Chapter Twenty-Five
Katey
A ll day I felt unsettled, which shouldn’t be all that alarming since I’d been feeling unsettled for more than a year at this point. Longer if I was being honest. But this wasn’t that fizzy water in the belly type of unsettled, oh no, this was something else entirely. There was a hitch stuck in my throat and every time I opened my mouth I felt as if I wanted to cry. My stomach was full of wasps, all buzzy and angry, which only made me anxious.
This wasn’t impending doom, at least not the kind of doom that loomed with thoughts of Ethan. This doom was particularly unsettling in that it wasn’t all that unsettling, but it should be. I promised myself when I spent my first twenty-four hours free of Ethan, that it would be a long time—years preferably—before I gave my heart away to a man. And that man wasn’t going to be a biker, that was the promise.
Yet here I was on the verge of handing my heart over to a man. A man who was in a motorcycle club, no less. I must be really fucking stupid . That was the only explanation for why I got all warm and tingly when I thought about Sniper. Why I smiled when I saw him. Why my body shivered when he smiled back at me, especially that little smile that curved his lips in that moment before his lips crashed down on mine.
It would all be manageable if this was just me being dickmatized by really great orgasms and the perfect cock. Hell, I’d tried to convince myself for weeks that’s all it was. It had been a long damn time since a man touched me like I mattered and put my pleasure first, and I told myself that’s all it was. But the truth was that these feelings—stupid feelings—only intensified when we were having sex.
And that scared the hell out of me.
Enough that I hadn’t slept for two days as I thought about leaving the clubhouse and the protection it gave me behind, because I knew the longer I stayed here, the longer I spent time and shared a bed with Sniper, the more those feelings would grow. And none of this was real.
The marriage was legal but that was as far as it went. The sex was really good but that was a physical need, not a manifestation of our love for each other. None of this was real, but to my poor, wounded heart it was starting to feel very real, which was why I considered leaving.
I couldn’t give my heart to a biker again.
I rolled to my side and put my feet on the floor as I pushed up and scanned the room with a heavy heart. I stared at my reflection in the mirror, nothing that my pixie cut was looking a little ragged, but it was my eyes that gave me pause. They were bright and shiny, my cheeks slightly flushed. All the signs of a woman in… deep like. “I can’t so I won’t.” I repeated those five words to myself over and over until the words lost all meaning. I said them until I felt them.
I liked Sniper, that was it. He was a likeable guy, and he was protecting me, of course I liked him.
But it was only like. Nothing more serious than that.
I liked him as a person.
The door opened and there he was, the man who occupied too much of my mind for too many hours each day. “Hey.” His gaze raked over my body and heat flared before he held my stare with a hint of a smile.
“Hey yourself. What’s up?”
“You said you took self-defense classes before, right?”
“Yeah.” I folded my arms and flashed a crooked grin in his direction. “You need backup again?”
“Funny.” His gaze swept the room before settling on me again. “We’re going somewhere.”
“Are we?”
Sniper paused and then nodded before he spoke again. “I want you to come somewhere with me.”
Oh no, no, no. I didn’t know what the hell that deep, polite tone meant but I didn’t like it. I mean, I loved it, which was exactly why I couldn’t let myself like it. “Sure. I don’t have anything else to do.”
“Okay. Good.”
I frowned. “Why are you being weird?”
“Am I?”
I nodded. “You are. What’s going on?” My heart stopped. “Did something else happen?”
“No, nothing like that. Come on and I’ll explain. I promise.” There was something odd about the look in his eyes and my heart skipped a beat before I looked away.
“Five minutes,” I promised and waited until he was gone to freshen up and go wherever we were headed. I didn’t do much other than run a brush through my hair and put some gloss on my lips, okay and spritz some perfume on my pulse points. That was it.
Nothing else.
***
The ride on Sniper’s motorcycle was short but I still enjoyed the way it felt to have my arms wrapped around his waist and my chest pressed to his back. I jumped off when the bike came to a stop and looked up at the sign. “Demon Head Guns? Sounds ominous.”
He laughed. “This is our shooting range and gun store.”
