“Want to make you happy enough to relax,” she whispered up at me.
Damn that sweetness and the ache it sent straight to the heart of me.
“Can’t relax when there’s still fuckers out there who’d keep you from me,” I told her honest.
Her eyes flared. “You want to keep me?”
I rolled my eyes at her and slapped at her sweet behind so she squirmed. “You think I tell every bitch I fuck that I’m ‘it’ for them? Fuck, takes a helluva a guy to step inside my shoes after I’ve been there but I don’t warn women off of it.”
Lou planted her boney little elbows in my chest so she could prop her face in her hands and glare down at me. “Sorry, I think I lost your point when you implied you’ve slept with and ruined dozens of women.”
“Little girl, I’ve fucked and ruined hundreds of ’em.”
Her beautiful face collapsed into shock and then she surprised me by laughing loudly, leanin’ down to do it right in my face. When she recovered, she fell against me to give me a full body hug and say into my chest, “Good thing for me, then, that you want to keep me and not them.”
I grinned into her hair and hugged her back, almost wrapping her up twice over in my arms. “Good thing.”
“I woulda made you keep me, you know?” she told me, tippin’ her head back so she could look up at me.
I propped my hand behind my head and snorted, “Figured as much. I like to fool myself into thinkin’ I make my own decisions so I had to sort it out quick, I wanted to keep ya.”
She giggled and closed her eyes, sighing until she was melted against me.
“So happy,” she muttered. “Never been happier and doubt I ever could be.”
I thought about all the things she had left to look forward to in life—graduation, marriage, travels, kids—and I thought about all the things I was lookin’ forward to givin’ her—celebration parties, my ring, vacations, baby Garros—and I knew she was wrong.
“Gotta lot more of life to live, kid.”
This time she sighed, it was a sad thing. “I like to live a day at a time, Z.”
Kicked me in the face to hear her say that but I got it. You don’t live through cancer to take life for granted and I was fuckin’ proud of her for decidin’ no matter what to live it to the fullest.
“I can do that,” I told her even though I was already thinkin’ and plannin’.
I mighta been a biker but I’d been a planner, a smarter guy than anyone ever gave me credit for ’cause of my bike, my tats, my size and my cut. I’d always known what I wanted and got it, even if I got some surprises along the way.
And I wanted Lou. So, I knew I’d get her and tie her to me in all the ways normal society and biker society would allow.
But despite what she said, I knew we had all the time in the world, so I wasn’t in any fuckin’ rush. I could enjoy lyin’ on the floor of my cabin holdin’ my girl and do it knowin’ I’d have a lifetime with her.
I was too hot.
It confused me in my state of half slumber. I was never too warm. The cancer sometimes gave me hot flashes but mostly, I was always cold. It almost scared me the most—the coldness—because it made me think I was already halfway dead, stiff and frozen but clinging to life.
So, the heat pressed heavy and close around me confused me enough that I opened my eyes.
I saw tattoos.
A long quilted expanse of heavily muscled back covered edge to edge in beautifully detailed body art. In the center was The Fallen emblem, the large demon skull with The Fallen MC arched above it and Entrance, B.C. bracketing it below.
Then the wings.
They started at the edges of the skull but flowed over his shoulder blades and around his tree trunk thick arms. I touched a finger to the perfectly rendered feathers like I had when I was a little girl, filled with the same awe that I had a real-life angel under my hands.
His skin was smooth under the black ink but riddled with small and large scars, the ragged scar from where the bullet we’d shared had passed clean through him and into me, a longer, thin white scar that crossed diagonally from right hip to mid-back that looked like the swipe from a blade and the dozens of little scars breaking up the skin of his knuckles from too many fist fights.
It was a warrior’s body and it was tucked all around me protectively, guarding me even in his sleep with his great big back like a chest plate over my torso, his right leg thrown over my lower body and right arm curled around my hips to tuck me even closer.