Chapter 54
Rachel
Dante stuck to his promise, waking us up bright and early to spend the day with him.
He gave me five minutes to get ready, and when I went downstairs, both kids were dressed, and he had a feast prepared for breakfast. I knew he wouldn’t have made everything and would have recruited one of the prospects to help him out, but I appreciated the sentiment anyway, even if it was a bit overdone.
I didn’t want Dante in performance mode.
I wanted the everyday Dante. Performance mode wouldn’t last. It was him trying to impress me.
Everyday Dante would be the man I had to live with day in, day out, and it was him I wanted to spend time with today.
Or else how would we know any of this was real?
As he once told me, there was no point in putting on an act. If you wanted someone to fall in love with you, truly, irrevocably in love, then they needed to be able to love all of you — warts and all.
But I didn’t want Dante to tell me I was ungrateful, or to start the day on an argument. Especially since that goddamn contract was hanging over my head every time I went to open my mouth. So I held my tongue, something I was doing more and more of these days, and I fucking hated it.
Dante took us to the beach again, same as he had that one day we had taken Bee on an adventure.
It was Axel’s first time, and he took to it like a duck to water.
I had picture after picture on my phone of Axel walking to the beginning of the tide and dipping his toes in the sea, only to be scooped in the air by Dante.
Bee had pouted, and he had grabbed her too, sitting them both on his shoulders and running into the waves with them.
“If you drop one of them, I’ll drown you. Promise. Not a threat,” I called after them, cupping my hands around my mouth to project my voice, making sure they could hear me over their squeals of laughter.
“Carry on threatening me—”
“Promising,” I interrupted with a grin.
“Threatening, and I’ll pick you up and dump you in the sea myself,” he warned, his voice low and deadly as he walked out of the water. My heart jumped in my throat as the sun shone behind him, illuminating him and my children like a beacon of light, calling to me.
I looked away, biting down on my bottom lip. I don’t know what it was about Dante holding children that I found so fucking sexy, but it had always been the same. The moment I saw him holding Bee in his huge, tattooed arms, a tender look on his face, I had been lost.
I’d never really found my way since.
But I knew how dangerous it was to confuse tenderness with trust. He’d ruined me before in exactly the same way.
“We should go,” Dante said, appearing by my side.
“What? Why?” I asked, looking at the children spinning around in circles in the sand.
“It’s going to rain. We should get the kids inside.”
Before he had even finished his sentence, he was proven right once again. The heavens opened, saturating us in an instant.
I jumped to my feet with a laugh, grabbing hold of Axel at the same time as Dante snatched up Bee, and we ran across the beach, half laughing, half panting as the cold of the rain made our clothes stick to our skin, droplets running down our backs.
We ran over the pier, weaving in and out of the traffic of people, all of them scrambling for shelter. Dante found an old, rickety looking gazebo and scurried us under it.
I was breathing heavily, looking at the crowds of people, all of whom were already soaked, and yet were trying to find shelter as though it would make a difference. The damage was already done.
And that’s when an old saying came back to me.
Life wasn’t about seeking shelter in the storm. It was learning to dance in the rain.
“Do you trust me?” I whispered to Bee, crouching down beside her.
“Why?”
“You don’t get to know. You just have to say yes or no,” I grinned at her.
She grinned back at me and nodded her head.
As soon as I saw her confirmation, I grabbed her hand and pulled her out from under the shelter and back into the rain.
She screamed, jumping up and down, the rain soaking her through to the bone.
I pulled her close to me and raised our joined hands up and twirled her.
Axel giggled in my arms and so I let go of Bee’s hand and spun him around, too.
Bee caught on quickly and ran to a lamppost, spinning around it like a ballerina.
I followed her lead and skipped over, raising Axel high in the air and flipping him onto his stomach over my hands.
I grabbed his arms and held them out like Superman and chased Bee around the lamppost, their laughter like music to my ears.
Bee spun close to me, her arms clinging to my clothes, and I wrapped my arm around her shoulders and spun again, tipping my head back to let the water wash over me.
I felt light and carefree. All I had ever wanted was for my children to be happy, and in this moment, I had achieved it. No matter what happened, I would always have this memory. I would hear their light laughter, giggling until their stomachs hurt.
I placed Axel on his feet and Bee immediately seized his hand, helping him run over to a puddle and teaching him how to jump in it.
“You look happy,” came a voice behind me, making me jump slightly. I looked over my shoulder and quickly smiled at Dante before looking back at the kids.
“I am happy.”
“It’s nice. I don’t see you happy often enough.”
“I guess I haven’t had much to be happy about lately,” I replied, leaning back against him. His hand came around my stomach, and we stayed together like that for a moment, just watching Axel and Bee live in the moment.
