“Over two years ago.”
“Before you started prospecting?” he asks.
“Yep.”
“If you’re hung up on her, then why not try to get her back?” Ian questions.
“I am going to try and get her back. It’s just not going to be easy.”
“Nothing worth having ever is,” he tells me simply. “You’ve got to earn that shit. Work hard for it. Fucking bleed for it. That way you won’t ever take it for granted once you have it.”
“Easy isn’t the problem. I’ll do whatever it takes to get her back, but it’s just taking longer than I had hoped.”
“Are you doing everything you can right fucking now?” he asks.
“I-I guess so. Yeah,” I agree. I earned my patch. I’ve become a Savage King, which wasn’t easy, and isn’t something many people are worthy of accomplishing. That was the first part of my plan. The rest, earning enough money so that Evelyn and Rita won’t ever have to worry about medical bills again is going to take a little longer.
“Then take it easy on yourself. Shit happens when it’s supposed to, not when we want it to. I’m not a patient man — that’s why this mess with Gabriel hit me so hard at first. But then I saw his sacrifice as the gift it was to me, and I decided to appreciate the time we’re apart instead of resenting it. You know?”
“Yeah,” I agree, wondering if Evelyn will feel the same way knowing I left her with that asshole for two years while he put her through no telling what. I hope she’ll be able to forgive me.
It may take some time to get everything figured out, but now that I’ve got the strength of the Savage Kings behind me, I won’t cower away like a pussy any longer.
Chapter Eight
Evelyn
Sitting in the waiting room of the nephrologist’s office shouldn’t feel like a vacation, but it does. Which is not fair to all the people around me in pain or worse, going through kidney failure like my mom. Thankfully, my mother is just here for lab work today, and then she’ll come back next week to see her doctor and go over the results.
But here, hanging out in the quiet waiting room, I don’t have Lowell breathing down my neck. It’s peaceful, and I enjoy the rare moments that he allows me to leave his side, which do not come often.
He goes out all hours of the day and night; but if I want to leave our apartment, he has to take me, like I’m not a grown woman who can drive a car and find my way to the store on my own.
Blowing out a breath, I rest my head back on the chair and close my eyes to soak in the few moments of reprieve.
“Miss Young? Evelyn Young?”
My peace is disrupted when someone calls my name, not my mother’s. I abruptly jump up and rush over to the nurse waiting at the door that leads to the exam rooms.
“What’s wrong? Is my mother okay?” I ask frantically.
“She’s still waiting to have her blood drawn, but I need you to come on back and wait for her in an exam room,” she says with a tilt of her head down the hallway before she starts walking hurriedly in that direction.
“Why? My mother’s not even seeing a doctor today,” I tell her in confusion.
“No, she’s not,” the nurse responds when we come to a stop in front of a closed exam room. “Go on in, and I’ll come back for you once your mother is finished up.”
“But…I don’t understand,” I say. “Is this because I was sleeping in the lobby? I wasn’t. I just shut my eyes for a few minutes.”
“No, ma’am. Please just go on inside,” she begs, lowering her voice as she glances around the hallway nervously. “There’s someone who wants to speak to you in private,” she whispers and then opens the door for me to go in.
Great. Is Lowell here? Was this some sort of test where he wants to make sure I really brought my mother in to the doctor and not to a male strip club or something equally crazy?
Knowing I have no choice but to find out what he wants since he’s the one who is paying for all of my mother’s visits and procedures, I sigh and slip through the door that shuts behind me. When I see the man who is sitting on the exam room table, I gasp audibly. It’s not Lowell. And it actually takes me several seconds of staring at his face before recognition dawns on me.
“Cedric?” I say in disbelief, because…it’s impossible.
“Hey,” he says with a crooked grin when he hops down from the table and strolls over to me. He looks so…different, which is why it took me so long to realize it was my childhood best friend. He’s no longer tall and lean. His chest is broader, and his arms are much thicker. I’ve never seen him with facial hair before, because he couldn’t even grow a mustache in high school, but now he has several days’ worth of black stubble along his stern jawline that loop around to a goatee.
He looks…good.
Better than good. Great. Amazing. Hot. As. Hell.
His boots come to a stop about a foot away from me, his hands shoved in the front pockets of his jeans like he’s not sure if he should hug me or not. So I decide for him.
I launch myself at him, winding my arms around his neck and squeezing him tight. His arms thankfully come around to hug me back just as fiercely until I’m lifted off of my feet.
“God, I’ve missed you,” he murmurs into my hair, his voice deeper, gruffer than when he was my easygoing best friend.
I want him to hold me forever, but I know that’s impossible. I’m suddenly paranoid that Lowell will find out he’s here. He would hurt Cedric again, much worse than what he did the last night at his house. Reluctantly, I let him go and take a step back to look at his different but still so familiar face. His silvery-blue eyes are the one thing that hasn’t changed, not even the way they look at me.
“Wh-what are you doing here?” I ask him.
“I couldn’t stay away from you any longer, Ev.”
“You shouldn’t be here,” I say softly. “If Lowell finds out…”
“He won’t,” Cedric replies calmly. “Only the nurse I bribed knows I’m here. She snuck me in through the back door.”
“Why are you here?” I ask again. “I’ve missed you too, but Lowell is even more dangerous than he was before.”
“Yeah, well, so am I,” he says confidently. That’s when I finally notice his black leather cut, one with patches on it, similar to the ones on Lowell’s denim one.
“You joined an MC?” I ask in surprise. “How? When?”
“It took me over two years to patch in, but I did it, and now I’m a member of the original charter of the Savage Kings.”
Frowning, I tell him, “I’ve heard that name before.”
“I’m not surprised,” Cedric mutters. “The Kings are the ones who took down the Ace of Spades MC years ago. Lowell was one of the three stragglers that started the new club.”
Grasping either side of the leather, I tell him, “This isn’t you, Cedric. What are you doing?”
“This is me,” he says, covering my wrists with his much bigger hands, one of which rubs over the seashells on the bracelet he made me so long ago. “I’m not the same sweet, innocent boy I was before.”