by Ashley, Ava
Great. So not only did I lose the man of my dreams, I lost my good path towards the career of my dreams.
Chin up, Savannah! I try giving myself a little pep talk. Try, try, and try again! If this parlor gets shut down, I’ll just have to find a job at another parlor. Someone is bound to have a chair open for me, or I will convince them to open one up. There is no failure until you fail to try, as Papa always said, and if there is one thing that I am definitely not going to do, I am definitely not going to give—
I’m so lost in my thoughts, trudging up the stairs to my apartment, that I walk straight into something big and hard that’s blocking the opening of the staircase to my floor. If it didn’t reach out to catch me in its—or rather, his—big, strong, muscular arms, I would have tumbled right back down all the stairs.
“Cooper?” I don’t believe my eyes. This must be a city smog-induced mirage or an exhaustion-inspired hallucination. “How did you find me?”
And then I take in what he looks like. I take in the busted lip, the bruises, the fresh scar peeking out under the bottom of his hair at the nape of his neck, and the black eye. My chest seizes up and I can’t breathe. On the one hand, I can’t deny that seeing Cooper fills me with the kind of joy I haven’t felt since I got on that bus to NYC. But seeing him like this, all banged up, just realizes my fears. They must have gotten to him—Nate or Daddy. These aren’t injuries from a fight. I’ve seen Cooper fight and he isn’t Cooper “Veni Vidi Vici” Quin for nothing. He dominates in the ring and he comes out looking fine, with his opponents looking like how he does now.
No, this had to have been a stacked fight. This had to have been multiple guys on Cooper, maybe even taking him unaware. And this time he came out alive and only relatively superficially injured, not seriously harmed, but that’s probably because they didn’t find me with him and didn’t know the full extent of what happened between us. Next time, he might not be so lucky.
I start bawling. “Why? Why did you come after me?”
“Because I want you,” Cooper says, holding up my locket. “Because I want you, only you, and you’re mine. I care about you, pretty girl, and you can run to the ends of the world, but there’s nothing you can do that can make me not find you and come to you—because I know you care about me, too. Deny it and I’ll go, but I know you can’t.” He takes me in his arms, stilling my body as it shakes with tears, until I calm down a bit.
And he’s right. I can’t. Standing here, in his big, strong arms, I realize what I would not allow myself to realize. The feelings I thought I had managed to put a numbing layer of disengagement around are just as real as ever. And that is not going to change.
“I...” I gaze up at this beautiful man looking adoringly and protectively down at me, “I want you, too. But Cooper, your face—they hurt you!”
“If I have you, I have no pain,” Cooper says. Then he literally sweeps me off of my feet, lifting me into the air. I can’t help but give in for a moment and do what I’ve been wanting to since I left. I wrap my arms around his neck and kiss him deeply and passionately. When he finally puts me back down, he slips the locket from my mother over my head. With it back, I finally feel whole again. But I’m standing here in the arms of the man whom I love and I can’t be at peace with that, much less as delighted as I should be, because he got hurt and it is all my fault. And if I stay with him, it is only a matter of time until it happens again. And the next time they come for him, he may not be as lucky.
The tears start streaming down my face anew. “Cooper, I care about you,” I say. “That is why I left you. I am no good for you. You don’t know everything about me and this, this—” I gesture at his bruises. “This is going to keep happening if you’re with me. I’m not worth it. You don’t know who I am.”
“You are worth it and I know just who you are, Savannah Santos,” he says. “And anything I don’t know, you can tell me. But it won’t change how I feel about you. Nothing can change the fact that I care about you more than anyone else. So I don’t care if you are in some trouble. I want you and I will help you and protect you. There is nothing, and I mean nothing, that could ever change my mind. I am not going to leave you, Savannah, not now and not ever.”
I look up at him, disbelievingly. He knows everything? And he’s standing here, saying all this to me, anyway? I am overwhelmed with emotion. I really don’t even know what I’m feeling at this point. Cooper knows who I am, but he wants me anyway. Cooper really, truly cares about me. And I care about him, too, but because I care about him so much, can I really allow him to take the risk of being with me? Is it even my choice to allow him to be with me or not?
