Chapter 3
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— Colt —
The whiskey wasn’t working. Three glasses in and I could still see her face. Still feel the jolt that had gone through me when she’d turned around in that produce aisle, dark hair catching the fluorescent light, looking at me like I was a stranger.
“Another?” The club girl—Tanya? Tonya?—leaned against the bar beside me, her body angled in a way that made her intentions clear.
She’d been circling all night, getting closer with each pass.
Pretty enough, with blonde hair and curves in all the right places.
The kind of woman who knew exactly what she was offering and didn’t play games about it.
Unlike some people.
“Sure.” I pushed my glass toward her and watched her pour, letting my eyes drift down to where her tank top gaped open. She noticed me looking and smiled, slow and inviting.
This was what I needed. Something simple. Something that didn’t come with years of baggage and a pair of green-eyed kids who looked at me like I was a monster.
“You seem tense tonight.” Tanya—I was pretty sure it was Tanya—set the bottle down and trailed her fingers up my arm. “I could help you relax.”
I should take her up on it. That’s what I would have done before Lilac. That’s what I’d done plenty of times after, in those first raw years when I was trying to fuck her out of my system. It never worked, but it numbed the edges for a while.
“Yeah?” I caught her wrist. “What did you have in mind?”
“Your room is right upstairs.” She stepped closer, close enough that I could smell her perfume—something floral and heavy, nothing like vanilla. “I could take a break.”
I stood up from the bar stool, and she smiled like she’d won something. Maybe she had. I let her lead me toward the stairs, past the common room where Handful was holding court with a couple of prospects, up to the second floor where the officers had their rooms.
She pushed open my door and pulled me inside, already sinking to her knees before the door clicked shut. Her hands were already working at my belt, practiced fingers making quick work of the buckle.
I let her. Closed my eyes and tried to lose myself in the mechanical relief, the promise of forgetting.
But when I closed my eyes, I saw Lilac.
Not the Lilac from today—the cold stranger who’d looked through me like I was nothing.
The Lilac from before. My Lilac. The way she used to smile at me in the morning, sleep-soft and beautiful.
The way she’d wrap herself around me like I was the only solid thing in her world.
The way she’d laugh when I said something stupid, that full-body laugh that made me feel like the funniest man alive.
Do I know you?
I stepped back abruptly, pulling away.
“What—” She blinked at me, more annoyed than confused now. “What’s wrong?”
“I can’t do this.”
“Can’t do—” She looked down pointedly, then back up with a smirk. “Your dick seems to disagree.”
“Not happening.” I tucked myself back in and refastened my belt. “Go find another brother.”
Her eyes flashed, irritation morphing into real anger. “Are you fucking serious right now?”
“Dead serious. Plenty of men downstairs who’ll take what you’re offering.”
“Fuck you, Colt.” She stood up, brushing off her knees with sharp, angry movements. “You’re not that special.”
I almost laughed. If only she knew. They all thought the same thing—these club girls who circled me like I was some prize to be won. Like if they just sucked my dick good enough, I’d make them my old lady. Tame the VP, lock him down, secure their place in the club hierarchy.
If only they fucking knew.
She pushed past me and out the door, leaving me alone in the dim room with nothing but the sound of my own breathing.
Fuck.
I sank down onto the edge of the bed and dropped my head into my hands.
I’d met Lilac at a gas station, of all places.
Not some romantic setup—no bar, no party, no mutual friends. Just a Texaco off the highway where I’d stopped to fill up my bike and she’d been standing next to her piece-of-shit car, staring at the steam pouring out from under the hood like it had personally betrayed her.
I could have kept walking. Should have, probably. I had club business waiting, a dozen things more important than helping some random woman with car trouble.
But she’d looked up at me with those eyes—warm and brown and completely unafraid despite the fact that I was six-two in a leather cut with Death’s Head MC patches all over it—and said, “Please tell me you know something about cars, because I think mine just died.”
I’d laughed. I remember that—laughing at her matter-of-fact tone, at the way she’d assessed me and apparently decided I was more likely to help than hurt her.
Most women looked at the cut and crossed to the other side of the street.
Hell, there was that whole thing on the internet about women saying they’d rather meet a bear in the woods than a strange man—and I was pretty sure a six-two biker covered in Death’s Head patches ranked even lower than “strange man” on that scale.
But this one had looked at me like I was just a man who might know how to fix an engine.
“I know a little,” I’d said, popping her hood. Blown head gasket. Her car wasn’t just dead, it was gone. “You got someone you can call?”
“No.” She’d said it simply, without self-pity. “I just moved here. Don’t really know anyone yet.”
So I’d called one of the brothers to come tow her car to the shop, and I’d offered her a ride to wherever she was going.
She’d hesitated—smart, I’d thought, she should hesitate—but then she’d squared her shoulders and said, “Okay. But if you try anything, I should warn you I took three years of karate as a kid.”
“Three years as a kid?” I’d raised an eyebrow. “How old were you?”
“Eight to eleven. But I’m sure I remember some of it.”
That was Lilac. Cautious but brave. Scared but not letting it stop her. She’d climbed onto the back of my bike and wrapped her arms around my waist like it was the most natural thing in the world.
And somewhere between the gas station and her apartment, I’d known I was going to marry her.
It had taken me six months to convince her to date me. Another year before she agreed to move in. Two more years before she said yes when I asked her to be my old lady, to make it official, immediately followed by a wedding.
I’d be patient for all of it. Earned every inch.
So the first night I finally got her to bed, I thought I knew exactly how it would go—slow and careful.
I was wrong.
She looked at me from across the room, something shifting behind her eyes, and pushed me down onto the mattress and climbed on before I’d finished processing the move. I reached for her, wanting to slow it down, take my time—
“I’ll tell you when to slow down,” she said. And started moving.
