Redemption (MC Biker Romance)

by Wilde, Blakeley

  Raze smiled, quickly, and returned to his meal.

  “I also thought we could trade in my bike,” he said. “You know, for a boring little sedan or something.”

  I jerked my head to the side. Raze’s bike was his baby. It was his life. It was a part of his identity. I couldn’t expect him to get rid of it.

  “That’s your baby,” I argued. “You’re going to sell it?”

  “New life, remember?” he said as he looked up at me with raised eyebrows. “I don’t want to be in the gang anymore. I want something new. Something better. Something better for us.”

  I nodded as I knew he had a point. He was really serious about this.

  “Before we leave town, we’ll stop at a dealer,” he said. “I’ll see what we can swap for it, even-Steven, and we’ll hit the road and head up north.”

  “Okay,” I said as I couldn’t hide the smile that spread across my face. “Sounds like a plan.”

  We showered, watched a bit of local news for the forecast, and checked out of the hotel. We climbed on his bike and headed towards a local dealership where they happily accepted his trade for a Toyota Camry. It was the most boring yet reliable car on the lot, the salesman told us. It was gray and came with all the standard features Toyota offered. It wasn’t flashy. It wasn’t attention grabbing. It was exactly what Raze had in mind.

  “I want us to fly under the radar for a bit,” he said as we walked inside to sign the paperwork. He reached over and squeezed my hand.

  “Of course,” I said.

  The salesman slapped a stack of paperwork in front of us and circled a bunch of lines for Raze to sign. It almost felt like he was signing his life away, and in a weird enough way, he sort of was.

  We pulled off in our gray Toyota Camry and headed up to northern California to start our new life. We knew exactly what we wanted. A sleepy little seaside town on the coast. Not too big, not to small. Friendly people. Lots of local shops. Quaint restaurants. Affordable housing. We wanted a place with a back yard so we could get a dog. Raze had never had one growing up and had always wanted a yellow lab. He even had a name picked out for it, but he wouldn’t tell me yet. He seemed sort of embarrassed about it.

  A day’s drive and stumbled upon the sweetest little town, and we both knew. We were home.

  “Welcome to the rest of your life,” he said as he leaned over and kissed my forehead.

  My once-rugged alpha male was melting away into the person he was meant to become. When I looked at him, I saw a broken little bird who was determined to live his dreams. And when he looked at me, I saw nothing but hope in his eyes. I had saved his life just as much as he had saved mine.

  I was beginning to fall in love with him. That much I knew. And I couldn’t wait to spend the rest of my life with him in that boring little sleepy seaside town.

  EPILOGUE

  Raze and I rented a small, two bedroom house about a mile’s walk from the ocean. On clear days, we could sit on our back porch and see the waves crash about the shore. I received my CNA certification and worked at a local nursing home. It didn’t pay much, but I was able to go to nursing school part-time. Just a few more years and I’d be a Registered Nurse. I couldn’t wait. Money would be good then.

  Raze worked at a local mechanic’s shop while we saved up for him to open a shop of his own someday. I told him it was important to have goals, and I think he was staring to realize that.

  Most days, we’d go to work and be home in the evening. Raze would grill out or I’d bake us some sort of frozen dinner. My cooking skills weren’t the greatest, but Raze never complained. We bought a lot of our furniture secondhand and tried our best to make our little rental place our home.

  Things were definitely not as exciting as they once were, but we were slowly adapting to a life less crazy. It was a huge adjustment for Raze, but I was there to help him every step of the way.

  There were times when the electric bill was late or the water bill was two months behind. I know Raze had considered resorting to his old ways to make some extra cash, but I kept him on track. I kept him honest and focused. I refused to let him slip back into that old lifestyle. He wasn’t that guy. Not anymore. I wouldn’t allow it.

  Every other week or so, we’d check out the local animal shelters in search of Raze’s perfect dog. Our rental house had a nice fence around it, but Raze had a dog in mind that he wanted, and we never seemed to find it. He was set on having this specific dog. I found out later it was the same dog he had as a kid, before his mom died. It made sense to me that he’d want to replicate that. I never judged him or made him feel weird about it. I thought it was endearing actually. I promised to keep looking for him, and I told him we’d look for as long as it took.

  The Black Ice seemed to leave us alone. I think his dad knew that life wasn’t for him, and I think his dad loved him just enough to leave him alone. He was a complicated man, but I know he did love Raze.

  I always wondered if maybe his dad really knew where he was but was watching him from a far.

  Raze rarely spoke about his dad that first year. It wasn’t until he saw something once that reminded him of his dad that he briefly brought him up. It was maybe a sentence or two about something his dad did once when he was a kid.

  After a few months, I encouraged Raze to get back in touch with his grandparents. We ended up meeting up with them, and they were the sweetest people I’d ever met. They were his mom’s parents and they’d raised him most of his life. He apologized for being a hellion, and his grandmother cried sweet tears of happiness when she wrapped him in a loving embrace.

  He showed me pictures of his mom, and he was right. She was beautiful. She looked like a sweet person. Her parents said she was a sweet girl who fell in love with the wrong man, but they emphasized that Raze was a result of that, and they wouldn’t have traded that for anything in the world.

  A year after settling in that sleep, Oceanside town, it was safe to say we were deeply in love. I couldn’t imagine spending my life with anyone else but him, and he even told me he loved me. He said he’d never said that to anyone before in his entire life. Not even his dad.

  He promised to buy me a beautiful ring someday, when money was less tight, and he wanted to make things official.

  I told him we were still young, we still had plenty of time, and I wasn’t going anywhere. We’d come too far to ever throw in the towel. I’d worked too hard to snag him. I wasn’t going anywhere. Ever.