Chapter Twenty
The next morning
Dux and Drake grabbed their duffel bags, walked down the stairs to drop them at the front door, before heading into the kitchen.
Briley and her oldest, closest friend Cheryl Finnegan were sitting at the table, cups of untouched and cooling coffee sitting in front of them. The women looked up and over as the men entered, then Cheryl glanced over at Briley, who was staring back into her cup as if the answer to the universe was written in there.
“You want me to step out?” Cheryl asked quietly. “Give you guys a minute alone?”
Briley didn’t answer or even look up, but Cheryl got to her feet anyway. Briley had barely spoken for days now, and Cheryl wasn’t totally convinced it was because of the sedatives that the doctor had her on; as far as she knew, Briley had cut way back on them, and now she was just naturally numb. Blank and broken, her green eyes listless and lifeless.
Cheryl had seen her friend go through hell, and been scorched and scarred as she’d escaped it, but she’d never seen Briley look anything like this . This woman looked, and moved, and spoke, like a total stranger. She was a wrecked shell of the woman she used to be, scooped out and hollow.
In some ways, it scared Cheryl worse than Hannah and Joe being missing in the first place. She knew that if those babies didn’t come back to her, Briley was going to be lost forever, just wandering in this half-living half-life, just waiting for death to take her. She wasn’t going to recover – Cheryl was absolutely sure of it.
“Nah, sweetheart,” Drake said now, and Cheryl knew that he was talking to her. She was ‘sweetheart’, while Briley was either ‘babe’ or ‘darlin’’, depending on which brother was speaking to her. “You can stay. Please.”
She nodded, returned to her chair, resumed clutching the cold coffee in her hand.
“Babe?” Dux said gently. “We’re going to the airport now.”
“We’ll call when we land in Wyoming,” Drake said. “Let you know that we’re safe.”
“And if you need us, you call anytime.” Dux moved closer, trying to get Briley to look at him. “If we don’t answer, then it’s because we have our phones off, because we’re –”
He broke off, suddenly unsure how to finish that sentence. ‘Because we’re in the middle of killing the fucker who took our kids’? ‘Because we’re taking gunfire and can’t quite get to the phone?’ ‘Because we’re dead’?
“Because we’re a bit busy,” Drake finished for him. “But we’ll call you back just as soon as we can, so don’t you worry.”
She said nothing, didn’t even act as if she heard them speaking to her. Cheryl and the men exchanged loaded, worried glances, then Drake stepped forward. He reached for Briley’s hand – in super-slow-motion, like he was approaching a skittish horse or a cowering puppy – and he picked it up. She made no resistance, but she didn’t respond either.
“Darlin’,” he said, and Cheryl could hear the pure love in those two syllables. “Do you understand where we’re going, and what we’re doing?”
There was no answer, and now Dux came and took her other hand. It was slack and lifeless, but he didn’t show how much that bothered him. Instead, he ran his thumb over her fingers, back and forth.
“We love you, babe,” Dux said. “We’ll call as soon as we land.”
“Love you,” his brother echoed. “We’ll be back soon.”
Both men gave Briley soft, sweet kisses on the top of her head, then as one, they turned back to the kitchen door. They’d taken three steps when they heard her voice behind them:
“You bring our babies home.”
Dux and Drake whirled around to look at her, and were stunned to see that she was staring directly at them, those amazing eyes awake and aware, as sharp as a laser beam. Her voice was raspy from lack of use, but the venom and rage came through as clear as a bell.
“I don’t care what you have to do to make that happen,” Briley said, her lips gray. “You torture and maim and kill everyone that you have to, anyone who stands between you and Hannah and Joe. You – you have to bring them home. Please . Promise me.”
Right away, both men were on their knees in front of her, catching the tears as they slid down her pale cheeks. They murmured to her that they would do whatever it took, to whoever it took, and they promised to bring their children home.
When they finally walked out the door ten minutes later, they hoped with everything that they had that they were able to keep that promise.
They were deathly afraid that if they didn’t, Briley wasn’t ever going to be able to forgive them.
And they wouldn’t forgive themselves.