“Which apartment is yours?” Cooper asks, cutting right through my thoughts. “Pack up your things. You’re coming with me. There’s no more running away.”
Somehow I obey. I can’t really understand it myself, but when I am feeling so confused and conflicted, it just feels natural to do as he says. Especially since what Cooper is saying to me is exactly everything I have ever wanted. I can barely believe that this is really happening, but it is. So I do as I am told. I lead Cooper to my apartment and he sits patiently on my bed, reaching out a hand to touch me whenever I am within his reach, and pack up my sparse belongings quickly. Then I let him wrap an arm protectively around me and lead me out of the apartment a last, final time.
Chapter Four
Cooper
I can tell Savannah has been struggling. That’s not to suggest that it was a huge fall, since it isn’t like she was rolling in dough when she lived with me. But even though the transition from her motorcycle club princess life to her runaway life was probably a more dramatic shift than the one from her first runaway life to her second, this is the one where she slipped under the minimum requirement of what you need to more or less comfortably survive. Her apartment was a total dump in the ghetto, much worse than the one we shared, and her cheeks look a little thin, like she hadn’t been eating right.
But now she’s with me and she won’t have any more worries. I have money, both saved up from my days of earning a Navy SEAL’s elite salary and my earnings as a top-ranked fighter since then, some above board and some from bets on me winning. When I was in the SEALs, I didn’t have anything to spend it on because I was away in war zones and dangerous enemy territory. Besides, I was saving up to be able to provide Sarah with the life she was accustomed to. Then that blew up and I was too depressed and pissed off, in turns, to spend my money. Since then, I’ve just been focused on fighting and saw no need for moving to a nicer place or buying a nicer car or anything like that, when most of my time and energy was spent on and at the gym. I never had the urge to get a nicer place to impress the girls who would have readily had sex with me in a public restroom, if I had asked for it, nor did I ever have the desire to spoil them with nice gifts of fancy dinners. They didn’t mean anything to me.
But Savannah does. Savannah means the world to me, just looking at this wonderful woman’s beautiful face makes me want to give her everything. I can tell there is a lot going on in her head and seeing me all banged up, obviously from an unfair encounter with the thugs that are chasing her down, didn’t help. It doesn’t matter. Whatever it takes, I am going to prove to Savannah that she is the girl for me and I don’t give a damn about what anyone else has to say about it.
But first, we need to take care of the basics.
I get her out of her dingy digs and catch a cab to the New Yorker Hotel in midtown. I booked an executive king suite on a high floor, so Savannah can finally see New York the way she deserves to. There are three huge flat screens in the suite, but Savannah ignores them and the nice couches to flop down on the bed. The poor thing is exhausted. Between her crazy shifts and not eating right, it’s no wonder.
That brings me to the next thing. I need to get some decent food into her. Who knows when the last time she had a decent meal, not instant ramen or the crap from the diner she told me about working at, was? We briefly consider going up to the S
ky Lounge for a nice meal, but one look at her tells me she’s completely wiped. I would rather just be with her, anyway, just the two of us, so we settle on room service. I have to goad her to order more and pricier food. For a girl who grew up rich, she is sure hesitant about spending money. Even though it’s a little frustrating, because I want to spend money on her, it’s also incredibly endearing. Sarah would always jump on expensive gifts and point out pricey jewelry and clothes that she wanted when we went out. If we went out to eat, she wouldn’t blink an eye at ordering the caviar and vintage wines. She expected to be pampered all her life and she just expected to never have to work for it. Savannah isn’t like that.
“So, now what?” Savannah asks. I startle a little—I was away in my thoughts. But I’m glad to be called back into the room that way, because I want to spend every moment with Savannah. She has propped herself up on her elbows on the bed and I know that it’s not just my pent-up sex drive that’s making me interpret that smile as flirty. She raises an eyebrow in a come-and-get-me way, so I do.
