“No,” I shake my head. “This is home—for me, and for you, and this club is your family, that’s easy to see.”
“You’re the only—”
“I know,” I whisper. “But this is part of it, and we can’t go.” I grin. “I don’t want to, either.”
“If trouble comes—”
“Then trouble will come,” I say quietly, sliding close to him. “But how about we make a pact. I’ll look out for you, and you look out for me. That work?”
He grins. “I can work with that,” he growls, scooping me into him. “So we’re staying right here.”
“Right here.”
“And you’re all mine.”
I grin. “Oh trust me on that.”
He smiles hungrily and pulls me close. “Ready for bed?”
He leans down and kisses me, but it takes about half a second for that kiss to turn into something that is decidedly not a good night kiss.
“I’m ready for bed,” I breathe, my eyes closed and my lips brushing his. “But I’m not sure if I’m ready to sleep.”
“Oh believe me, love,” he growls, his hand sliding down to cup my ass. “You’re not bloody sleeping yet.”
His lips crush to mine, and I melt into him as we tumble back into the cabin and shut the door behind us. And sleep does come, of course.
…It just doesn’t happen until about noon that day.
Epilogue
Oliver
Let me tell you a little story. It starts with a punk of a little shit growing up in the ass-end of London. He stole, he fought, he was a right prick, and he was destined to die young, unglamorously, and most decidedly alone.
He had three rules: be ready to fight, keep your nose out of other people’s shit, and never stop moving. He lived his life at a hundred eighty miles an hour, with no brakes, no helmet, and no regrets, and he welcomed death with a middle finger in the air and a grin on his face.
He thought this made him tough—wild and bold and unafraid. He thought thumbing his nose at death and living as recklessly as humanly possible was a badge of honor, as if this was some sort of achievement that took hard work to reach.
He was wrong.
He was wrong on every. Single. Level.
When his life shattered, several different times, he let the winds, or fate, or his own overblown ego and sense of immortality take him here it would. He lived in darkness, he worked for devils, and he did terrible things, until whatever person he’d been born was dead and buried. He did this until he was a demon himself, grinning as he rode headfirst into hell.
But he got brake-checked along the way, and this was a good thing. He met a friend just as wild as him, but with just enough more sense of his own mortality to keep our hero from dying spectacularly. Then he met a few other friends—men not unlike himself who’d spent their lives running from the light and pretending that darkness made them harder instead of realizing it was a crutch, and a weak man’s false armor.
They formed a group, and together, they stumbled forward. And yet, this man, our hero, still found darkness and pain, even if he had to hunt for it. He still sought the thrill of death, and the rush of telling it to go fuck itself at breakneck speeds.
And then, he met a girl.
Not just any girl, either. A woman who slammed on his brakes, and for the first time in his entire life, made him pull back the cover of darkness and let light shine on his imperfections and bullshit. She didn’t know it at the time, but she pulled him back from the edge, one last time. And this time, he didn’t much feel like looking over that cliff again.
But maybe you didn’t come this far to wax poetic. Maybe you got all the way here hoping to be scandalized, or shocked at some sort of hint into another person’s story. Well, you’re shit out of bloody luck, because this is where my story ends.
…Guess you’ll just have to hear theirs to find that scandal and salaciousness you’re looking for. But trust me, it’ll be there if you go looking for it.
You thought you knew the ending of this story at the beginning. So did he, our hero, at the beginning of his. But endings change. Life changes, and people change with it. There are roads you take and roads you don’t. They’ll split and split again, and we keep trying to find the right one as best we can in the darkness. But sometimes, we meet a person traveling with us who shines a light just by being there, and picking the right road just gets a little easier.
The ending you think you know doesn’t have to be so. Trust me on that one.
Choose to live. Choose to seek and embrace love. Choose desire, not want. Wanting will leave you broken and angry, and forever unsatisfied. But desire? Desire will light a fire under your arse and remind you to breathe.
Thumbing your nose at death and living recklessly isn’t a badge of honor. Rushing headfirst through life with no brakes isn’t hard work.
Living is hard work.
Loving, and being loved, is the badge of honor.
Wear it proud.
* * *
The End.