**
Clarice ‘Honey’ Potts heard a vehicle pull up and she pulled her gun before she even glanced out of the kitchen window. When she saw the black SUV, her muscles loosened marginally, but it wasn’t until she saw Tom ‘ Tank ’ Devereux that she fully relaxed and returned the gun to its holster.
“They’re here,” she said to Zoe and Keira, now eyeing the tiny blonde woman with the neck brace being helped out of the SUV by her hulking King’s Men partner. “I see them both.”
“Yay!” Keira squealed, almost upending her cereal bowl in her excitement to get to her feet. “Vixen!”
“Hey, now,” her mother admonished her. “No jumping on her, OK? You remember?”
“I remember,” the little girl said solemnly. “She got hurt helping me.”
“She did, but she told me that she doesn’t care about that, and you’re not to worry about it,” Zoe said. “She said that she’d do it again a hundred times if it meant that you were safe.”
“And I am!” Keira exclaimed, dancing on the spot, then she seemed to sober a bit. “Can I hug her?”
“Let’s ask her,” Zoe said. “I really don’t know what her neck can take right now. OK, little flower?”
“OK.”
The door opened now, and Tank called out in his deep voice, “Just us!”
“We know,” Honey called back. “In the kitchen.”
Two sets of footsteps approached, and then there they stood in the doorway, Tank his usual massive, menacing self, and Vixen, looking even tinier next to him. She looked tired, Zoe thought, and no surprise: she was healing from a serious shock and a worse injury, and Zoe honestly wondered just how much sleep she was actually managing to get, seeing as she couldn’t lie flat.
“Vixen!” Keira said, reaching out to her, then hesitating. “Can I hug – Mommy said –”
“Keira cutie,” Vixen said with a huge smile. “If Tank helps me get into a chair, then you can definitely hug me… just not too hard, OK?”
“OK!” Keira said excitedly, turning to Zoe. “I can hug her!”
“I’m thrilled to hear it,” Zoe said. “Because that means that I can too.”
“After me!” Keira said bossily. “Right, Vixen?”
“Right,” Vixen told her, walking over to the chair that Zoe had just vacated, holding Tank’s huge hand as he eased her into a seated position. “You first… so come on, then. Where’s this promised hug? I’ve been looking forward to it for days and days .”
Keira shot across the room at roughly warp speed, but slowed down as she reached Vixen, looked at the woman, waiting to see what she would do. From the waist, Vixen turned her whole upper body to the right, opened her arms, and Keira stepped into them. She curled into Vixen’s chest, very still, her tiny hands on Vixen’s knees.
“See?” Vixen whispered into her blonde curls. “We can do hugs.”
“I see,” Keira whispered back. “Vixen?”
“Yes?”
“Will you still come to my birthday party?”
Vixen leaned back so she could meet Keira’s dark eyes, saw the worry all over the little girl’s face.
“Of course I’ll come.” She gestured at her neck. “Did you think that I couldn’t? Because I’ll be all healed up, and out of the brace by then.”
“Nooooo. I thought maybe – maybe you were mad at me. Mommy says that you aren’t, but I thought – well. I was a bit worried.” She reached out and touched Vixen’s cheek, as light as a butterfly kiss. “I know that these marks won’t ever go away. Is that my fault?”
“Keira, honey.” Vixen smoothed that tousled hair back off her anxious little face, held her eyes. “I promise you, I’m not mad at you, and I never was. Not even for one teeny, tiny second. And none of it was your fault, at all, not one single part.”
“But – but your face.”
“My face is totally fine.” Vixen gave her another smile. “See? It still works, and to tell you the truth, I don’t care about the scars.”
“You don’t?”
“I don’t.”
“Not at all?”
“Nope.” Vixen winked at her. “Can I tell you a secret?”
Keira shot a look at the other adults in the room, who immediately pretended to be engrossed in looking out the window again, or pouring coffee for the woman who saved her child’s life, or staring at his gargantuan booted feet.
Keira leaned in closer, kept her voice low. “Yes. What secret?”
“I found a man who likes me for me,” Vixen told her quietly. “He thinks that I’m beautiful, even with these scars, and I believe him. You see, when someone cares about you as a whole person, they care about all of you, inside and out, and they look past things that aren’t perfect.”