I pounce onto the bed and she does that adorable giggle-shriek that cute girls do as I roll her over on top. She’s laughing and giggling and shrieking as I give her a thousand kisses all over her neck and shoulders, but then I kiss my way up to just beside her mouth and she stops laughing. She takes my face gently in her soft, little hands and looks me straight in the eyes.
“Thank you for coming for me,” she whispers softly. “I missed you with all my heart.”
“I missed you, too, Savannah,” I say. “More than anything.” Then I kiss her, long and deep, and like the only thing I need in life is her and her kiss.
Chapter Five
Savannah
The food is delicious and abundant and served beautifully on silver platters that make me feel like a princess. I eat like I am ravenous, because I am, but I cannot fully enjoy the sumptuous meal. Even as the warmth of the food spreads through my stomach, filling me up, I can sense the tense, cold stone of dread that has been there since the wonderful, and terrible, moment when I first ran into Cooper in my stairway. We are going to have to talk about the murderous, gang-shaped elephant in the room sooner or later. And now that we are done eating, later has come.
He could not possibly know everything about me. And now, to finally level the field and treat him as he deserves, I have to tell him every last thing about me and the nuclear disaster zone that is my life. How could he possibly feel the same way about me after that? How could he possibly not leave me when he realizes that continuing to be with me like this would be signing his own death sentence?
Suddenly, the meal that was so delicious only moments before doesn’t feel like it was such a good idea after all.
“You’re looking a little green, babe,” Cooper jokes. I smile weakly at him.
“I’m just—” I take a deep breath and start over. “We have to talk, Cooper.”
“What are we doing right now?” He is still teasing me, a flirty twinkle in his eye.
“No, Cooper,” I say. “I am serious. We have to talk.” He takes one look at my face and realizes I mean it. He nods, his own face immediately completely serious.
“Shoot,” he says.
I take a deep breath and look down at my hands. They’re shaking in my lap, so I press them down between my thighs to still them. “Cooper,” I say. “I have to tell you everything about me. For real this time, with all the bad and all the ugly.”
“I know everything,” Cooper says. “Savannah, I am an ex-Navy SEAL. I have the skills and the access to find out anything about anyone. And I wouldn’t have gone into your background and looked up things you didn’t want me to know, but when you disappeared on me like that, without a word or a call or even a goddamn fucking note, Savannah—” Cooper looks really upset about that and I can’t blame him. To him, it looked like I just walked out on him for no reason after our wonderful night together.
He takes a breath. “And then Nate and his thugs showed up and I knew you were in danger and I had to find you. So I did a thorough background check. Savannah, I know everything. You are Savannah Santos, daughter of known gang leader Flint Santos of the infamous Santos Motorcycle Club. I know who Nate is and I know who he is to you. I know that you’re his fiancee, but I also know that you can’t possibly love him. Don’t do this, Savannah, don’t be with him.”
I shake my head. “You know everything that’s on the books. But you don’t know the details. You know my mom died, and my little sister, in the middle of a particularly bad bout of gang warfare when I was a little girl. But what you don’t know is that my hand in marriage was my father’s peace offering to the Morenos. The engagement between me and Nate, to be consummated into a marriage on my eighteenth birthday, was what stopped the gang wars. And then—and then I couldn’t do it. I never liked Nate and we couldn’t get along at all growing up, but when I walked in on him with an ex just a few weeks before my eighteenth birthday, and our wedding, it was the final straw. I just couldn’t do it. So I ran away, so that I wouldn’t have to marry him.”
I pause there to collect myself and check how Cooper is taking it so far. His jaw tensed when I talked about how I was supposed to marry Nate, but he comes over closer to me on the couch and takes me in his arms.
“Baby, none of that is your fault,” he murmurs. “Does the thought of you marrying some other guy make me want to punch his fucking lights out? Hell, yeah. But you didn’t do anything wrong and you’re mine now. It’s okay, baby.”
