Shield

by Anne Malcom

  I gaped at her, then fiddled with my hands, remembering Luke’s words. “There’s something else too,” I whispered.

  She grinned. “Of course there is.”

  She stopped grinning when I started talking.

  By the time I was finished, she was crying.

  Then she hugged me, tightly, her tears mingling with my own.

  I expected her to yell at me for not telling her sooner, declare war on an already long-dead dirtbag. Tell me I needed to join some support group.

  She did none of that when she pulled back with red and makeup-streaked eyes. “You are good. And clean. And strong. What happened should never make you feel opposite, Rosie,” she said firmly. “You didn’t tarnish Luke, and especially not yourself. I don’t need to talk to him to know you saved him. And, more importantly, yourself. I know you can do that without anyone’s help, but how about you let me lend you my shoulder? Whenever you need it. I’m always here to remind you when things get hard.” She squeezed my hand. “And so will Luke, babe. I know you think you sentenced him to damnation just because he doesn’t drive around in a car with flashing lights, but you gave him something different. I saw it in his eyes, well beyond the crazy sex maniac look.” She winked. “I saw salvation. You’re always going to be different, Rosie. Extraordinary. So that means salvation might look a little different, darker in hue, but that doesn’t change the meaning. You better remember that, or I’ll kick your ass.”

  I sucked in a ragged breath. “I love you.”

  She smiled. “And I love you right back. So does Cade. And the club. Forever. No matter what. So just be happy. Just be you.”

  I sipped my wine. “I’ll try.”

  It was dark by the time I heard a key in my lock. Gwen left after only one more glass of wine, telling me she had a drive to make.

  I felt significantly lighter once she was gone.

  But then I started to get heavy with worry when Luke didn’t answer his phone, didn’t come back. I started to convince myself that I’d majorly fucked up this time.

  The second his large form came through the door, I exhaled, properly. Then I ran, right into his arms. He hadn’t expected it, so he went back on one leg, but that didn’t stop him from catching me.

  I didn’t say anything, just clutched him, just inhaled clean air. Not just Luke, the both of us. Clean.

  I eventually let him put me down, but he didn’t let me go. He clutched me tightly, eyes stuck on mine.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I said shit I didn’t mean and it was ugly, and I’m sorry. But you’re right, I don’t know how to be me. Not really.” I paused. “Life’s just a big party, you know? A costume party. Most people don’t realize that. They take it so fucking seriously. The little cages they live in. The lines they’ve got to stay between. I’m not a different person every day because I have deep-rooted psychological issues.” I toyed with Luke’s shirt. “Okay, maybe that’s part of it, but mostly I’m a different person because I can be. It’s that simple. People don’t realize it. The little pleasures. Wearing head-to-toe sparkles one day and then black lipstick the next. That’s what life is, the little pleasures. Not the big moments. They take too much energy, too much planning, too much fucking artifice. All those big moments are to show the world you’re happy. The little ones are just to be happy. Not for the world, for you. So yeah, I take pleasure in the fact that I don’t know what person I’ll be in the morning. In the fact that I don’t have to know. Because my life would be a pretty fucking bleary place if I didn’t.”

  He leaned forward, face unreadable. “You’re trying to convince me about something that made me fall in love with you,” he said. “I love that I’m going to be as surprised as you are when you decide who you’ll be every day. I don’t give a fuck that you don’t know what person you’ll be in the morning. I fucking love that. As long as that person is someone who wakes up next to me, I’m good, babe. That’s my little pleasure.”

  “You can’t keep saying things like that, not after saying nothing at all for years,” I whispered.

  “Even when I didn’t speak, I’ve never said nothing at all,” he murmured. “You know that. You owe it to us, to yourself, to do this, Rosie.”

  “Yeah, I do,” I agreed.

  “Something good did come of this afternoon,” he rasped, moving his hands up to cup my breasts softly.

  I sucked in a breath. “And what’s that?” I said, voice heavy.

