Chapter Fourteen
A bigail cut her truck’s engine and sat behind the wheel, staring through the windshield at the goat barn without really seeing anything.
Though she felt all her emotions keenly, she’d never been much of a crier—at least not the heaving-sobs kind of crying.
She was sometimes sad, sometimes had days that were blue for no discernable reason, always felt compassion and sympathy for the suffering of others, and might tear up or catch a stone in her throat, but she rarely felt deeply downhearted, and never hopeless.
She’d wept hard for her chickens after the rampage in the summer, but that had been grief, not hopelessness.
Her feelings this afternoon were more akin to grief as well—or, at least, the keen sense that grief waited on the near horizon.
She’d driven home in quiet, alone, her vision a bit blurry and her mind swept up in a whirl of wondering and worry about Mel, and for him, too.
He’d brushed off her concern about his injuries, and they weren’t severe, but still, he’d been fighting, been hurt, because she’d been there.
She made sure to think of it like that: not that he’d been hurt because of her, but because she’d been there.
That distinction put the onus on Mel, where it belonged, but acknowledged that his misplaced and troubling urge to defend her against someone’s words had been the catalyst. If she hadn’t been there, he wouldn’t have fought.
Not for that reason, at least—and she knew he didn’t go looking for reasons.
In the way he’d slammed her truck door and stalked back to the clubhouse, he’d made it clear that he was angry—specifically, angry at her.
He was confused, and probably hurt, by her rejection of his ‘defense’ of her.
She understood; her way of thinking about such things was likely not most people’s way of thinking, and even more likely not the Horde way of thinking.
But it was her way of thinking, and on matters relating specifically to her she considered it a boundary: she had no interest in being offended by a stranger’s random comment simply so she would feel grateful for someone’s supposed defense of her—because it turned a spotlight on whatever was said and meant that her ‘defender’ was on the same wavelength with the stranger’s thinking.
If Mel had followed her lead and simply kept walking, right past that woman, Abigail would have had no reason to think about her, no reason to give her words a second’s attention.
Instead, those words and everything that followed had settled into the center of her mind and begun to ache.
Even worse, the cracks that brief moment exposed now threatened to dismantle the very good thing she and Mel had been building, and they’d barely had time to lay the foundation.
Maybe it was as simple, and as difficult, as the truth she’d always felt: she didn’t fit with the Horde.
Their way of being in the world was not her way.
The men who wore the Horde’s patch created the Horde way of being in the world.
Mel was one of those men; thus his way of being in the world was not her way.
Could two people so fundamentally different make a whole? How would it work?
When she had pressing questions her mind would not sort out, she used her cards to clear a path through the thicket. But this thicket was so dense she wasn’t sure she could form a proper question.
Well. The best way to make one’s thoughts settle was to leave them to themselves.
She had a mountain of work to do before the Harvest Festival began tomorrow.
One nugget of good in this afternoon’s muddy morass of bad was that socializing with the Horde would have meant a late night for her, and now she could get her work done in the daytime.
As she climbed down from the truck and greeted her dogs, Abigail gave the heaviest worry a hard shove to the back of her head: the thought that all this really meant she was not compatible with the Night Horde MC, and thus not with any of its patches. Not with Mel.
Maybe she’d have to face that eventually, but for now she wasn’t sure it was true. No point fretting over it yet.
She swung the door closed and turned to her dogs with a cleansing sigh. “Okay, boys. I’m going in to change, then let’s get to work.”
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~oOo~
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W ith her face washed of ‘going to town’ makeup, wearing her usual outfit of comfy cotton dress, bright work smock, and Crocs, her hair back up in its usual loose bun, Abigail checked on the animals, checked the gardens for anything that might be left to pull, and then ensconced herself in the kitchen.
She stood before her well-loved work island, dressing up jam jars with small rounds of gingham and calico fabrics she’d cut with pinking shears, fixing them around the lids with matching strips of satin ribbons.
