Chapter 3 #8
Two horses were saddled near the tree line.
“No trucks,” he said before I could ask. “Too loud. Too easy to track. We ride the back wash, cut through the brush, and nobody sees a thing unless they’re looking for ghosts.”
“I feel like a ghost and I hate horses.”
Dylan glanced at me. “Not tonight and then you’ll have to ride with me again.”
He helped me mount because my pride had finally met a staircase it couldn’t climb before swinging up behind me. His body warm and solid at my back.
I felt all the things. His hard thighs mine slightly on top of his. His strong arms holding me against his chest; his biceps gently brushing under my breasts. The tiny nerve endings feeling like a live wire.
“Relax,” he murmured near my ear. “I know better.”
I wasn’t sure which part of that sentence hurt. Maybe I wanted freedom to love and want who I wanted. Without the club, a patch or my family bloodline in the way.
The horse led us out through the trees.
The ranch disappeared behind us by inches, swallowed by darkness and branches and the soft, steady rhythm of hooves on dirt.
The world narrowed to the horse beneath us, Dylan behind me, the night ahead, and the distant lights of Santa Fe scattered below the hills like somebody had dropped jewels across the valley.
We didn’t speak for a long time.
That suited me.
Words felt too heavy.
The path climbed gradually, winding through scrub brush and pi?on, over rocky patches that made my body ache with every careful step. Dylan must have felt me tense, because one hand left the reins just long enough to steady my waist.
“You okay?” he asked.
“No.”
“Good answer.”
A breath slipped out of me. “Do you ever take anything seriously?”
“Constantly. I just don’t let it ruin my face.”
“That’s tragic. Your face is your only redeeming quality.”
His chuckle was quiet against my hair. “Careful, Beautiful. Compliments like that go straight to my head.”
I smiled despite myself.
Then the hill opened.
The cemetery was small. Older than I expected.
Not polished. Not pretty in the way rich people made grief pretty.
It was tucked high above the town, surrounded by scrub and stone and a low iron fence that had rusted red in places.
The markers stood crooked under the moon, some pale, some dark, some worn nearly smooth by wind and time.
Below us, Santa Fe glowed.
The town looked soft from up here.
Forgiving.
That almost made me laugh.
Dylan slid down, then reached up for me. I hated needing help. I hated the way my legs trembled when he lowered me to the ground.
But he didn’t comment.
He just held me until I found my balance.
I saw the grave before I was ready. Maybe part of me knew I might never be ready.
Tarak was still grieving a fiancée when he buried her. The stone was beautiful, elaborate… beloved… but…someone has spray painted ‘WHORE’ in red across the back.
My knees weakened.
Dylan moved beside me, but he didn’t grab me this time. He let me decide whether to fall. His mouth thinned at the graffiti. “I’ll have it taken care of.”
I didn’t.
I walked to the edge of the grave and stood there, staring down at the woman who had made me and broken me and saved me and ruined me in ways I would probably spend the rest of my life untangling.
For a while, I couldn’t speak.
The wind moved over the hill, lifting my hair, slipping cold fingers beneath Dylan’s jacket around my shoulders.
I looked around for flowers, then remembered where we were.
The desert didn’t give softness easily.
But near the fence, stubborn little wildflowers grew in a pale clump, silvered by moonlight. I walked over and picked a few with shaking fingers. They were not beautiful in the way roses were beautiful. They were dry, delicate, fierce little things that had no business surviving where they did.
Perfect, then.
I carried them back and laid them at the base of her stone.
“This is fitting,” I whispered.
Dylan stepped back, giving me space.
I sank carefully to my knees.
The dirt was cold beneath me.
“Night,” I said to her. “That’s fitting too, isn’t it? Night is all you knew. All I knew.”
My voice cracked, but I kept going.
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to say to you. I thought I would. I thought if I ever came here, the words would already be waiting. But they’re not.”
The wind pushed tears down my cheeks before I could wipe them away.
“I’m angry at you,” I whispered. “I’m so angry I don’t know where to put it.
I’m angry that you left me with questions.
I’m angry that you made choices I’ll never understand.
I’m angry that part of me still wants to crawl into your lap like a little girl and ask you to explain all of it in a way that doesn’t hurt. ”
My hands curled in the dirt.
“And I love you. That’s the worst part. I love you even when I hate you. I miss someone I barely got to have. I grieve a version of you that might not have even existed.”
