Dauntless (Sons of Templar MC) (28 page)

I scowled at him. “I’m not moving in with you,” I told him firmly.

“Yes, you are,” he argued.

I restrained my urge to fight, to swear my way out of this situation. Namely because I didn’t want to fight with Gabriel. We were both fighting enough battles; we didn’t need to fight each other. So I took a breath, glancing down at our boots, inches away from each other. “I have to figure myself out before I can give you anything. I have to find out who I am without the drugs, without the stripping, without the filth. That new person is just being made, coming to life after I died those months ago.” I found my strength and glanced into his glittering eyes. “Because that’s what happened. I died. A part of me. A big fucking part. The part I held most precious because it was the part I thought had survived everything. Would survive everything.” I paused, sucking in a breath. “I need to find a way to come back to life before I can make anything with you. I need time,” I whispered.

His eyes still glittered, twinkled with emotion that I couldn’t place, and his usually expressive face was blank, the small twitch in his jaw the only thing distinguishing him from a statue. That and the way my blood sang for him, yearned for him.

He stepped forward, so close his body brushed mine and I was engulfed in his musky scent. He didn’t touch me, though, at least not physically. Though he held me just the same, every inch of me, whoever ‘me’ was.

“You didn’t die,” he rasped, his voice like sandpaper. He lifted his hand and trailed it lightly down my cheek, his eyes watching its progress. “You, my little firefly, turned into a chrysalis, a cocoon that protected that soft, beautiful part of you that somehow survived what would destroy most people.” His hand moved down to my collarbone. “It took a while for the outer parts of you to heal, but now you’re comin’ out of that cocoon, becoming what you’ve always been. Evolving into something more beautiful than before.” He took a breath. “You need time to get to know this new beautiful thing you’ve turned into, you got it. You want to learn to love the woman you see in the mirror every day, fine with me.” His hand circled my neck and pulled me gently so our foreheads were touching and his eyes burned into mine. “You can have all of that, but I’m not going anywhere. You see, I’ve always known that beautiful thing you’ve turned into, always seen it. And I don’t need to learn to love the woman you see in the mirror.” His nose rubbed against mine and I struggled to breathe. “’Cause I already do. Have since the moment you talked about nuts covered in piss.”

Before I had the chance to respond, he pulled back and stared at me. I expected him to say something else, or to pressure me to say something. Instead, he gave me a small, dark grin.

“See you tomorrow, firefly.”

Then he was gone.

That guy so knew how to make an exit.

“
S
ometimes the most courageous
act a human can do is to let somebody love them.”

-Michael Xavier

“
G
reat
. More fucking visitors,” I muttered to myself. I walked through the hallway to the door it felt like I’d just closed on Lizzie. I’d contemplated ignoring it, but then I thought it might be some big bad biker man who would take my not answering to mean I’d been kidnapped or was hanging from a shower rod. Then he’d take it upon his muscled shoulders to kick the door down and stomp in and save the day. I heard they did that sort of thing rather frequently. So to save Rosie’s door, I answered.

I couldn’t have been more surprised at who the knocker was when I burst it open. Instead of some biker man, it was a biker chick.
The
biker chick. Or queen, to be exact. Evie was someone I’d only met in passing and she’d made it more than clear what she thought of me, which was not much. Not that I blamed her. She was hard. There was something behind those only slightly wrinkled eyes that saw through the bullshit.

Which had been dangerous before.

Now it was downright terrifying.

She quirked a brow. “You gonna invite me in or just stare at me like that?” she asked, her voice husky and raw.

I was taken aback by the greeting. Everyone had taken to treating me with care since I’d been back, like I was breakable. Fragile. Rosie was a slight exception, but even her concern cracked through. They meant well, I knew, but the best way to make someone feel weak was to treat them like they were about to fall apart.

It seemed Evie wasn’t going to do that. I opened the door and she strutted through it, her large fringed leather handbag swinging in the crook of her arm. I dutifully followed her back into Rosie’s living room. It looked like a hippy, a biker and a fashionista had vomited all over it. The whole room was an identity crisis, but like Rosie herself, it worked.

Evie sat herself down on the white sofa, pushing a furry throw pillow out of the way.

I stared at her.

She stared back at me.

“Can I get you something? The blood of an infant, bottled unicorn tears?” I asked uneasily.

She quirked a brow, obviously not finding me funny. Then she looked me up and down. “I get it,” she declared. “Why he picked you.”

I immediately knew who she was talking about and I stiffened.

She either didn’t notice or ignored it. “The fact you’re still up and about, wearing crop tops, shows you’ve got guts. You’re not hard on the eyes, either. Too skinny, though.”

I frowned at her. “I’m not sure where this conversation is going, but then again I was lost before we started.”