“Okay.”
For the next five minutes Sniper said nothing as he grabbed my hand and pulled me through the shop and down towards the gallery. He had a black metal tray with four different guns on it and two sets of headphones. “You ever shot before?”
I folded my arms defensively. “We both know if I had, I wouldn’t be here right now.” Damn that sounded bitchy. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be. I get it and that’s exactly why we’re here.” He took my hands in his and stared straight into my eyes. “I know you want to be able to take care of yourself and you’ve done a damn good job of it so far.”
I snorted my disbelief.
“You’re still here, Katey. That’s more than lots of women in your situation.”
I nodded and looked away before he saw the hint of emotion in my eyes.
“The confidence you’ll get just from knowing that you can take care of yourself will help, I promise. The nightmares won’t stop completely, probably and definitely not right away, but you’ll be surprised how different they are when you know you can fight back. It’ll help, I promise.”
A gun. I’d learned to fear them over the years and that wasn’t all down to Ethan. “He slept with one under his pillow and he… wasn’t afraid to use it to get his way.”
His jaw clenched tight. “Motherfucker.” Sniper’s anger on my behalf only tugged at those emotions I’d tried to bury deep. “Okay,” he exhaled and wiped his hands on his jeans. “Let’s test out these guns.”
I grabbed the biggest gun and held it in my hand. “It’s heavier than I imagined.” It was really heavy, in fact. “How in the hell are kids using these things?”
He shrugged. “It’s the rush of being cool. And being a bad ass. Are you ready to test it out?”
I nodded nervously. “Yeah, I’m ready.”
Sniper took the big gun from my hand and replaced it with a smaller one as he stood behind me, towering over me. My breath caught in my throat when his arms went around me until his hands wrapped around mine. “Okay, relax a little. I know it seems counterintuitive, but I need you to relax.”
“Hard to do with you being so hard.”
“Ignore it. I’m trying to.” His voice was thick and growly as he gave me instructions. “Line up your shot on the inhale and squeeze the trigger on the exhale.”
The first few times I missed the target wildly. Okay, for the first hour, I missed the paper entirely but slowly during the second hour, I started to improve. “What am I doing wrong?”
“Nothing,” he laughed. “Nobody becomes a sharpshooter overnight.”
“Not even those with a teacher called Sniper?”
“Not even them. Let’s try something a little bigger but I want you to dig your feet in and ground yourself before you shoot.” He pressed a soft kiss to that spot right behind my ear. “Relax,” he whispered.
I nodded. “Yeah. Okay. Relax.” Should be easy now that my heart was racing a million miles an hour.
“You got this.”
His show of support and those kind words helped. “Okay,” I repeated the word softly and went through the steps Sniper had given me. I squeezed the trigger and hit the target three times. “Oh shit, I did it! I hit the target!” I jumped up and down excitedly, waving the gun wildly.
Sniper grabbed my wrist and aimed the gun to the ground before he slipped it from my grasp. “You hit it.” His smile was magnificent and when he wrapped me in a hug, I wanted to stay and live there forever.
“Thank you, Sniper.” Emotion welled within me, and I hugged him tighter before releasing him and getting back to it. The truth was that I felt powerful with that piece of metal in my hands. I wasn’t scared and that was something I hadn’t felt in far too long. I knew there was no guarantee that I’d be able to pull the trigger if Ethan got close enough, but Sniper was right, knowing that I could take care of myself made me feel better.
I had to just hope that belief propelled me into actually being something more than a scared woman on the run.
Three hours later, Sniper put the guns away. “What are the chances I can buy one of these for myself?”
“Let’s do a few more lessons first, yeah?”
“Fine,” I grumbled. “A few more lessons.” I felt lighter as we walked out of the building into the desert sun, freer. I felt like a different woman altogether, like a woman who wasn’t burdened by fear and a psycho ex.
“How’d it feel?”
I turned to face him and smiled. “Amazing. I felt confident for the first time in a long time and powerful.” I couldn’t resist wrapping my arms around him again. “Thank you for this. It helped more than I could have expected.”