Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
Lacey
“No one is killing anyone,” I whisper. My words are lost on Kevlar as he flexes his hands, balling them into fists and releasing the tension again. “I’m not your problem.”
“Is that what you believe?”
Everything hurts.
My head.
My heart.
My soul.
“I’m not worth you spilling blood over.”
“You are,” he says, so low it barely escapes his lips. “You’re worth all the trouble in the world. You’re mine, sweetness.”
“I just want to be free of him. Free to live life my way.”
“When I put a bullet between his eyes, you’ll have that.”
“Not if you’re rotting away somewhere in a jail cell.”
“You saying I’ll get caught?”
“Think about your sisters. They depend on you and I’m just some girl you hardly know that you found on the beach.”
“You’re not some random girl. You’re you.”
“I’m no one.”
“You’re mine.” He grabs me by my hips, pulling my body flush to his. The ocean roars behind us, but all I can hear is my heartbeat hammering in my ears as he gazes down at me.
“I’m…” he cuts my words off by sealing his lips to mine. Kevlar kisses me hard and deep. He kisses me with so much force that I almost forget my name again. He owns me in this moment.
I forget our fight.
I forget about my horrible husband.
I forget everything but his touch.
His hands grip my ass, anchoring me to him. My knees are weak, and my tongue turns clumsy. My kisses rushed and sloppy. Frantic. But I keep kissing him even though I’m dizzy and wildly terrified of what happens next.
“I’m not letting him get away with hurting you.” Kevlar peppers kisses along my neck and back to my mouth. The ache between my thighs is stronger than the ache in my head. I want to crawl inside him and never come out. Not even when the world threatens to burn the two of us alive.
He pulls away first. “He’ll never hurt you again.”
“You believe me?”
“Sweetness, you could tell me the sky is really the ocean, and I’d believe you. Your word is all I need. He’ll never lay eyes on you again if I can help it.”
We both know that it isn’t that simple.
“One between the eyes and this can all be over.”
“You’d be starting a war. His family is powerful.”
“So are we. Our club has chapters all over. He won’t win.”
I don’t want blood on my hands, but I know that if left to Kevlar, he’ll put that gun to Phillip’s temple and never blink. He means it. I feel it in the way he touches me. The way he looks at me. He looks at me as if he loves me.
I could run. We could run. Vanish as though neither of us ever existed, but I won’t ask that of him. I won’t ask him to leave his club, his family, and his business behind.
“I don’t want you to go after him,” I say, my voice coming out shaky. “He’s not worth it. Let me just disappear.”
“I’m not letting you go. I just got you.”
“He won’t stop coming after me until one of us is dead.”
“Exactly. Leave it to me.”
I clamp a palm over his mouth.
“Just listen.” he nods, and I remove my hand from his mouth. “Heather needs to die so Lacey…so I can live.”
“You sure this is what you want to do?” Kevlar asks as Ashley smears some red gelatin mixture across my forehead and splatters it down the front of my dress. The one he found me in.
“It’s the only way Phillip is going to leave me alone.”
Kevlar’s throat bobs, but he doesn’t argue.
It’s early enough that no one is around. Buford blocked off this part of the beach and has everything ready on his end.
Our small group goes down to the rocky part of the shore where Kevlar found me one week ago. I lay on the wet sand, pretending I’m dead while Guts snaps the scene of the crime. Well, the scene of Heather Manning being found after a drowning accident.
As far as the rest of the world will know, I drank too much and went for a midnight swim.
Phillip will know it’s a lie, but he will get what he wants. Me legally dead and the freedom to marry Leandra. On paper, I’ll be known as Lacey Sweet.
“Oh, that’s good,” Ashley says while hovering over Guts’ shoulder.
I made Kevlar hang back at the clubhouse. There’s no way I could concentrate with him watching.
“I think we have everything we need for Buford.”
“Thank you both for helping me.”
“That’s what friends are for,” Ashley reminds me.
I smile as she helps me up. I look and feel like something out of one of the horror movies Kevlar loves to watch.
Back in my room, which I’m renting at the clubhouse with the pay I’m earning bartending for them, I get cleaned up. Kevlar wanted me to move in with him, but it’s too soon.
We need to get to know each other.
Take things slow.
I’m rediscovering who I am.
I have plans to open a bakery in the future. I’m going to call it Lacey’s Sweets.
Kevlar offered to front me the startup, but I need to do this on my own. I need to stand on my own two feet.
I finish getting ready, and for the first time in a long while I like the girl looking back at me in the mirror. I love who she’s becoming.
I meet Kevlar in the parking lot. He’s waiting by his bike.
We’re going on a date. It’s starting at his tattoo shop where London is giving me my first tattoo. Kevlar is a bit butthurt he won’t be the one to do my ink, but I need this to be mine and only mine.
“Stop hovering. Shew. Go do something. Like sweep the front or some shit. But if you don’t stop crowding my station, I’m going to bury my needle in your eye,” London threatens my boyfriend.
“I’m not hovering,” Kevlar insists, but London just glares at him over the rim of her thick black glasses, her hands steady as she sets up the tattoo machine with surgical care.
“You are, boss man. You’re sweating all over my floor,” she says, popping her gum. “You want the girl to be nervous, then keep this macho man crap up.”
I think she’s one of the few people who can snap at him and get away with it besides his sisters or me.
Kevlar mouths something rude I can’t quite catch.
He steps back, folding his arms and fixating on me with this hungry, dark stare that makes my insides twist. I’m perched on the padded tattoo chair, half of a cookie in my mouth.
My hand trembles just enough that my nervousness shows.
London snaps her gloves on, and I catch my reflection in the mirror.
Pale.
Flushed.
Scared shitless.
“Show me the sketch one more time?” I ask, voice pinched with a charged mix of excitement and fear.
London pulls the paper from her cart and hands it to me.
It’s a chocolate chip cookie with a semicolon in the middle. My story didn’t end that night on the beach. It began the next morning when Kevlar found me.
“Are you ready?”
“Let’s do this.”
She places the transfer on my arm.
My man. My biker grins at me with pride and love.
The tattoo gun buzzes, and London gets to work.
The tattoo takes about an hour.
“If you ever want to get more ink or this one touched-up, you know where to find me. But next time you’ve gotta let the boss do it. I can’t work with him hanging over my shoulder every five seconds.” She laughs as she wipes away some droplets of blood from my arm.
Kevlar flips her off. “Don’t be expecting a good tip now.”
“Pfft. You better tip me.”
“What’d you get?” Candyce and Ashley rush me when we get back to the clubhouse.
I show off my inked cookie, and they gush about how it fits me perfectly.
For the first time in my life, I feel like I have a true place in this world where I belong. I have friends. A job. Goals. A hotter than sin biker.
Life is good. Almost too good.
“No, he fucking didn’t,” Candyce screeches as Graves walks through the front with some big-boobed redheaded chick on his arm.
“Fuck,” Kevlar grumbles, wrapping a hand around his sister’s wrist.
“This about to get ugly,” Ashley whispers.
To be continued in Graves & Candy