She eyed me. “I’m here to check on a girl who went through the hellest of hells and came out the other side. Not unscathed, I’m guessing, considering the boy I consider a son is full of fucking scars that will never heal.”

I flinched at the no-nonsense tone of her husky voice.

She didn’t miss that. “Yeah, I see you’ve caught them too. They’re hard to miss. Though I guess impossible to miss when you see them in the mirror.”

I didn’t think she required an answer, so I moved to sit down in the sofa. Only so long I could stay standing under the weight of her words.

“You clean?” she asked.

I gaped at her. “You really don’t do bullshit, do you?”

She shook her head. “This life, there is no bullshit. A lot of blood, bullets, and chaos, but no bullshit.”

“I dig that.” I eyed her. “I’m clean,” I said. “Though I’m more depraved now than I was when I was using.” I had no idea why I added that little personal gem. Maybe because I was tired of the bullshit myself.

“That’s called love. The most addictive and destructive substance out there. If used right, it can create.” She looked at me shrewdly. “In your case, recreate.” There was a pregnant pause. “If used wrong, it can flatten everything in your life and turn what remains into a gray wasteland.”

I raised my brow. “I don’t exactly understand what you’re trying to convince me of here. That I should run back to the needle?”

She lit her smoke. “There a promise of anything going right with that needle? Way I see it, the only thing it promises is a barren wasteland, right or wrong.” Her kohl-rimmed eyes narrowed on me. “What you’ve got with the kid, what he’s offering you? Sure, if it goes bad it might resemble the wasteland that addiction is. But you give it a chance, you give him a chance, you might just find an oasis.”

I chewed over her words as she puffed on her smoke, not bothered that I was silent. She arched her brow at me. “Though you decide that shit, you do it soon. Stop fuckin’ him around. He’ll follow you around like a lovesick puppy and feast on every scrap of hope you give him. Those men”—she nodded to the curb where Skid’s bike was visible—“they don’t love like normal men. Not in this life. They’ve chosen a life outside the lines of the coloring book called society. They live rough and hard. They love hard too. And mostly, it’s for life. Even if you two explode into a blaze of disaster, he’ll still hold the burning embers till the day the reaper takes him. I can see that in his eyes.”

Cue girly stomach flip. Not a time to mull over that while I was getting life lessons from the biker matriarch.

“I’ve known him since he was a prospect runnin’ from a street gang and used his good looks and smart mouth to guide him through the shit life threw at him. He’s a good man. And if you hurt him, I’ll run you over with my car and make it look like an accident,” she declared, like she was mentioning she might have me out for dinner one night. It wasn’t an empty threat; I’d heard plenty of those in my life. This was a promise. And despite the fact she was promising my murder, I liked it. I liked that for Lucky, that he had someone looking out for him. That he had a family. I liked that for Lily too. She lost the only family she had left when her mom died and was saddled with the junkie stripper fuckup for a best friend. Now she had a family that would kill for one another.

Not exactly Thanksgiving with Grandma, but it was good.

And on a little shelf in the dusty corners of my mind, I liked it for me too. That I might find a way to fit. Because this was Evie’s roundabout way of welcoming me into the fold—with a death threat, but with a promise of family too.

I nodded slowly as it all sank in and I nurtured the little hope I had. “I won’t hurt him. Not on purpose, at least.” I had to cover my bases.

She put out her smoke and stood, hitching her bag on her shoulder. “I don’t expect you will.” She walked over to me and cupped my face in her manicured hand. I didn’t flinch away like I had with most human touch recently. It didn’t make my skin crawl or the dirt that more unbearable. It was kind of nice.

“What I see behind Lucky’s eyes, I see it behind yours too. You’re hiding behind your demons, baby. I know they’re bigger and scarier than most, and I’ll personally castrate the person who put them there given half the chance, but they’re not indestructible. You’re in charge of whether you let them win or not. Whether you give yourself a chance at something more than the shitty plate that life decided to hand you.” She leaned in and I smelled vanilla and coconut as she kissed my head and straightened. “We got family dinner at my place next Sunday. You make the right choice, you’ll be there.”

On that note, she turned on her caged heel and left the room.

I put my head back on the sofa. “Well, fuck,” I muttered to the ceiling.

* * *

T
he next day
, Gabriel turned up at my office, sauntering in and dripping his hotness all over the place. He leaned against the desk, staring at me.

“I can’t concentrate with you just leaning there, being all hot,” I snapped at him, not looking up.

His grin was palpable. “Well, I’m sorry, but hot is the only thing I know how to be. It’s a blessing and a curse. Mostly a blessing ’cause I get to distract the beautiful Rebecca Flannery,” he said, placing something on top of my budget sheet.