“And he thinks that you’re perfect?”
“Noooooo,” Vixen said. “Nobody’s perfect, but he likes me for me, and that’s something really good. It means that I can have a scarred face, or I can gain twenty pounds, or I can let my hair go back to brown – and he’ll still think that I’m beautiful.”
“Even with brown hair?”
“Even then.”
“Huh.” Keira cocked her head. “I think you should keep your blonde hair, though.”
“Do you?”
“Yes. I think it’s very pretty. Also, I like having the same hair color as you.”
“Totally convincing argument,” Vixen said. “I’ll stay blonde.”
“Yay!”
“And actually, Keira… I wanted to say sorry to you , for pushing you so hard and yelling at you. I was just really, really scared, and sometimes scared people are a bit loud and not very careful. I’m sorry.”
“That’s OK,” Keira said brightly. “Saint told me that it was good that you pushed me, because he’s not a very fast runner, and he wasn’t sure he’d get to me in time.”
“So it all worked out.”
“Yes. Vixen?”
“Yes, Keira cutie?”
“You’ll come to my party?”
“One hundred percent,” Vixen said. “I promise.”
“OK.” Keira gave Vixen a tiny kiss on her unmarked cheek, then bounded away. “Can I watch TV now, Mommy?”
“You sure can,” Zoe said, bringing Vixen a cup of coffee and the sugar bowl. “Then we’ll read a little bit, OK?”
“Can Vixen read with me?”
“Of course,” Zoe said. “If she’s not too tired.”
“Oh, yes,” Keira said, standing on one foot, then the other. “Mommy did say that you need to rest.”
“I do,” Vixen agreed, adding an extra spoonful of sugar; she felt like she needed the energy after a restless, worried night, then getting up with Ice at five o’clock. “But we can absolutely read together.”
“Yay!” Keira bunny hopped towards the living room. “I’ll bring Peach. She’s learning to read too.”
“Excellent.” Vixen took a much-needed and -appreciated sip of coffee, wishing that it was possibly, just a tad stronger. “You let me know when Peach is ready.”
“Ohhh-kaaaay!”
Keira’s voice had faded, and now Zoe and Vixen looked at each other: the two women hadn’t laid eyes on each other since they’d stood in Satan’s and Zoe had asked Vixen to please go with Keira to get Peach from Blue Dragon. On every single level, Zoe knew that what had happened afterwards wasn’t her fault, any more than it was Keira’s, but there was a big difference: Zoe was her mother, and it was her job to protect her daughter.
And when her child had needed her – when a van was trying to run her down, to snuff out her beautiful little life – Zoe had been talking to her husband. Maybe giving him a kiss goodbye, saying that she’d see him at home later. Maybe chatting with Cole on her way out, maybe smiling at Viking and Elle.
What she hadn’t been doing was standing between her daughter and a killer.
No. Vixen had been the one doing that.
“Vixen,” Zoe said now. “I – I know I said it over the phone, but I need to tell you to your face… thank you. Thank you for Keira, for what you did for her, and I’m so, so sorry that you got hurt.”
Vixen started to say something, but Zoe held up one shaking hand. Honey and Tank tried hard to look like they were disappearing into the walls.
“Please, just let me say this to you.” Zoe took a deep breath. “Please.”
Vixen smiled, knowing that this was critically important. “OK.”
“I wish – it should have been me.”
“What?” Vixen stared at her; she hadn’t been expecting that . “Zoe, you don’t mean that.”
“I do. I really do. I should be the one with the broken neck, and the permanent scars. I should be the one sleeping sitting up, and the one who can’t turn her head for two months. I should be the one sitting at home and healing. Not working, not going about my normal life, going on coffee runs, and walking in the park with Keira, and sleeping with my husband. I should – it just should have been me. You were only there because I asked you to be – and I wish so hard that I could take it all back. Keira’s my responsibility – and I failed her. Completely.”
“Zoe,” Vixen said quietly. “I’m glad that I was there. I’m glad that it was me.”
“What? Why?”
“Because,” Vixen said. “If Keira had to see a woman get hit by a van, and thrown twenty feet through the air, and then sprawled on the ground in a parking lot with a snapped neck, I’d rather that it not be her Mom.”
