to the arm of the chair, she reached her other hand out to slide the tips of her fingers along the stubble at his cheek. Up, she smoothed the hair over his forehead. Back down, she cupped his jaw.
“I think, if you don’t mind, sweetheart, I’ll put a little more effort into it,” she murmured.
Fuck, he loved her.
“Knock yourself out,” he murmured back.
Her glistening eyes smiled and she slid her thumb over his cheekbone, his lips, before she took her hand away and settled back in with Nick and their view.
“One regret,” she said quietly.
Fuck.
He looked to her profile.
It was still untroubled.
“What?” he asked when she spoke no more.
She turned to him. “I never got a ride in your Jag.”
He bit back laughter.
“No worries, Livvie. It’s in storage. We’ll get it back.”
Her green eyes smiled, this time bright and carefree, and she turned back to the view.
Nick did too.
He gave her time. He gave himself time. When the peace settled deep, it was time for something else.
“You want breakfast?” he asked.
She turned to look at him again and when she did, her eyes had a different look. A look he felt in his cock.
“French toast,” she answered.
That was when Nick’s eyes smiled.
* * * * *
Five Weeks Later
He knew it the minute his stomach clutched, pushing bile up his throat so severe, in reaction to it his body convulsed right off the commissary stool.
“Clear! Clear!”
It was a bellow but it sounded far away.
His frame spasmed violently, pain raking his body as the foam filled his mouth.
A shadow crossed over his closed eyes.
He opened them to see the prison guard leaning near.
He bent closer. So close, he disappeared.
The foam slid from his lips.
The whisper came in his ear.
“Sebring’s got a message. He wants you to know you shouldn’t worry. He’s gonna do what you didn’t. He’s gonna take care of Livvie.” The guard pulled away, doing it shaking his head. “You shouldn’t have hit her, man,” he went on. “This woulda gone a lot different if you hadn’t.”
Foam and spittle bubbled out of his mouth.
“For that, you pay,” the guard continued and again got close, “For Hettie, you burn in hell.”
The guard again pulled back but stayed kneeling beside him, staring in his eyes.
So he was the last thing he saw before Vincent Shade died.
* * * * *
Nine Weeks Later
The day had been long. All they’d seen was hard, cold road the length of it.
They hadn’t even stopped to eat.
After they checked in, she demanded they eat.
So they ate.
Now they were back at the motel in the middle of nowhere that was so in the middle of nowhere and so nothing it cost only twenty bucks a night.
Not what she’d worked her ass off her whole goddamned life to have.
He opened the door.
It didn’t happen until they were both through.
When the light came on, with the amount of guns on them, they didn’t move as the door swung shut behind them.
Her eyes were pinned to the man sitting on the edge of the bed, a woman standing next to him, her hand on his shoulder.
Benito Valenzuela and his woman, Camilla Turnbull.
Fuck.
Her man made a move at her side.
Stupid. So fucking stupid.
But he l
oved her.
There it was. Proof.
Love made you stupid.
And in Gill’s case, dead.
The shot only gave a sharp buzz. She felt the spatter hit her face but all she allowed herself was a flinch as he fell to the floor at her side.
Gone, now.
Everything.
Gone.
Her heart shriveled inside her.
Fucking shit, maybe in all her bitching, Liv had been right.
“You were simply affecting profit margins,” Valenzuela noted like a member of his crew had not just shot the man she loved in the face. “Which was annoying and needed to be dealt with.” He shook his head. “This business after what happened with your sister. Quite the nuisance.”
He said no more, just continued to shake his head.
“You burned her in her bed,” Georgia hissed.
“For many years, you haven’t been stupid. What’s turned you stupid now, Georgia?” Valenzuela asked.
“We have one enemy,” she returned. “You.”
“And as that enemy, you know me. You know it’s bad business to eliminate something that’s not a threat.” He tipped his head sharply to the side. “Worse business if eliminating that non-threat suddenly makes me the enemy of someone who gives not one shit about me and,” he leaned slightly forward, “I don’t want them to.”
“You don’t know your enemy either, obviously, since I gave a shit about you,” she snapped. “We could have made a deal.”
His eyes turned shrewd. “I was talking about Sebring.”
“Knight has dick to do with this,” she retorted.
“That’s not the Sebring I mean.”
All over her body, her skin got tight.
“Nick’s unhappy,” Valenzuela said softly.
“I don’t give a fuck about Nick,” she shot back.
But it was a lie and they both knew it.
“That’s your mistake,” he whispered, standing. “Pretending that’s true, that’s been your mistake for years.”
She felt her lip curl. “He’ll be taken care of.”
“Such bravado,” Valenzuela muttered.
That was when every inch of her skin got cold.
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