I glanced up at him, my stomach fluttering at the look on his face. And the stomach flutter was good. Or mostly so.

“What’s this?” I asked, fingering the envelope in my hands.

His eyes twinkled. “Open it and find out.”

I did as he instructed, and after a couple seconds scanning what was on the page I moved my head up to meet his eyes. “Is this for real?” I asked in disbelief.

He grinned. “Well, I don’t know if it’s technically going to be a
lifetime
supply considering ice cream could become obsolete when we turn into oil-consuming cyborgs. But for now, you’ll never want for Chunky Monkey.”

I gaped at him. The piece of paper was a delivery schedule from Ben & Jerry’s, which stated a new delivery every week.

“Oh, and I would like to present you, Rebecca Flannery, with this.” He pulled out a statue-like trophy from behind his back.

I took it automatically, surprised at the weight. My eyes near popped out of my head. “This looks surprisingly real,” I said slowly, looking at the fake Golden Globe in my hands.

He merely shrugged.

“This is a fake, right?” I asked while reading the inscription.

He shrugged again. “Let’s just say I know people. Who would you like to thank? The academy? Your agent? Or your positively amazing old man and soon-to-be roommate?”

I stopped my perusal of the statue and gave him my full attention.

“My body is my fortress, my dominion. When we lost Faith,
I
lost faith. Whatever shred I’d been clutching. Lost all control. Of everything apart from my body.” I hugged my arms around my ribs. “I became the dictator of it. The dictator bent on destruction. Not because I was suicidal but because even through destruction came control. I was the agent of my own destiny, or in this case my own demise. In a world that gave me a life I had no control over, my body became my kingdom in which I ruled. There was a kind of brutal comfort in that. Then
they
came. They did those things. My control was lost. I held no dominion over myself. The one thing I had left to possess, even through the darkest depths of my addiction, was lost. They stole it. I became a stranger, a prisoner to myself. Now with you, this, the same thing is happening. I don’t have control over this, over us. It could mean a destruction that isn’t in my hands. It’s in yours.”

“I’d never fuckin’ destroy you, baby. I’ll treasure you.”

“I know. At least I hope. But I can’t trust that. Not now. Not when I’ve only just gotten the dominion of my own body back. I don’t think I can pass over the keys to the kingdom just yet.”

The cocktail of emotions in his eyes was enough for me to battle against the prickle of tears at the backs of mine. I wanted to throw myself into his arms, tell him I was his, now and forever. To give in to the fairy tale. To believe him. I almost did; my arm actually twitched. But I held stock-still because this wasn’t a fairy tale. This was life. This was
my
life. The one I’d only just got back. The only one I had. And I couldn’t lose myself in another addiction just as I’d kicked the last one.

“I get it,” he said finally. “Fuckin’ kills me, but I get it. You’ve got the keys to the kingdom, baby, and I’ll wait for them ’cause it’s prime real estate. Mine. And you can have your kingdom as long as you reside in my house.”

I frowned at him. “I don’t think you get me.”

“Oh, I get you. But I’m havin’ you under my roof. You’ll get your own room. No funny business, I promise. I can keep my hands to myself, you know. I’m not an animal. Though I can’t say the same for you, having my manly deliciousness within licking distance.” He waggled his eyebrows and I couldn’t help but surrender to the grin that tickled the corner of my mouth.

He was tempting me. With his stupid grin, with the fact he didn’t blink at giving me what I wanted, even if it was ice cream. He wanted me. Me. After everything.

And I wanted him. After everything. I wanted nothing more than to move in with him. To be normal. Free from my nightmares.

But I was scared.

Terrified.

Not for me, for the grinning biker in front of me who apparently was willing to steal Golden Globes for me. To sell his soul for me.

“I’m never going to be free,” I whispered. I didn’t let the hardness of his jaw penetrate, and I straightened my back so I didn’t look like I was hunched over feeling sorry for myself. I wasn’t. Self-pity was an ugly emotion that I had no room for. “I’m okay with that. I’m at peace with that. I was born captured by a shitty childhood, and from then onwards I would live in captivity. I chose to chain myself to the needle. That’s for life. I’ll always be an addict, never be free of that label. It was a choice. It was on me, and I accept it.” I sucked in a breath. “What they… did, I’ll never be free of that either. It’s something I’ve survived but I’ll never be free from. I’ve accepted that too.” I found the courage to meet his hazel eyes. “But you can be. You can be free from all of that. I have to live in captivity because I’ve got no choice. It’s my life and I’ll live with it, but I won’t chain you down too. I won’t. I care far too much about you to do that.” I didn’t say how much because admitting it to myself was another set of chains I couldn’t accept. Because those didn’t scratch at my psyche and jar me with discomfort. They felt nice. Right.