I sucked in a ragged breath. “I love you.”
She smiled. “And I love you right back. So does Cade. And the club. Forever. No matter what. So just be happy. Just be you.”
I sipped my wine. “I’ll try.”
It was dark by the time I heard a key in my lock. Gwen left after only one more glass of wine, telling me she had a drive to make.
I felt significantly lighter once she was gone.
But then I started to get heavy with worry when Luke didn’t answer his phone, didn’t come back. I started to convince myself that I’d majorly fucked up this time.
The second his large form came through the door, I exhaled, properly. Then I ran, right into his arms. He hadn’t expected it, so he went back on one leg, but that didn’t stop him from catching me.
I didn’t say anything, just clutched him, just inhaled clean air. Not just Luke, the both of us. Clean.
I eventually let him put me down, but he didn’t let me go. He clutched me tightly, eyes stuck on mine.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I said shit I didn’t mean and it was ugly, and I’m sorry. But you’re right, I don’t know how to be me. Not really.” I paused. “Life’s just a big party, you know? A costume party. Most people don’t realize that. They take it so fucking seriously. The little cages they live in. The lines they’ve got to stay between. I’m not a different person every day because I have deep-rooted psychological issues.” I toyed with Luke’s shirt. “Okay, maybe that’s part of it, but mostly I’m a different person because I can be. It’s that simple. People don’t realize it. The little pleasures. Wearing head-to-toe sparkles one day and then black lipstick the next. That’s what life is, the little pleasures. Not the big moments. They take too much energy, too much planning, too much fucking artifice. All those big moments are to show the world you’re happy. The little ones are just to be happy. Not for the world, for you. So yeah, I take pleasure in the fact that I don’t know what person I’ll be in the morning. In the fact that I don’t have to know. Because my life would be a pretty fucking bleary place if I didn’t.”
He leaned forward, face unreadable. “You’re trying to convince me about something that made me fall in love with you,” he said. “I love that I’m going to be as surprised as you are when you decide who you’ll be every day. I don’t give a fuck that you don’t know what person you’ll be in the morning. I fucking love that. As long as that person is someone who wakes up next to me, I’m good, babe. That’s my little pleasure.”
“You can’t keep saying things like that, not after saying nothing at all for years,” I whispered.
“Even when I didn’t speak, I’ve never said nothing at all,” he murmured. “You know that. You owe it to us, to yourself, to do this, Rosie.”
“Yeah, I do,” I agreed.
“Something good did come of this afternoon,” he rasped, moving his hands up to cup my breasts softly.
I sucked in a breath. “And what’s that?” I said, voice heavy.
“We get to experience makeup sex,” he growled.
“Why do we have to keep this a secret?” Luke asked sometime later, after possibly the most fucking amazing makeup sex known to man. “Especially now that Gwen knows.”
I drew circles on his bare chest, my tattooed hand contrasting against the naked skin. “Can you think of any other way, Luke? Think of us reading the paper in the morning, getting brunch with our friends and family? Being that couple? No. We don’t fit that way.”
He moved me so our eyes met. “Listen to you, Rosie, talking about fitting, molding. Wasn’t it you who once told me it was the greatest farce of them all, trying to squeeze into some role? I’m not asking for that. I never fuckin’ would. I’m askin’ to sleep with you, a full night. Wake up with you. Not have snatched fuckin’ moments with you, I need it all with you.”
I narrowed my eyes. “What about the club, Luke? I’m a package deal. As much as I sometimes wish Templar, along with Trouble, wasn’t my middle name, it is, and always will be. You can’t reconcile your hatred. Being with me, out in the open, in the daylight, means them too. That’s my world. It’s not yours.” It was what we kept coming back to, what Luke had never really, properly addressed. It was all well and good stepping over it in the romance of the moment, but it was quite another thing living with it.
He cupped my face. “You’re my world, so I’ll come into it. I don’t have hatred for what makes you you.”
I pushed up on my elbow and raised my brow. “So you’ll come home, to Amber, this weekend, and come to a party? At the club. As Luke, my boyfriend, not Luke, the sheriff?”
He pulled me into his arms. “I was never Luke, the sheriff. I was always Luke, Rosie’s man. Even before I knew it. Definitely before you knew it.”
I swallowed. “Is that your alpha and dramatic way of saying you’ll come?” I still wasn’t used to it, those hearts and flowers declarations. They didn’t feel real. They couldn’t feel real. Then again, all the shit, the horrible shit we’d been through up until now, was real, so why couldn’t some of the good stuff be real too?
He chuckled and kissed my nose. “Yeah, babe.”
I sank into his embrace for a moment and his lips found the top of my head. He inhaled, and I leaned back. “Did you just sniff my head?”
He smiled. “Sure did.”
“That’s weird, dude.”
He continued to smile. “I’ve had twenty years of wondering what every inch of you smelled like, tasted like. Had to restrain myself from finding out because I didn’t think you could be mine, not biblically at least. Now that you are mine, finally, there’s nothing to stop me from doing any of that. So I will, as often as possible,” he murmured.
Fuck. There it was. More hearts and flowers. It was almost as hard to deal with as the shit that came before. For different reasons.
“You do realize that someone will almost certainly brandish at least one weapon at you, on principle,” I said, skipping acknowledgement of his words once more.
He didn’t seem to worry about me not fulfilling my feminine duty to whisper sweet nothings back to him. “Bring it on, babe.”
All my excuses and warnings used up, I sank back into his embrace, defeated. Or victorious. I wasn’t sure which.
Chapter Eighteen
Despite all my bravado in the fight that led to Luke and me being in a car a few minutes out of Amber, I was nervous.
Among other things.
The car was heading directly for my home. Not my house, but the Sons of Templar compound. My house didn’t feel like my house anymore. It surely wasn’t my home.
I’d brought it with the proceeds of some of my extracurricular activities. To solve any of the questions I would’ve gotten from buying said house with money that no one—apart from Wire—knew I had, I took the offer for the loan of a down payment from Steg. And from Cade. And then paid them back with each other’s money.
I wagered they’d never find out because men didn’t talk about that kind of stuff at the best of times, and at that point, Cade and Steg were very far from the best of times.