Chapter 6 #2
He left. Walked past us, his shoulder deliberately barging against mine as he left, his jaw tight, the last shred of his composure holding him together until he turned the corner and was gone. I heard his footsteps on the sidewalk, heard a car door open and close, heard an engine start and he left.
The alley was quiet.
I turned. Trixie was standing against the wall with her arms wrapped around herself and tears running silently down her face. I went to her. Put my hands on her face, wiped the tears with my thumbs, tilted her head up until she was looking at me.
“He’s gone,” I said.
“He was sleeping with someone, lots of women from what you said.” Her voice was flat. Gutted. “The whole time. While he was telling me nobody else would ever want me. He was...”
“I know.”
“I believed him. I believed I wasn’t enough.”
“You are enough.” I held her face, held her gaze, put everything I had into the words. “You are more than enough. You always were.”
She broke. The tears came properly, the ugly, shaking kind, the kind she’d been holding back for six years.
I pulled her against my chest and held her while she cried, my arms around her, her face pressed into my shirt, her whole body trembling.
Ghost stood at the mouth of the alley with his back to us, giving us privacy, watching the street.
I held her until the crying stopped. Until her breathing evened out. Until she pulled back and looked at me with swollen eyes and wet cheeks and a face that was raw and open and completely unguarded.
“Ruby?” she said.
“With Rosie. She’s safe. She ran straight to me, Trixie. She ran to me.”
Her face crumbled again. But this time it was different. This time it was the crumbling of a woman who’d just heard that her daughter had found the person she trusted most in the world, and he’d been right there like it had been fate.
We walked around to the front. Ruby was in Rosie’s arms, the teddy retrieved from somewhere, her face blotchy and tearstained.
She saw me and reached out and I took her, the fierce, brave, terrified little girl, and she locked her arms around my neck, pressed her face against my shoulder. “Is Mommy okay? Is Mommy okay?”
“Mommy’s right here, little one.”
Trixie put her arms around both of us. The three of us stood on Main Street in front of Rosie’s diner, holding on to each other in the afternoon sun, and Rosie watched from the doorway with a tea towel over her shoulder and tears on her face that she’d deny until her dying day.
Ghost was there still, leaning against the railing outside the diner, watching the street with the quiet vigilance of a man who’d keep watching until he was told to stop.
“We’re good?” he asked me.
I looked at Trixie. At Ruby. At the town around us, the mountains behind it, the road that led to the compound where the rest of my brothers were waiting.
“Yeah,” I said. “We’re good.”
TRIXIE
ELEVEN MONTHS LATER
He had me on my back in our bed with the curtains open and the moonlight turning everything silver and his mouth on my throat and his hips rolling into mine with the steady, unhurried rhythm of a man who had absolutely nowhere else to be.
“Duke.” His name came out breathless, my fingers digging into his shoulders, my legs wrapped around his waist. “Right there. Oh…my…god. Don’t you dare stop doing that.”
He didn’t stop. Instead, he shifted his angle, just slightly, and the change hit something inside me that made my back arch off the mattress. His hand slid down my thigh, gripped behind my knee, pushed my leg higher, and the new depth pulled a moan out of me that I buried against his neck.
“Fuck, Trixie.” His voice was rough against my ear. “You feel incredible. Every time. Every goddamn time.”
He fucked me slow and deep, his mouth finding mine between strokes, kissing me until I couldn’t breathe.
His free hand found my breast, his thumb working my nipple, and the dual sensation made my whole body tighten around him.
The orgasm built, that slow, familiar pull.
I rocked my hips up to meet him, chasing it, my nails raking down his back.
He reached between us. His thumb found my clit, circling with the same steady rhythm, and I gasped his name and gripped his arm and felt everything begin to tighten toward a single point.
He watched my face while he worked me, his eyes dark, intent, the face of a man who’d learned exactly what I needed and never got tired of giving it to me.
I came hard with his thumb on my clit and his body buried inside me. He followed a few strokes later, his face pressed into my neck, a low groan vibrating against my skin, his hips stuttering as he spent himself.
Quiet. Breathing. The sound of crickets through the open window. Ruby’s nightlight glowing under her door down the hall whilst she was fast asleep, the faint hum of the fridge downstairs, the ordinary sounds of a house that belonged to us.
He rolled onto his back and pulled me against his chest. I settled there, my ear over his heartbeat, my hand on the warm skin of his stomach, my body loose and heavy and satisfied. His fingers trailed up and down my spine.
“So,” I said. “When I mentioned having more kids, I didn’t mean we had to get right on it.”
His hand paused on my back. Then resumed, slower, the lazy stroke of a man who was very pleased with himself.
“Well,” he said. “No sense in wasting time.”
I laughed. He pulled me tighter against him and I felt his smile against the top of my head, and the feeling of it, his body warm beneath mine, our house around us, and our life built from a broken car, a highway, and a biker who stopped.