2. SARAH
SARAH
Finn carried our son into his home as if Noah had always belonged in his arms, and I followed them knowing I had never deserved to see it.
His rooms occupied the back corner of the clubhouse, tucked behind a reinforced door fitted with three locks and a keypad.
Inside, everything was dark wood, black leather, and hard edges, with no photographs on the walls and nothing left lying around that could not be packed in under a minute.
The man I had known kept old concert tickets in his kitchen drawer and never threw away a birthday card.
This man lived as if he expected to evacuate or be attacked before breakfast.
I had helped do that to him.
Finn took Noah straight into the smaller bedroom. The bed was narrow and neatly made, probably intended for a brother too drunk to ride home, but he lowered Noah onto it with a care that made my throat ache. When Noah stirred and clung to the front of his cut, Finn went completely still.
“Don’t go,” Noah mumbled.
The anger in Finn’s face disappeared so quickly it was almost frightening. He sat on the edge of the mattress, one big hand covering our son’s back. “I’m right outside, kid. Nobody gets near you without coming through me first.”
Noah accepted that promise more easily than I ever had. His fingers loosened, his eyes closed, and within seconds he was asleep again.
Finn stayed there longer than necessary, studying every line of Noah’s face as though he could recover four missing years if he looked hard enough. I stood in the doorway with blood drying against my arm and guilt pressing on my lungs until every breath hurt.
When he finally rose, the softness went with him.
“Kitchen,” he said.
I tucked the blanket around Noah and followed Finn down the short hallway.
He had already taken off his cut and laid it over the back of a chair.
Beneath it, his black shirt was stretched across shoulders broader than I remembered, the sleeves tight around tattooed arms. Time had sharpened him rather than softened him.
There were new scars across his knuckles, more ink disappearing beneath his collar, and nothing left of the easy smile he used to save for me.
He opened a metal first-aid kit and pointed at the counter. “Sit.”
“You’re still bossy.”
“You’re still bleeding.” His gray eyes met mine. “Get on the counter, Sarah.”
I should have argued. Instead, I climbed onto the cold surface and let him stand between my knees because my body had never learned the difference between an order from Finn Oakland and an invitation.
He cut away the torn fabric around my forearm, revealing the long scrape beneath.
It looked worse than it was, but his jaw tightened anyway.
He cleaned it without speaking, one hand braced around my wrist while the other moved with careful precision.
The silence between us was full of everything we had not said at the gate.
“You searched for me,” I said.
His hand stopped for half a second. “Eighteen months.”
The answer hurt more than if he had said no. “I didn’t know.”
“That’s what happens when you vanish.” He pressed clean gauze against the cut. “You don’t get updates.”
“I changed names. I moved whenever I thought someone had found me.”
“You were good at it.”
“I had to be.”
His gaze lifted to mine. “Start at the beginning.”
I looked toward the hallway, checking that Noah’s door was still open and the room beyond it quiet.
“The night I left, someone was waiting inside my apartment. He wore a mask and gloves, and he knew where you had been that day, which road you would take back to the clubhouse, and exactly where you slept. He put photographs of you on my table and told me I had ten minutes to pack.”
Finn’s fingers tightened around my wrist. “What photographs?”
“You leaving my place. Riding alone. Standing outside the garage with Hawk. There was one of you asleep in bed beside me.” Shame and old fear burned the back of my throat.
“He had been inside while we were sleeping, Finn. He told me that if I warned you or went to the club, they would kill you before sunrise and make me watch.”
“So you believed him.”
“He left your knife on the table.”
Finn went still.
It had been the hunting knife his father gave him, the one he kept locked inside the drawer beside his bed.
I had recognized the worn leather sheath and the nick near the base of the handle.
Whoever entered my apartment had already breached Finn’s rooms once.
I had no reason to believe they couldn’t do it again.
“You should’ve come to me,” he said.
“You would have hunted him.”
“Damn right.”
“And if he really had people watching every road out of this compound, you would have ridden straight into them.” I pulled my arm from his grip. “I loved you too much to gamble with your life.”
His expression hardened. “So you gambled with yours instead.”
“I kept you alive.”
“And my son is asleep down the hall after spending four years believing he didn’t have a father.”
“I never told him that, Finn.”
“What did you tell him?”