“You’ve always been good with kids, Rachel. They’re your calling. I knew you would be a natural. I might have been wrong about literally everything else about you, but I knew I wasn’t wrong about that. Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For being exactly what they need. What Bee needs. I don’t say it often enough, but I am thankful. You brought her back to us. The light in the darkness.”
“I’m not all light,” I murmured.
“I know. But they don’t know that. You know how to keep that side of you hidden from them.
To them, you’re just their mum. And they love you.
I know you come with darkness of your own, but your soul is a good one.
Fucked up and vengeful,” he chuckled, moving his lips to my neck.
“But a good one.” He kissed me briefly before inhaling deeply, as though he couldn’t get enough of me. I closed my eyes, savouring the moment.
“You have a tough exterior, Rachel, and you’ve seen some shit, done some shit, and experienced more shit in your thirty years than most people ever see in five lifetimes. But it hasn’t tainted you. Not like it has me.”
“It can only ruin you if you let it,” I murmured.
“Look at them,” I pointed at the kids, who were still jumping in the puddles.
“They’re not asking for perfection. The bare minimum is enough for them, because they love us unconditionally, and with no expectations.
Our love for them is what makes us strive to do more than the minimum.
And that’s something only you have control over, Dante.
You think I have a good soul, but that’s because I choose to not give into the darkness.
And I think that’s something you need to decide, and decide quickly.
Are you a good man that does bad things, or a bad man that does good things?
Because there is a difference, and I can only make this thing between us work with one of them. ”
I twisted my head and captured his lips with my own for a brief second before I pulled away and walked over to the kids, letting Dante think over what I had said.
Dante interrupted our dancing and asked the kids if they wanted to get some lunch. He took us to a small restaurant, and I left him at the table with the kids, telling him to join in with the colouring books, and went to the counter to order our food.
As I was waiting for the waitress to come over, I felt eyes on me, making me spin around to confront whoever it was.
“Whoa, whoa,” a man said, holding his hands up in surrender with a small laugh. “I come in peace.”
“Sorry,” I grinned back. “Have I pushed in front?”
“Not at all,” he said. “I just came over to say hi.”
“Hi…” I said slowly, looking him up and down. He was attractive, of that there was no doubt. He had a few tattoos on his arms, his hair was dark, and his eyes sparkled with mischief. He was exactly my type, and yet I felt nothing.
Because he’s not —
Let’s not go there.
“Look, I’m going to be forward here, because I’ve had more than one missed opportunity like this,” he rubbed the back of his neck nervously. “Are you seeing anyone?”
I burst out laughing before I could stop myself. “I see my therapist once a week, my inner demons when I close my eyes, and I guess, technically, an angry biker that burns houses to the ground for a laugh.”
“Is that a yes?”
“It’s a…” How did I answer that? In a few months' time, he could ask me again and everything would be different.
Right now, me and Dante were not technically together, but we were so far away from being apart either.
I was his old lady in name only, and yet I was contractually bound to say otherwise.
I looked around and saw Dante leaning against one of the columns near our table, his arms folded, looking at us in amusement. The smirk on his lips said a thousand words, and I didn’t want to hear a single one of them.
“It’s a yes,” I said, pulling my attention back to the man in front of me. “And to be honest, he probably wouldn’t take too kindly to me even talking to you for this long, so if you’d excuse me…”
I tried to turn back around, presenting him with my back, but he seized my arm and prevented me from completing the movement.
“Take this,” he said, offering me a card. “Just in case you change your mind.”
“I won't.” I replied firmly, letting the card drop to the floor between us.
“Your loss,” he shrugged, his eyes hardening. I braced myself for the inevitable personality shift, as most men did when they were rejected, but he surprised me by walking away without another word. I glanced back at the column, but Dante was nowhere to be seen.
I turned to the waitress and placed our order before heading back to the table, seeing Dante colouring in a hot-air balloon with Axel.
I took my seat next to him and he sat back, dropping the crayon and draping his arm over the back of my chair.
“How much did that pain you?” He murmured in my ear.
“What?”
“You know what,” he said with amusement. “How much did it pain you to admit to someone outside of the club that you were taken?”
“Not as painful as I thought. After all, ‘taken’ implies unwillingness, and that about sums things up nicely.”
“Fine, let me rephrase,” he said, bending his head towards me to whisper in my ear.
“How much did it pain you to admit you’re mine?
Because that’s what you are, Rachel. You’ve been mine since the day I laid eyes on you, and there's not an inch of this earth that you could run to where I wouldn't find you, and where you wouldn't still be mine.”
“And if I don’t want that?”
“I guess I’m forcing you. Chalk it up to being one of those bad things that good men do,” he pulled back from me with a small wink.
“Is that you making up your mind?”
“It’s me saying I’m going to try to make the shift. Try is the best I can do.”
“I can’t really ask for anything more,” I replied, copying the grin he gave me.