She had the Highwomen playing on the old CD player atop the pie safe, and she sang along with them to ‘Crowded Table,’ one of her favorite songs. She’d never had a crowded table of her own, and had rarely had a seat at anyone else’s, but she loved the idea of community the song celebrated.
Even she had a community like that. Though her own table was sparse, she knew if she had a need, there were people who cared enough about her to fill it.
That thought sidled through her mind as she tied a lavender ribbon around a piece of pink calico, over a jar of blueberry preserves. Her next thought froze her with her fingers on the tails of the bow.
When she’d had need in the summer, the Horde had jumped in at once to fill it. And Mel had been the vanguard, leading the charge. That was what had brought him into her life.
She hadn’t forgotten, of course; not a day had passed since that she hadn’t thought of their help and been grateful, not a day had passed since that she didn’t feel blessed to have such a dear new friend, and lately even more than a friend.
Yet her understanding had not made her feel more comfortable in the Horde’s home.
She’d been so uncomfortable, in fact, that she’d missed a bright truth: the Horde had offered her a seat at their own crowded table.
In this moment, with her fingers snug around bits of satin ribbon, Abigail finally realized that the roots of her discomfort were sunk into soil of judgment . She was judging the Horde and finding them lacking. These men, and their families, who’d done so much to help her when she had need.
In the same moment, while the epiphany held her in place, she heard the roar of a motorcycle’s engine, and the dogs climbed down from the porch. She knew a lot of bikers, but she could imagine only one who’d come all the way out here on a day like this. Only one who had reason or care to do so.
Her thoughts finally aligning into meaning, Abigail went out to meet Mel.
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~oOo~
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H e arrived at the foot of the porch steps as she stepped through the screen door. They both stopped, and as their eyes locked, the world went still. Neither moved or said a word.
They stood like that, frozen in time. Abigail studied Mel, noting how his bruises had darkened since they’d parted, how his aura blinked and stuttered, how the same turmoil showed on his face, especially in his eyes. He was deeply upset and confused.
In the time they’d been apart, Abigail had sorted through her thoughts and feelings and come to a better understanding of things, but Mel seemed still trapped in a sticky web of doubt. Their need to talk remained acute.
“Hey, hon,” she said, softly. “I’m glad you’re here. Come on in, and we’ll talk.”
“No,” Mel said, the short syllable sharp as a command.
“No?” Abigail was taken aback. Had he come to end things?
For a long span of silent heartbeats, Mel stood at the foot of the steps, one hand on the railing, his mouth closed and his brow furrowed.
Wild thoughts rioted across his face, and Abigail tried to read them, to understand him.
Was he here to end things? Or was his turmoil rooted in worry that she wanted to end things?
Or was it something else, something apart from and maybe bigger than them?
Had something happened at the clubhouse?
Abigail was stuffed with questions like feathers in one of Granny Kate’s old blue-tick pillows, and the quill of each poked at her insides. They had to talk. None of this could be resolved unless they understood each other.
Abruptly, just as she prepared to ignore his barked command and speak those thoughts aloud, Mel stomped up the steps and straight at her, so quickly his hands had firm hold of her face before she could do more than suck in a shocked breath.
Before she could let it out, his mouth landed on hers, covering her lips completely, fusing their mouths together, as his tongue surged forward.
Though they hadn’t gone much further, Abigail and Mel had kissed often in the past few weeks.
Many nights, after dinner, they curled up in her front room and listened to music or watched a movie, and most of the movie got missed.
Sometimes she had trouble getting dinner made because he’d stand behind her with his arms around her and nibble at her neck and ear until she had to turn around and get in on the fun.
His smiling attentions had her giddy as a schoolgirl nearly every moment they were alone together.
She’d kissed very few men ever, and Mel was, by far, the man she’d kissed most, and who’d kissed her best. Yet he’d never before kissed her like this. No one ever had. This kiss overwhelmed her, dominated her. This kiss was a demand.