  “We get to experience makeup sex,” he growled.

  “Why do we have to keep this a secret?” Luke asked sometime later, after possibly the most fucking amazing makeup sex known to man. “Especially now that Gwen knows.”

  I drew circles on his bare chest, my tattooed hand contrasting against the naked skin. “Can you think of any other way, Luke? Think of us reading the paper in the morning, getting brunch with our friends and family? Being that couple? No. We don’t fit that way.”

  He moved me so our eyes met. “Listen to you, Rosie, talking about fitting, molding. Wasn’t it you who once told me it was the greatest farce of them all, trying to squeeze into some role? I’m not asking for that. I never fuckin’ would. I’m askin’ to sleep with you, a full night. Wake up with you. Not have snatched fuckin’ moments with you, I need it all with you.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “What about the club, Luke? I’m a package deal. As much as I sometimes wish Templar, along with Trouble, wasn’t my middle name, it is, and always will be. You can’t reconcile your hatred. Being with me, out in the open, in the daylight, means them too. That’s my world. It’s not yours.” It was what we kept coming back to, what Luke had never really, properly addressed. It was all well and good stepping over it in the romance of the moment, but it was quite another thing living with it.

  He cupped my face. “You’re my world, so I’ll come into it. I don’t have hatred for what makes you you.”

  I pushed up on my elbow and raised my brow. “So you’ll come home, to Amber, this weekend, and come to a party? At the club. As Luke, my boyfriend, not Luke, the sheriff?”

  He pulled me into his arms. “I was never Luke, the sheriff. I was always Luke, Rosie’s man. Even before I knew it. Definitely before you knew it.”

  I swallowed. “Is that your alpha and dramatic way of saying you’ll come?” I still wasn’t used to it, those hearts and flowers declarations. They didn’t feel real. They couldn’t feel real. Then again, all the shit, the horrible shit we’d been through up until now, was real, so why couldn’t some of the good stuff be real too?

  He chuckled and kissed my nose. “Yeah, babe.”

  I sank into his embrace for a moment and his lips found the top of my head. He inhaled, and I leaned back. “Did you just sniff my head?”

  He smiled. “Sure did.”

  “That’s weird, dude.”

  He continued to smile. “I’ve had twenty years of wondering what every inch of you smelled like, tasted like. Had to restrain myself from finding out because I didn’t think you could be mine, not biblically at least. Now that you are mine, finally, there’s nothing to stop me from doing any of that. So I will, as often as possible,” he murmured.

  Fuck. There it was. More hearts and flowers. It was almost as hard to deal with as the shit that came before. For different reasons.

  “You do realize that someone will almost certainly brandish at least one weapon at you, on principle,” I said, skipping acknowledgement of his words once more.

  He didn’t seem to worry about me not fulfilling my feminine duty to whisper sweet nothings back to him. “Bring it on, babe.”

  All my excuses and warnings used up, I sank back into his embrace, defeated. Or victorious. I wasn’t sure which.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Despite all my bravado in the fight that led to Luke and me being in a car a few minutes out of Amber, I was nervous.

  Among other things.

  The car was heading directly for my home. Not my house, but the Sons of Templar compound.
My house didn’t feel like my house anymore. It surely wasn’t my home.

  I’d brought it with the proceeds of some of my extracurricular activities. To solve any of the questions I would’ve gotten from buying said house with money that no one—apart from Wire—knew I had, I took the offer for the loan of a down payment from Steg. And from Cade. And then paid them back with each other’s money.

  I wagered they’d never find out because men didn’t talk about that kind of stuff at the best of times, and at that point, Cade and Steg were very far from the best of times.

  It was now mortgage free and had a tenant by the name of Gage living there.

  Which stopped it from being my house, because I didn’t even want to entertain what twisted shit he’d gotten up to. He’d put me to shame.

  But we weren’t going there.