Zoe opened her mouth, closed it again.
“I know that it scared her that I got hurt,” Vixen continued. “But at least she had you there to hold her and comfort her, make her feel safe again. If you’d been the one unconscious with blood covering your face, taken away by paramedics, in a neck brace for weeks and weeks, and you couldn’t pick her up or touch her – and this is all after a van tried to run her down – can you imagine what that might have done to her? Maybe forever?”
“I – I never thought about it that way.”
“I know.” Vixen smiled again. “You were thinking like the amazing mother that you are: you wanted to be there to protect your child. But I’m thinking like a person who wants you to be there to help her after what happened, after the dust settles. She needs you safe and whole, to help her work through everything that she saw. Scars can’t do that – not with what he has to deal with over in Utah. Elle and Jo and me, we all love Keira – but we can’t do it, either. Not the way that her mother can.”
“I –” Zoe stared at Vixen as if seeing her for the very first time. “You are so right. You are so fucking smart.”
“I am, and I am!” Vixen said merrily. “So… can we just agree that it’s better that it was me?”
“I guess we can. Now… am I able to give you that hug?”
“You certainly are.”
Zoe crossed the kitchen, and kneeled down in front of Vixen. Gently, carefully, she wrapped her arms around the smaller woman, held her for several seconds. Said thank you silently, said it ten different ways – with her breath, and touch, and thoughts, and heartbeat – and Vixen both felt and heard it, all ten ways.
Zoe finally pulled away, smiled at Vixen. “More coffee? Maybe some breakfast?”
“Yes please, and yes please.” Vixen looked over at the woman standing by the window; she was blonde with baby-blue eyes, and she was tiny, smaller than Vixen herself, which made her believe that if this woman was one of King’s Men, then she had to be absolutely fucking lethal, appearances be damned. She could probably snap a grown man with her pinky finger, smiling sweetly the whole time. “Hi. I’m Vixen.”
“Honey,” the woman said. “And let me tell you, girl… I’ve seen that video footage from the parking lot. You are a badass extraordinaire, and I suspect that if you came after my job, you’d get it.”
Vixen laughed. “How are your benefits? You get dental?”
“C’mon now, ch è re ,” Tank said in that warm, sexy Cajun drawl that had utterly charmed her on the drive over to the safe house, his dark eyes dancing. “Catching the bad guys is the benefit in itself, n’est-ce-pas ?”
“I’ll take your word for it,” Vixen said. “Right now, I’m just happy to have some toast.”
“So,” Zoe said, popping two slices of bread into the toaster and cracking some eggs for a quick scramble. “You and Ice, huh?”
Vixen choked on her coffee. “What – how –”
“Oh, Jesus.” Zoe rolled her eyes and threw some butter in the frying pan. “Even if I hadn’t literally just heard you tell Keira, I have eyes. You think that I haven’t noticed that you two are completely fucking nuts about each other?”
“Well,” Vixen said, regaining her composure. “I mean… until just recently, our relationship has only been…ummm…”
“Physical,” Zoe finished for her. “Yes. And so now you two are getting to know each other in all the non-physical ways, right?”
“How did you –”
“ Jesus ,” Zoe repeated. “Didn’t you just tell Keira that Ice likes you for you, and thinks you’re beautiful, and sees you as a whole person?”
“That was a secret, between me and her,” Vixen said in a dignified manner. “Eavesdropping is rude , Zee. I thought you’d know better.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Zoe shook her head, poured the eggs into the hot pan. “So how about while I cook your breakfast, Tank and Honey give you the grand tour, get you set up in your bedroom. They can help you unpack, and set up the sleeping frame, and show you the walk-in shower.”
“Walk-in?” Vixen perked up. “For real?”
“Uh-huh. And it’s huge, so we could actually get four chairs in there for you to sit on, so you won’t need to worry about slipping and falling in a bathtub. You can take a shower in comfort and in privacy, then I can help you get dried off and dressed. If you want me to, I mean.”
“Thanks, Zoe. I definitely need the help.”
“You got it, anything you need.” Zoe started a fresh pot of coffee, opened a package of bacon. “I’ll have this all done in about ten minutes, so go and settle in a bit.”
