She laughed a little, relieved and also giddy, a happy little flush in her cheeks. “Honestly, it’s been a bit fun keeping the secret. I can’t even really tell you who it is.”
My eyebrows cut hard lines into my forehead. “Oh my gosh, are you serious? This is so unlike you.”
Cleo and I were best friends for many reasons. We were both fairly innocent girls brought into the club world by family ties without a man in leather to call our own. We both loved classic movies, though I skewed to the horror and Cleo loved old love stories, shopping at vintage stores, and basically anything and everything girly. We were two peas in a pod, Axe-Man had said once after walking in on us making heart-shaped pancakes at midnight during a sleepover.
And it was true.
So, I was both shocked by her secrecy and by the fact that she was dating at all.
She’d never had more than a crush as far as I knew.
“Is it Eric?” I asked, thinking about her blushing around him recently while we were wrapping up a Little Miss Murder episode.
Her laughter was embarrassed and stuttering with awkwardness. “Bea! I can’t say, okay? Not yet at least.”
“Why would you need to hide a relationship with him? Are you afraid Axe-Man wouldn’t approve? I know Eric looks like a punk, but he’s a really good guy. Heck, he’s a dedicated churchgoer.”
Cleo’s blush intensified. She grabbed my hands and squeezed them tight, eyes shining as she leaned toward me. “He’s amazing. No matter why I can’t tell you the details, I was just bursting to tell you something. He makes me feel so good, Bea, like pure and beautiful and worthy.”
“Aw, honey,” I murmured, feeling the echo of that sensation in my chest as my mind instinctively turned to Priest. “I know the feeling, and it is awesome.”
“So awesome,” she agreed.
We beamed at each other for a long minute, then dissolved into giggles.
“I’m so happy for you,” I told her, bouncing slightly on the bed to emphasise my excitement.
Cleo mimicked me, then bounced our joined hands up and down in tandem. “I’m so happy for you.”
“You promise he’s treating you well?” I demanded. “I’ll kick his butt if he doesn’t.”
She chuckled, so carefree and beautiful, I wanted to squeeze her. So, I did, lunging at her to hug her so tightly, she wheezed in laughter and protest. We struggled a little in jest before I flopped onto my back, panting slightly as I stared at the pink canopy over my bed. Cleo’s hand found my own and linked our fingers.
“Love isn’t how I thought it would be,” she admitted softly after a minute.
“No?”
“No,” she said on a dreamy sigh. “It’s more than just feeling happy. He makes me feel like I have a purpose now.”
I hummed as I thought about that, but I didn’t have a response to give her that she would have liked. In fact, I didn’t like the conflation of love with purpose. My life before Priest was filled with drive. I loved my podcast, my schooling, my family and friends. I had dreams and goals.
I existed outside of my feelings for Priest, a fully realized woman on an independent path through life.
Loving Priest wasn’t like finding the North Star, a guiding force to hold my hand through life and show me the way. I didn’t need his love to acknowledge the beauty and worth of my own existence.
But…
Loving Priest made everything I loved about my life and myself vibrant and clear, somehow simply and utterly more profound. All those traumas I’d bore alone before him, all those things large and small I’d always believed I hated about myself, were suddenly given new depth and compassion. He hadn’t changed my life. It was that he had given me new perspective, limning everything both good and bad in the golden light of his love.
When we emerged from my bedroom a while later, my hair curled and gloss applied, my kitchen was filled with people.
I blinked at the sight, trying to absorb the sheer number of massive, tattooed, and leather decked men cramped into my little space. Zeus was wedged in a corner of the counters with Loulou between his legs, held loosely in one arm while he held Monster in the other and my sister cradled Angel. Lila was beside them, cooing at Angel so she laughed and clapped while Nova watched both of them with obvious desire stamped on his gorgeous face. King and Cress were on the ground beside the island on some of my living room pillows playing with Steele and Shaw, who raced toy motorcycles over their limbs and a smiling baby Prince in his car seat.
Hannah was laughing with Harleigh Rose as they fixed coffee for everyone, moving between and around Lion and Lysander, who were making pancakes in my pink pans on the stove. Sander, massive, scarred and scowling, was even wearing one of my aprons, a white one patterned in red hearts. He looked ridiculous, but I knew he did it to make Honey smile because she was doing so, poorly hidden behind her hand as she pretended to be bored on a stool between Dane and Bat. It was rare to see her at Fallen functions even though she was technically Maja and Buck’s ward, because she resented her half-siblings and had been poisoned against the club by her pernicious, now dead mother. But if she was there, so too always was Sander.