  It was weird, taking your boyfriend home to meet the family. Much weirder when your family was a motorcycle gang who would shoot anyone they decided wasn’t good enough. It was off the reservation when your boyfriend had not only met but arrested at some point or another almost everyone in that entire family. Had spent a previous life trying to take them down.

  But this wasn’t that life anymore.

  He wasn’t coming to raid the compound, look for evidence.

  He was coming as my boyfriend.

  My heart was thundering so hard I wondered if it might jump right out of my throat. I had never been this scared on a single mission in Venezuela.

  That might’ve been because of the visit—the unexpected one—I’d had from Cade a few days prior. I thought it was a good idea to call ahead and tell him Luke was coming so I didn’t spring it on him and my brother didn’t shoot him on reflex.

  After I’d told them, there was silence on the other side of the line. “Hello? You didn’t die, did you?”

  “I’ll be there in two hours,” he growled, then hung up.

  I didn’t think my older brother would actually drive that far just to yell at me.

  I should’ve known better.

  He and Gwen turned up a little over two hours later. I reasoned the delay was because he didn’t want Gwen coming. But she was there. Because he was a marshmallow.

  Not right then, though.

  “Him?” he roared. “Really, Rosie?” He began to pace the room. “I know you like to push the boundaries, consider yourself a rebel amongst rebels, but this is fucking….” He ran his hands through his hair.

  “Love,” Gwen interjected quietly, eyes on me and then her husband. “This is love, Cade.”

  I’d adored my sister-in-law since the moment I met her, but right then, I could’ve kissed her feet. For her gentle gaze and strong vote of support. For going up against Cade. For me.

  He glared at his wife, but there was no iron behind it. “It’s fucking not,” he hissed. “It’s Rosie being Rosie.”

  Gwen rolled her eyes. “Seriously, dude?”

  “Don’t call me dude,” he snapped, real anger directed at his wife. “I’m your man.”

  Another eye roll. “Yes, you’re my man,” she agreed, eyes twinkling. “But you’re also acting like a dude.” She said the word so it sounded like an insult. “You’re not blind, Cade Fletcher,” she continued, her voice softer. “I know you like to think that you only see black, white, and red. That you don’t see the emotional underpinning of this world we live in. The love.” She gave him a look. “But I know better. You taught me better. You saw inside me what I didn’t even know existed. That maybe I didn’t want to know. So you’re not going to bullshit me and say you don’t see it in your own blood. This is Rosie being Rosie. Acting for Rosie. Not for you, not for the club, not for the countless women who owe their happiness and sanity, at least in part, to her. She is finally following her heart. You know the one that beats for the club? The one that all your grumbling men treasure above all else yet take for granted? The one that you’re trying to blindly protect but instead are breaking by being the pigheaded macho man holding onto ancient grudges that don’t mean shit if your sister’s happiness and future are a casualty of it?”

  He blinked at his wife. His glare was still in place, but it wasn’t directed at her. His eyes changed, the entire structure of his body changed, under the weight of his wife’s words. I thought he might still yell. Swear. Throw something.

  He didn’t do any of that. Instead he stared at his wife.

  “Fuck, I love you, baby,” he murmured.

  Gwen grinned. “I love you more.”

  So he’d left drunk on Gwen, forgetting to even give Luke a death threat.

  There were no guarantees, though.

  Luke’s hand fastened over mine, stilling them when I hadn’t even realized they were moving.

  He rubbed his thumb over my palm. “You’re fidgeting,” he observed.

  He was driving again, his truck this time. And I didn’t mind because that meant I’d gotten to take healthy swigs of the margarita I’d put into a sippy cup before we left.

  I glared at him. “Yes, that’s what people do when they’re nervous.”

  He smiled at me, and damn if my glare didn’t just melt away. It wasn’t as if I’d never seen Luke smile before, but I hadn’t seen him really smile. Showing me he was happy, unobtrusively. And that I was the reason. Unobtrusively.

