He whipped his shades to me. “Rosie, I need to talk to your….”
“Boyfriend?” I finished for him.
Cade scowled and nodded once.
I squeezed Luke’s hand. “You’re not throwing your macho shit ordering me around and beating Luke up.” I moved forward, in front of Luke, shielding him from any blow that Cade might decide to land. “You’ll have to go through me first.”
Cade pushed his shades to the top of his head in frustration. “Really, Rosie? The dramatics necessary?”
I gaped. “Seriously? I’m not the one who was standing in the middle of the parking lot like Snake Plissken.”
There was gentle pressure at my hips as Luke turned me. “Babe, it’s okay,” he murmured.
“No it’s not. You don’t have to play this game. It’s a dumb dick-swinging contest. I have it on very good authority that you don’t need to do that.” I was disappointed that I didn’t get to see Cade’s glare at the comment, but the fury was hot on my back.
Luke kissed my head, smiling and shaking his own. “I appreciate you lookin’ out for me, babe, but this needs to happen. I can take care of myself. And no matter what, I’m in there, right behind you, okay?” he promised, nodding to the clubhouse.
I paused, frowning. “I don’t like this,” I grumbled, turning to scowl at Cade. “And you hurt him, I will shoot you,” I promised. My gun was in my purse.
Cade didn’t answer.
“Thought tensions might be high,” Luke said, putting his hand in his pocket and opening his palm to reveal a handful of bullets. “Took them out to make sure you don’t do something you’d regret.”
I would’ve had a lot to say about that had I not seen the corner of Cade’s mouth twitch. In Cade World, that was considered a smile.
I pointed between the two men who I loved immensely in different ways. “Play nice,” I ordered.
Luke grinned. “Always.”
Cade, again, didn’t answer.
I gave Luke one more lingering glance before I walked into the clubhouse.
I’d always felt easy, relaxed, walking in there.
But without Luke at my side, it didn’t feel right.
I prayed that he was true to his promise, that no matter what, he’d be right behind me.
Luke
He braced. Hard. For the hit—fuck, for the bullet. He was certain the former was coming; the latter was an educated guess. You didn’t just walk into the compound you’d been trying to burn to the ground for years, stand in front of the man you’d hated for your entire life, the man whose life you were trying to ruin, tell him you loved his baby sister and get a pat on the back. No. Even in a normal situation you wouldn’t get that. And this was so far from a normal situation he would laugh if he wasn’t so fucking nervous.
Not about the inevitable punch or the semi-inevitable bullet.
He’d experienced a lot of the former and a fair few of the latter in his years wearing the badge. He was used to them. He sure as fuck wasn’t afraid of them.
He was afraid of any life without Rosie. Fucked up, but he was finding it hard to remember that he had any life before her. It sounded ridiculous, like he was a character in some Nicholas Sparks book for even thinking it, but it was the truth. It was all murky, the before, like a half-remembered dream.
At least it was when he was with her.
Now that he was staring in the face of the man who could alter the course of his life, his past, that dream, was promising an ugly and stark reality of a future without her if this didn’t go well.
Rosie’s family were everything to her. Some women built their worth on things, on looks, money, the men they could bed, the fucking image they put on their social media. Not Rosie. Her worth, her life, her happiness were packaged into that clubhouse, gated off and secured with barbed wire. She’d let him in, but the man in front of him could kick him out.
He’d never thought he’d want to so badly be in there.
They stared at each other for a long time. The length of a lifetime he’d be promised if this went to shit. Cade had this way of staring at a man like he had all the time in the world to cut his guts out and show them to him. Just for fun. It didn’t scare Luke. At least not before.
“You love her?” Cade grunted finally, breaking the uneasy silence.
Luke was momentarily surprised it was words that broke the silence instead of the unmistakable sound of a fist on flesh or a bullet discharging, but he recovered quickly.
“Yeah,” he replied.
Cade gave him that stare once more, testing the truth in that single word.
Luke supposed he had a lot of practice in staring at a man and looking for a lie in his eyes. Probably more than Luke did, though he’d never admit that out loud.
Cade nodded once. “Okay. Let’s have a beer.”
Luke gaped at him. Openly gaped. He could feel the loss of his poker face and didn’t have it in him to regain it.
“You’re shitting me,” he spluttered. “That’s it?”
Cade nodded again. “That’s it.”
Luke ran his hand through his hair. “You’re not spiking my beer with arsenic?”
Cade made a grunt that sounded suspiciously like a chuckle. “Poison’s a woman’s weapon. Not my sister’s, of course. Hers is a G42. Subtlety is not her strong suit. Runs in the family.”
“But it can’t be that simple,” Luke said, a smile of his own threatening the corner of his mouth.
“Not many things in life are that simple,” Cade said. “It’s fuckin’ tiring dealing with them. Why the fuck try to make the simple things complicated too? Lost patience for that shit the second I saw life without my wife. My kids.” His eyes went dark. “So you love my sister. She’s happy, really happy this time, so that means she loves you. Do I wish she was with someone who didn’t spend the majority of his career trying to bring down my club? Perhaps. But then again, maybe not. Not my choice. Know by experience it’s not yours, or even hers either. We don’t get to control that shit. We’re just lucky enough to live it.”
Luke stared at Cade. The man who, up until recently, he’d thought of as a criminal, as a cold-blooded killer. Who he’d never heard that many words from… ever.
“Don’t get me wrong. You hurt her, I’ll cut off your dick and feed it to you,” Cade continued conversationally. “After she’s done with you, of course.” He eyed him shrewdly. “Don’t expect I’ll be needing to do that, though. I repeat the question. Do you love her?”
Like before, without hesitation, Luke answered, “Yes.”
Cade shrugged. “Then it’s that simple.”
He turned on his heel, walking toward the entrance of the clubhouse that Luke had never been an invited guest of before in his entire life. If there ever was going to be an invitation, Cade’s shrug and small monologue followed by his exit that didn’t include a death threat or the brandishing of a weapon was it.
Luke stared at the patch on the back of Cade’s cut, the grim reaper taunting him: ‘The Sons of Templar MC.’
All his life, he was convinced that piece of leather, all who wore it, and everything it represented were nothing short of the Devil. He tried to think of what specifically gave him that impression, that bloodthirsty need to see the entire club and its members dismantled and cuffed.