“That sounds great, actually,” Vixen said, accepting Tank’s help up out of the chair. “Then I wanted to talk to you alone, if it’s OK with you.”
“Vixen,” Zoe said. “We’re going to be here, all five of us, for who-knows-how-long… what the hell else are we going to do if not talk?” She paused. “And teach a stuffed bunny to read?”
**
About two hours later, after a massive breakfast, and reading with Keira and Peach, Vixen asked Zoe to help her get into bed for a nap.
As she eased her way into the frame that Tank had set up for her in the double bed, Vixen looked at the solid wooden furniture, the huge window facing a line of trees in the distance, the flowered duvet and bright yellow curtains.
To be honest, she was surprised how comfortable and warm the safe house was; she’d had visions of the barest, most basic amenities and necessities, but this was a really cute little farmhouse, way out of the city and surrounded by fields. Honey and Tank could see anything coming for miles and miles around – from any window in the house. Normally, Vixen would dislike feeling this open and exposed and isolated, but right now it was a comfort to know that there was nobody close by.
“You OK?” Zoe said to her now. “What else do I do to make you more comfy?”
“Could you just pile the pillows around on either side of me? They keep me from moving too much, but also, I feel kind of snug and cozy all boxed in.”
“You got it.” Zoe started to do as Vixen had asked, then she stood there, staring at her handiwork. “Huh. Looks like a pillow fort.”
Vixen laughed. “That’s exactly what Ice said, the first time that he stayed at my place and had to trap me in the pillow prison.”
“So.” Gingerly, trying not to jostle the mattress too much, Zoe sat at the end of the bed. “You said that you wanted to talk to me… is it about Ice?”
“Kind of, yes. I’m looking for some advice, actually.”
“I should tell you,” Zoe said. “I don’t know him very well at all. I mean, I think in the past four years, I’ve exchanged maybe a hundred words with him. The man keeps to himself, as I’m sure you’re well aware.”
“I didn’t want to talk about Ice , exactly. More about how you handle – I mean, what do you do when the guys are – are off doing whatever it is that they’re doing, and you’re just kind of left here. Waiting, knowing nothing. How do you do it? How does it not upset and freak you out?”
“Ah,” Zoe said gently. “It’s not easy, is it?”
“I don’t really know yet, because this time is different. In fact, it’s the first time that it’s been like this .” Vixen twisted her hands in the bed sheets. “I mean, Ice left just a few hours ago, and even though he’s been gone for weeks and weeks in the past –he’d just up and go without a word – but that was before .”
“Before what?”
“Before we got together properly,” Vixen said, a bit shyly. “Before we told each other how we feel.”
“So before, the deal was that you were just about sex, so he went about his club business without saying anything to you?”
“Exactly. He just kind of disappeared and then reappeared out of the blue. Sometimes with bruises, or fresh stab or even bullet wounds – but we never talked about it. We weren’t about talking.”
“And now you are?”
Vixen gestured at the neck brace wryly. “It’s all we’re about right now.”
Zoe laughed, and Vixen smiled back.
“OK, yeah,” Zoe said. “I can see that. So you’re asking me how to be in a committed relationship with a Road Devils MC member, who lately belongs to a club that always seems to be spinning from some insane drama straight into another one? And how to cope when your man, and mine, are heading to Utah to face fuck-knows-what, in order to retrieve yet another MC member and two kidnapped babies?”
“That’s what I’m asking you.”
“Yeah, it’s a lot.”
“But you’re so good at handling it all,” Vixen said. “I mean, I know you have to be worried about Scars and Wolf and everyone, but you just get on with it, and take care of Keira and take the whole ‘safe house with bodyguards’ thing in stride. So maybe you just – you get used to it?”
Zoe sighed. “Nope. You don’t.”
“No?”
“No.”
“Shit.”
Zoe laughed again, but with some sadness. “I get better at handling it every time, I think, but between you and me, I’m so upset and worried right now, and I’m keeping myself busy just as a big distraction. Scars called this morning before they headed out, and I was in tears when we hung up – me and Keira being here means that I didn’t even get to say goodbye in person.”
“God. That has to be hard.”