A small voice in her mind whispered that it was too overwhelming, too dominating, too demanding.
Never in her life had she wanted to cede control of her own body to anyone, and Mel’s fierceness now bordered on force.
Always before he’d asked—it was one of the things she’d found sexiest about him, how he always told her what he wanted before he did it, making the request part of his play, his deep voice low and slow, rolling through his warm breath and over her cheek like a caress.
He always waited for her to tell him, or to show him, that she wanted what he wanted.
He hadn’t waited now. He hadn’t asked. He almost didn’t seem to care if she wanted his mouth on hers or not. She should find this dangerous, offensive. She should push him off.
But something else inside her, not in her mind but seated more deeply, not a voice at all but something far more elemental, something perhaps that had been inside her since before she understood words or how to use them, wanted this fierceness from him, wanted to give in to it, to submit to him.
That something understood that his force wasn’t danger or offense but desperation, a need to cut through everything that had grown up between them on this day and reclaim their closeness.
She’d wanted words first, to work through the trouble and reclaim the connection between them. Mel clearly wanted the connection reclaimed before anything else.
And she responded. A fire caught and began to blaze in her, bedded in her core and sending fiery heat through every vein and nerve, all the way to the tips of her fingers and toes, to the roots of her hair. She blazed so hot she thought her feet might truly lose contact with the ground.
She flung her arms around his neck and kissed him back with all the wild abandon with which he kissed her.
At that clear sign of her acceptance, without even the slightest break in the dance of their mouths, Mel dropped his hands from her face and wrapped his arms around her, pulling her body to his like he meant to draw her fully inside him.
And then her feet did leave the porch as he stood tall and pulled her up with him. For a hazy, dazzling moment, Abigail thought she was truly floating.
In that moment, she knew she was in love. Fully and completely in love. Not a single complication had been resolved, but for this one moment, none of it mattered a whit. This was her man, holding her up, holding her close, and it was all she cared about.
He was right: this was the way to reclaim what they had. Not merely reclaim it but emphasize it.
Mere seconds after that powerful understanding landed inside her, Mel’s force gentled, and he finally eased back. Still holding her dangling before him, he opened his eyes and smiled.
“Talkin’s overrated,” he said in a soft voice more like his usual friendly drawl.
She smiled back. “Maybe so. Maybe sometimes.”
His smile faded from his lips, and his eyes grew serious. “I know there’s talkin’ to do. I know we got shit to work out, Abs. But we’re workin’ it out. ‘Cuz I need this—you, I mean. I need you. All that shit today feels like it came outta nowhere.”
It hadn’t, which was why they had talking to do. They each owed the other an apology, and they each had ways of being and thinking the other didn’t yet fully understand. However, what they’d needed before anything else was this: this closeness, this attraction, this bond.
Understanding this moment for what it was, Abigail didn’t push him toward talking. Instead she brushed a finger over his soft bottom lip, bedded in a heavy beard and still gleaming from their kiss.
Strangely, she realized it would be easier to speak the words to tell him she loved him than that she needed him.
It wasn’t the right time for the former, and she shied from the latter (something she’d think through later, alone, when she could focus), so Abigail told him something else good and true: “I want to work it out, too. I don’t want to lose you.
” And then, because she was still completely held by his strong, steady arms, still on fire all the way to her toetips, and well convinced that sometimes talking was overrated, Abigail slipped her hand into Mel’s dark hair, put her lips at his ear, and whispered, “But we can talk later. Let’s go upstairs. ”
She felt the shock move through him before he whipped his head back and stared hard at her. “Abs?”
Already her nerves quivered, but her resolve remained solid. She wanted this. Him. Oh, how she wanted him. She was nervous, but she wasn’t afraid. Because she trusted him.
“I want you to come to bed with me.”
Mel didn’t need to be told again.