“But you don’t understand,” I say. “When my mom and my sister were killed, my whole world fell apart. I didn’t lose just them, I lost my entire family. My warm, loving daddy suddenly turned into this cold man who wouldn’t play with me anymore, wouldn’t read me bedtime stories, and wouldn’t helicopter me through the air, like he always had. He wouldn’t even look at me anymore. My big brother, Wolf, followed his example. He became cold and hard and grew up overnight into a motorcycle club man with no feelings. He wasn’t the fun, adventurous guy that I had spent my childhood days chasing through the house and getting into trouble with. I was suddenly all by myself, stuck with a series of nannies who did exactly as expected and nothing more. I was miserable and angry at the world. Then I grew up, too, and I realized that the real world is a cold place where feelings only hurt you. If you love someone, it’s inevitable that they will disappear from your life and you’ll be hurt. Or worse, you’ll hurt them. If you stay with me, Daddy’s thugs won’t stop coming after you, ever. They won’t stop until they have me and, once they find out that you and I have been together, they won’t stop until they have killed you. And they will kill you.” This is the nail in my coffin. Coming clean about this will definitely make Cooper hate me. “They will kill you, because you will be held accountable for starting the gang wars up again, just like me.”
Cooper looks a little perplexed, but not angry.
I take a shaky breath and continue. “As you know, I was a virgin when I met you. In order to carry through my part of the peace clause, I had to stay pure until my wedding night. Even if I wanted to, which I don’t, I can’t marry Nate anymore. I’m not a virgin anymore and I won’t bleed anymore. There are no more take-backs. we have targets on our backs. I’m—I’m sorry.”
There. I said it all. And now I am stuck, paralyzed in the longest moment of my life. I know he will pull away and as I sit there, wrapped in his arms, I try to immortalize every last moment before he pulls away from me.
“Oh, Savannah.” Instead of letting me go, or pushing me away, Cooper holds on to me tighter, squeezing me to his chest. “There’s nothing to be sorry for. I know what I’m risking. I have been shot at, I have walked into situations where we were vastly outnumbered by the enemy forces, and I took on fighters in my early days who I knew by all logic should pummel me into a pit. But falling for you scared me more than any of those things. Caring for people can hurt you, more than any bullet or pack of thugs, but if you don’t take the risk, you’ll miss out on
something wonderful. Savannah, we are something wonderful. And you can’t decide for me that I don’t want to be with you, because I do. Savannah, I would die for you.”
“But you don’t get it! You only want to be with me because you haven’t felt the pain, you don’t know how badly I can, and will, hurt you if you stay with me.” He’s still hugging me and I hate it, because I love it. I know I should pull away, but I can’t make myself leave his arms. I am completely out of control, totally under the sway of my emotions and desires. I can’t stand this uneasy feeling of uncertainty. Every cell in my body is begging him to say he doesn’t care, but every bit of my rational self understands that it’s an impossibility.
“Savannah, you are not the only one who has been through some tough shit.” Now Cooper sounds frustrated. “I grew up broke, watching my mom sleep with every low-life in town, sometimes for help with the rent, sometimes for a bag of groceries, and sometimes just for a can of Bud and a few minutes of forgetting that she’s a poor, single mom living in a trailer home with a dead-end job and no hope. I got into all kinds of trouble growing up, and was headed on the same kind of path as all the other losers who grow up in the trailer parks and die in them, too. I didn’t care for authority much, because I wasn’t used to my mom trying to put any rules down and I didn’t have a dad. Then everything changed when I met a girl. A rich girl who probably wouldn’t have given me a second thought if I wasn’t always around with my shirt off, mowing her lawn.” Cooper gives a bitter bark of a laugh. “But that didn’t do anything for her dad. Long story short, he wanted someone for his little princess who could provide the kind of life she was used to. I didn’t have the right pedigree to date his daughter, even though I was turning things around for myself. And for her. Long story short, I rose to the top of my graduating class, joined the military, advanced quickly through the Navy and into the Navy SEALs, and was getting ready to marry this girl.”