“It is. But even when we can talk in person, it’s still hard because I know that he’s getting ready to head off and do something dangerous, and I can’t help. I also know that he protects me from a lot of what the club gets up to – both him and Wolf talk to me, but I never get the whole story from either one of them.”
“And being married to Scars hasn’t changed that?”
“No. He was really open and honest with me when we were living together before marriage, and it’s the same relationship now. Being married hasn’t made him tell me more or less.”
“Do you think,” Vixen said slowly. “That in some ways, it’s better for us to not know what our men do for the club? How they fight for it, what they do to protect it?”
Zoe gave her a hard look, those emerald green eyes as sharp and bright as jewels. “Real talk now?”
“Yes. One hundred percent.”
“OK, then.” Zoe took a deep breath. “I absolutely do not want to know what the guys do, how they do it, where they do it, or who they do it to. I’ve known Wolf for a long, long time, from way before he patched in to the club, and he’s never told me everything to do with The Road Devils. Frankly, if he’d told me, as an outsider, any club business back when Wheels Jordan was in charge, he’d have been lucky to just get thrown out of the MC and not killed – there’s a code of silence and secrecy, and every man swore an oath to it. Telling us even the little that they do is just down to Wolf’s generosity in leadership. But if he was a different kind of leader, if he was like Wheels, and he told Scars tomorrow to never breathe a word to me ever again, Scars would do as he was told. Failure to obey would put Scars, and me, and Keira in danger.”
“But Wolf’s not like that.”
“In some ways, he is. Some stuff – the really bad stuff – stays between the boys. Some stuff I can kind of take a guess at, but I don’t want to know if my hunches are right.”
“So… so they do kill people. Still , I mean. Since Wolf taking the club straight.”
“Yes.” Zoe’s tone was flat and final. “Yes, I know that for sure. I don’t have all the details, but I know they still take lives. I even know who was killed, in a few cases, but I don’t know who actually did the killing, or what happened after.”
“You mean with the bodies?”
“I mean at all. I don’t know where the bodies are – if there even are any bodies left – and I don’t know who helped make everything disappear. I don’t know who was tasked with what, inside or outside the club, and I never ask a single question about any of it. You shouldn’t either.”
“I have to say that a part of me wants to know,” Vixen admitted. “But I also don’t want to know. Both things are true at the same time, and I feel – conflicted.”
“And that’s how it will feel all the time where you’re with a man who’s patched in to The Road Devils. You want to know because you want to support him if he’s struggling, but you don’t want to know because then he’s betraying his brothers, maybe putting you in danger, maybe putting the MC in danger.”
“But aren’t we already –” Vixen broke off.
“Aren’t we already in danger?” Zoe finished for her.
“Well, yes. I mean – the parking lot. The babies being kidnapped. Elle being taken. Rebel being killed.”
“I get what you’re saying. I do. What I’m saying is that it would be worse if the MC’s enemies believed that we knew everything, if they thought that taking us and hurting us would mean that they got information that they could use against the club. We’d have targets on our backs as big as the moon, and believe me, there would be way more victims and tragedies than we’ve suffered so far.”
“You’re saying that what’s happened so far is the best case scenario.”
“That’s what I’m saying.”
“Shit.”
“I’m also saying, that by choosing our men, we’ve also chosen to enter into this life with them. Me, you, Elle, Jo.” Zoe held her eyes, really willing Vixen to understand this part. “We’ve chosen to stand by them, and trust them, even when we don’t know or fully understand what’s happening. We’ve chosen to trust what they tell us, and to trust what they don’t tell us, and to trust them to know the difference. You get me? It’s about choice and trust – and just not knowing what it is that we don’t know. It’s tough, I’m not going to lie, so if you decide to do this with Ice all the way, then you need to understand that you’re signing up for a whole lot of unanswered questions.” She gestured around the room. “And for crises that result in safe houses and bodyguards, and you don’t even totally know why you’re in the damn safe house… but you pack your bags on short notice and you go with the strangers who are tasked with protecting you from who-knows-what.”
“And then you wait.”