The town lights blurred.
“But you gave me life,” I said. “Whatever else happened, whatever you did, whatever was done to you… you gave me life.”
I bowed my head.
“And I’m going to make something of it.”
The words steadied me.
Not much.
Enough.
“I’m not going to burn the world down just because someone handed me matches. I’m not going to let people turn me into the worst thing that ever happened to me. I’m not going to be their story.”
My breathing shook.
“I’m going to start fresh somewhere no one knows our name. No one knows our blood. No one knows what we survived. And I’m going to write a new story.”
I touched the cold stone.
“For both of us.”
Behind me, Dylan said nothing.
But I knew he heard.
Or maybe he pretended not to.
That was kinder.
I stayed there a little longer, letting the tears come softly.
Not ugly, gasping sobs. Not the kind that tore through a room and demanded witnesses.
These were quiet tears. Regal tears, maybe, if pain could have posture.
They slid down my face in silence while the desert wind lifted my hair and the dead kept their secrets.
When I finally stood, I swayed.
Dylan was there before I could catch myself.
His hands came to my arms, gentle, careful.
“Easy,” he murmured.
“I hate that word.”
“I know.”
The wind blew my hair across my face. Before I could move it, Dylan lifted his hand and brushed the strands back behind my ear.
His fingers lingered.
Just for a second.
Long enough for the night to notice.
I looked up at him.
His face was half-shadow, half-moonlight. Too handsome. Too sad. Too much trouble for a girl who had already been trouble’s favorite toy.
“Dylan,” I whispered, hands clutching at his muscular upper arms. He was all man. Smelled of danger and desire. His throat working as he tried to resist what my lips were offering.
He closed his eyes like my voice hurt him.
Then he bent his head and brushed his lips across mine.
Once.
Barely a kiss.
Barely anything.
Except it changed the shape of the air.
Stamped something on my soul I knew no one else could touch. Dylan saw the ugly, sharp twisted pieces of me and still called me beautiful. He saw the monster in me that night and saved me anyway. Dylan was risking his neck, his patch to give me this moment and I knew it meant everything to me.
He pulled back immediately, his forehead almost touching mine.
“I just had to once,” he muttered. “No one’s here but ghosts watching.”
My breath caught. “Then at least do it properly.” Before he could register my words—I pulled his head back down, on tiptoes—I crushed my mouth to his. Taking what I wanted. What I needed… in that respect Mandy’s hot blood and mine were the same.
He growled my name before the wind carried it away across the night sky and up into the stars. I prayed they would grant me this wish—a love like the way Tarak and Edge loved my mother once—I wanted a man to love me in that terrifying beautiful crazy way.
He groaned, kissing me back with all the pent up passion he’d been hiding.
He pilled me closer. Hands on my hips… something hot and urgent took hold and his mouth slid to my neck, my ear while he rasped against my skin, “crazy beautiful... I’d die to have you just once…
” then his tongue swept back into m mouth for the final curtain call.
Once last passionate match on the fire before he pulled back, breathing hard. “We can’t ever…”
“I know. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want you or this.” My hand came up to rest against his heavily beating heart.
“We need to go. It’ll. be midnight soon. Cal will check he does every night.”
The horse ride back was torture. Dylan couldn’t keep his hands or lips off me. Stealing the last seconds we could before midnight and sunrise. I hissed as his finger crept under m shirt over my bruised rib,to cup an aching breast. “Anyone ever touch you here?”
I groaned. “Edge would kill them.”
He rolled a nipple between two fingers. I answered by scooting my behind back on his lap. This time he was the one to hiss. “Careful, Beautiful.”
“I’m sick of being careful, didn’t you get that memo?”
He stopped the horse earlier than necessary dismounted then reached for me. Against an old tree trunk I found my self kissed, worshipped shirt up, his head bent down to suckle each nipple under moonlight. The horse nickered in approval as my head fell back.
Everything felt too good.
It was the first time a man touched me.
His hands on my skin were fireworks nothing like when I had touched myself on so many lonely desert nights.
“Dylan, please.”
“Please, what Beautiful?”
“I need…”
“I know what you need. A good spanking and some time and space to grow up. But damn it if I can wait and let some other guy be the first when it’ll be me in the end anyway.”
“My mother would have approved of you,” I whispered, angry and burning for something I knew we’d never finish. Not here. Not tonight.