She fucked me hard and certain, hands flat on my chest, hips rolling in a rhythm that made it clear she’d been thinking about exactly this.
Every time I tried to flip her, take some control back, she locked her thighs around me and kept me exactly where she wanted.
She knew what she wanted. She wanted it deep, wanted it fast.
“Harder,” she said at some point. Not a request.
I gave her everything she asked for.
When she came she clenched tight and hot around me, my name half-gone in the moan before she could finish saying it. I lasted about ten more seconds.
Afterward, she curled against my side—soft and warm and quiet, entirely the sweet and careful woman I’d thought I’d been courting for six months.
Other nights I took my time. Got her on her back and worked my way down until careful and measured had nothing to do with anything.
She was grabby when she got close—sheets, pillow, whatever was within reach. The first time she got her hands in my hair she pulled hard, both fists, completely unaware she was doing it. I felt it all the way down my spine.
I didn’t stop. She didn’t let go.
The sound she made when she came from that was something I thought about for years.
There were slower nights too. Her underneath me, no agenda, just long and deep and unhurried. She’d stop trying to set the pace and just hold on—hands on my arms, wherever she could reach.
“You have to stop,” she’d said once, her voice gone soft and wrecked. “I can’t think when you—”
She hadn’t actually wanted me to stop. I hadn’t stopped.
“I’m not cut out for this life,” she’d told me more than once. “I’m not tough enough.”
“You’re the toughest person I know,” I’d always answered.
And I’d meant it. Not tough like a biker, not tough like someone who could throw a punch.
Tough like someone who’d grown up in foster care and still believed in people.
Tough like someone who worked two jobs to put herself through community college.
Tough like someone who’d looked at a scary biker in a gas station parking lot and decided to trust him anyway.
I’d thought I knew her. I’d thought she knew me. I’d thought what we had was solid, unshakeable, the kind of love that survived anything.
I’d been a fucking fool.
The night she disappeared, I’d been on a club run to Corpus Christi. Three days of hard riding and harder business, the kind of thing I couldn’t talk about even to her. When I’d finally made it back to our apartment, she was gone.
Not just gone—erased. Her clothes were missing from the closet. Her books were gone from the shelves. The little touches that made the place hers—the throw pillows, the plants, the photos of us stuck to the fridge with magnets—all of it, vanished.
And our bank account—the joint one we’d set up after we got married—was empty. Every penny of our savings, gone.
I’d torn the apartment apart looking for a note, a clue, something to explain how my wife could just disappear without a word. Nothing. She’d been thorough.
It was my Death’s Head brothers who finally told me the truth.
The clubhouse had been somber when I’d arrived, frantically looking for Lilac. Brothers wouldn’t meet my eyes. Scar, the club VP at the time, had pulled me aside.
“Brother, I’m sorry.” He’d handed me an envelope, his face grim. “You need to see this.”
Inside were photos. Lilac with another man. Timestamps from the weeks before she vanished. Bank statements showing large withdrawals—our money, gone. A motel receipt.
“Bullshit.” I’d slammed him against the wall. “Lilac wouldn’t—”
“We had them verified, Colt.” His voice had been gentle, pitying. “I’m sorry, brother. She was planning to leave you. She was cheating, and she cleaned out your accounts before she ran.”
I’d wanted to deny it. Wanted to believe there was another explanation. But the evidence was in my hands. Cold. Concrete. Undeniable.
The woman I’d loved had betrayed me. Had stolen from me. Had walked out of our life together without a backward glance.
The divorce had been rushed—filed within days, finalized within the month.
The club had greased the right palms to make it happen fast. A judge who owed Scar a favor, a clerk who looked the other way when the timeline didn’t quite add up.
That’s how things worked in our world. You needed something done quick and quiet, you paid the right people, and suddenly the impossible became routine.
She never contested it, just signed and moved on with her life. The lawyer said she’d accepted without a fight.
That had been the final nail. If she’d wanted to fight for us, she would have.
She hadn’t wanted to fight for us.
I lay on my bed in my room at the Venom Riders clubhouse, seven years and two thousand miles from Texas, and tried to make sense of what I’d seen today.
Lilac, with two kids. Twin boys who looked about the right age to have been conceived while we were still married.
Proof she was cheating, my brain insisted. Your brothers were right all along.
But something didn’t fit. Something I couldn’t quite put my finger on.
The confusion on her face. The genuine fear when I’d confronted her. The way she’d said I think you have me confused with someone else like she actually believed it.
My Lilac had never been a good liar. Today, she hadn’t looked like she was lying. She’d looked like she genuinely didn’t know who I was.
But that was impossible. You don’t just forget years of your life. You don’t forget the person you shared a life with, a home with, a bed with. You don’t look at your husband and ask do I know you? unless you’re playing some kind of sick game.
Unless…
No. I wasn’t going to do this. I wasn’t going to let her fuck with my head again, make me doubt everything I knew to be true. She’d cheated. She’d taken my money, my trust, and my fucking heart.
Whatever game she was playing now, I wasn’t going to be a pawn in it.
But even as I told myself that, I couldn’t shake the image of those boys. The fierce one who’d squared up to a six-foot-two biker without flinching. The quiet one grabbing his brother’s arm, trying to protect him even while he was scared.
Brave kids. Good kids.
Kids who’d looked at me with fear, because I’d been too blinded by rage to control myself.
I’d scared them. I’d scared her. And some part of me—whatever was left of the man who’d loved her—hated myself for it.
“Fuck,” I muttered into the empty room.
This was supposed to be simple. See her, hate her, move on. Not this twisted mess of anger and confusion.
I pushed myself up from the bed and headed back to the bar. I needed another drink. But more than that, I needed answers.