“And then you wait,” Zoe echoed. “I made my choice when I married Scars Innis, and there are repercussions for that decision. I stand by them now, even as I find them difficult. The part that I struggle with is the danger that it exposes my daughter to, and all I can do is hope that she’s never the target again – Scars assured me that kids are always off-limits, and nobody can believe what Viper Grant has done. Even by one-percenter MC standards, the man is an absolute fucking monster lunatic. I’ve heard that The Hellions have lost a lot of support for involving Keira and Hannah and Joe in business, and that quite a few MC’s who hated Wolf for pulling The Road Devils out of the life are actually back on his side now. No way our club goes back to the one-percenter life, but they’ve been embraced by its members anyway.”
“Wow. Seriously?”
“I know, right?” Zoe shrugged. “For a bunch of guys with no rules or respect for the law, and who thought Wolf was an asshole for abandoning the world they love so much, they seem to forgive and forget when kids are dragged into the whole mess.”
“Any chance that some of these MC’s might be helping our guys over in Utah?”
“That’s the kind of thing that I don’t expect to know,” Zoe said. “Scars would never name-drop another MC. Like I said, by choosing to be his, I agreed to get limited information.”
“I’ve made my choice too.”
“You sure?” Zoe cocked her blonde head. “Because I don’t know if things are going to get better, or if they’re going to get worse before they get better. You’ve already been badly hurt… you willing to take that risk again, all to be with Ice Johansson?”
And now Vixen thought about the night before, after their campfire date under the stars. Ice had taken her home, undressed her, then held her close to him under the shower spray, running his large hands over and over her body: her hair, her back, her breasts, her stomach. He’d washed her, dried her, his hands caressing her skin as if she was made of the rarest porcelain, the heat in his eyes telling her that she was beautiful. Then he’d helped her into a long t-shirt and then into her little pillow fortress, before undressing himself and climbing into bed next to her.
He’d kissed her goodnight, the softest, sweetest kiss that she’d ever be able to imagine, told her to get some rest… and every time she’d opened her eyes, unable to relax properly during the long night, worrying about what the next few days were going to bring, he’d been awake and watching her, those ice-blue eyes warm with affection. And every time their eyes met in the half-darkness, he’d reached out to her, whispered that everything was going to be OK and she should get some sleep.
Vixen looked down at the gold band on Zoe’s left hand, really looked at it, and thought about what it meant. Never in the whole of her life had she thought about marriage as anything except an archaic religious ceremony, something that her parents and church had lectured and hectored her about from the time she could walk. She’d always considered it a trap, a prison, something that had been shoved down her throat. Her teenaged rebellion against religion wasn’t just a rejection of the guilt and shame that she’d been exposed to for having sexual desires – it was a rejection of everything to do with her parents’ values and beliefs. Including marriage.
But looking at Zoe, thinking about Scars, Vixen knew that their commitment to each other wasn’t about following a bunch of commandments or rules from a holy book. Zoe wasn’t submitting to Scars because he was a man and the head of the household, and she was a weak and frail vessel in need of guidance and direction. Zoe didn’t get married because she’d felt any societal pressure to be a wife and mother, or because she was incapable of surviving without a man in her bed and her life
No, Zoe and Scars loved each other, and they loved Keira. They were a family.
Suddenly, Vixen longed for a family of her own. She hadn’t ever had one, not really, because her parents had never really accepted her or listened to her – but Angela moving to Seattle had truly made Vixen feel not just orphaned, but abandoned. Alone. She’d tried to fill the emptiness with great sex, thoroughly enjoyed with a parade of devastatingly hot men, and it had worked for a good long while. It had been what she’d wanted and she’d pursued it with zero guilt or shame.
But now she was tired of the revolving door of men, and of only meeting Ice in bar back rooms, even if they were exclusive. Vixen was fed up of waking up alone, going to bed alone, sleeping alone. Now she wanted something else.
She wanted what she’d had for the previous two nights: she wanted Ice in her home. Taking care of her, and talking to her, and asking her about herself. She wanted to worry about him, and hear about his life, and trust him to come back to her because that’s what he’d promised, and Ice was a lot of things, many of them scary and dangerous – but he didn’t lie to Vixen.
And so she said to Zoe:
“Yes. Yes, I’m sure that I want to risk it for him. I choose Ice… if he’ll have me.”