  It quelled my nerves, that smile. Only a little though, because I was picturing a bullet, or at the very least a fist going through it as soon as we arrived.

  Luke’s hand moved to engulf mine and bring it to his lips so he could lay a kiss on my palm.

  “It’s going to be okay,” he said.

  I huffed but didn’t take my hands from his. “That’s what people always say right before everything goes to shit.”

  He chuckled. “Shit with you isn’t shit, babe.”

  I gaped. “You’re not nervous? Worried about the state of your body when you leave versus when you arrived? Because I am. I like the state of your body. The muscles and stuff, obviously, but the whole breathing and walking and talking thing too.”

  “I would’ve thought you might be happy if I was mute for a bit,” Luke teased. “I always seem to piss you off with the talking.”

  I roll my eyes. “It would piss me off more if you didn’t do it.”

  “Babe, we’ve got this, okay? You always think of the worst because you’ve always had to. Because too often, you’ve had the worst,” he said, face turning serious. “But that’s done with. No more worst, not before it goes through me. And your family will have to put a bullet somewhere to change that. But they won’t, because they love you. I’ll take a punch, babe. I’ve had worse.”

  I sighed and hoped he didn’t get worse.

  It was like Cade sensed that someone was coming to challenge his masculinity, because he was waiting in the parking lot, shades on, arms crossed when we parked.

  “Oh, Jesus,” I muttered. “He’s decided to go Leon: The Professional.”

  Luke smiled and got out of the car.

  I was too busy stewing to be quick enough to get out at the same time, which gave Luke the opportunity to get my door, which he groaned about not being able to do. Some of the good guy remained, the best parts.

  “Ready?” I asked as he grasped my hand and walked toward Cade.

  “Since you were five years old,” he murmured.

  I glared at him. Of course he’d say something that sweet right as we stopped in front of my brother, the man who looked like he might actually shoot Luke.

  “Rosie, go inside,” Cade barked.

  I turned my glare to him, who was directing his murderous stare at Luke, who, surprisingly, was mild-faced.

  “Hello to you too, big brother,” I snapped.

  He whipped his shades to me. “Rosie, I need to talk to your….”

  “Boyfriend?” I finished for him.

  Cade scowled and nodded once.

  I squeezed Luke’s hand. “You’re not throwing your macho shit ordering me around and beating Luke up.” I moved forw
ard, in front of Luke, shielding him from any blow that Cade might decide to land. “You’ll have to go through me first.”

  Cade pushed his shades to the top of his head in frustration. “Really, Rosie? The dramatics necessary?”

  I gaped. “Seriously? I’m not the one who was standing in the middle of the parking lot like Snake Plissken.”

  There was gentle pressure at my hips as Luke turned me. “Babe, it’s okay,” he murmured.

  “No it’s not. You don’t have to play this game. It’s a dumb dick-swinging contest. I have it on very good authority that you don’t need to do that.” I was disappointed that I didn’t get to see Cade’s glare at the comment, but the fury was hot on my back.

  Luke kissed my head, smiling and shaking his own. “I appreciate you lookin’ out for me, babe, but this needs to happen. I can take care of myself. And no matter what, I’m in there, right behind you, okay?” he promised, nodding to the clubhouse.

  I paused, frowning. “I don’t like this,” I grumbled, turning to scowl at Cade. “And you hurt him, I will shoot you,” I promised. My gun was in my purse.

  Cade didn’t answer.

  “Thought tensions might be high,” Luke said, putting his hand in his pocket and opening his palm to reveal a handful of bullets. “Took them out to make sure you don’t do something you’d regret.”

  I would’ve had a lot to say about that had I not seen the corner of Cade’s mouth twitch. In Cade World, that was considered a smile.

  I pointed between the two men who I loved immensely in different ways. “Play nice,” I ordered.

  Luke grinned. “Always.”

  Cade, again, didn’t answer.

  I gave Luke one more lingering glance before I walked into the clubhouse.