“That his father was someone brave who would have loved him if he knew.” My voice cracked, and I hated myself for it. “I showed him the one photograph I had of you. I told him your name when we crossed into town tonight because I didn’t know if I would get us through that gate alive.”
Finn turned away and planted both hands on the sink, his head bowed. Anger rolled through every rigid line of his back, but beneath it was something far more difficult to face.
Grief.
“I found out I was pregnant six weeks after I left,” I continued.
“I bought a prepaid phone and drove three counties over because I was going to call you. Before I could, someone left a picture of your bike outside the clubhouse beneath my windshield wiper. On the back, they had written, He lives because you listened.”
Finn looked over his shoulder. “You still have it?”
“I kept everything.”
“I want it.”
“It’s in the bag.”
“What changed three nights ago?”
“The phone in my apartment rang after midnight. A man said Rafe Maddox knew about Noah and wanted the Iron Flames to understand how easily family could become leverage. Then he used the same words the man in the mask used before I left.”
“Which words?”
“He lives because you listened.”
Finn faced me fully, and the look in his eyes belonged to Knox, the man the rest of the world knew. Cold, suspicious, and already arranging somebody’s death.
“Why drive here instead of running again?”
“Because they knew Noah’s school, his teacher’s name, and which window belonged to his bedroom. Running stopped keeping him safe.” I swallowed. “You were the only person left who could.”
He crossed the kitchen until he was standing between my knees again, but there was nothing careful in him now. “You trusted me with him when you ran out of choices.”
“I always trusted you to protect us.”
“Just not enough to let me choose how.”
“It was my decision.”
“It was my life!” His hands closed around the edge of the counter on either side of my hips. “My kid. My woman. You made the choice for all three of us, then came back expecting me to be grateful you finally ran in the right direction.”
Anger snapped through the guilt that had been choking me since I reached the gate. “I am not your woman.”
His face lowered until only an inch separated us. “Look me in the eye and say that again.”
I did, because I had spent years learning how to live without him and I would not let one night inside his walls strip all that strength away. “I’m not yours.”
His gaze dropped to my mouth. “Liar.”
“You don’t fucking own me because we had a child.”
“No. I owned every fucking breath you gave me long before that.”
“And what about you?” I caught the front of his shirt and dragged him closer, furious with him for saying it and even more furious with myself for wanting it to be true. “How many women have you called yours since I left?”
His eyes darkened. “There she is.”
“Answer me.”
“None.”
The word landed low in my stomach. “You expect me to believe you’ve been alone for almost five years?”
“Didn’t say I was alone. Said none of them were mine.” His hand slid from the counter to my thigh, fingers tightening through the dirty denim. “Now you answer. How many men thought they could take my place?”
“That isn’t your business.”
His hand moved higher. “Everything that touched you is my fucking business.”
“Nobody stayed.”
“That ain’t what I asked.”
“And you don’t get to ask.” I pulled his mouth close enough that my lips brushed his with every angry word. “You weren’t there.”
“Because you left me!”
“Because I was trying to save you!”
“I DIDN’T ASK TO BE SAVED.”
“Neither did I.”
The last thread between us snapped.
Finn kissed me with one hand fisted in my hair and the other gripping my hip, dragging me to the edge of the counter until I could feel how hard he was between my thighs.
There was no tenderness in it, no cautious reunion after years apart.
His mouth crashed into mine as if he could punish the lost time out of both of us, and I kissed him back with every ounce of anger I had carried through every lonely night without him.
I bit his lower lip hard enough to taste blood.
He pulled back with a low growl. “Still fight dirty.”
“Still think you can handle me?”
His hand slid around my throat.
The grip was firm without crushing, his fingers spanning the sides while his thumb tipped my jaw up. He searched my face for hesitation, and when he found none, the heat in his eyes turned brutal.
“Tell me to stop.”
I wrapped my hand around his wrist and pulled him tighter. “Don’t you fucking dare.”
He kissed me again, harder this time, and lifted me from the counter.
I locked my legs around his waist as he carried me into his bedroom, our mouths still fighting, my hands tearing at his shirt until buttons scattered across the floor.
He kicked the door shut behind us and turned the lock without putting me down.
“Quiet,” he warned against my mouth. “My son’s asleep.”
“Our son.”
Something savage flashed across his face. “Say it again.”
“Our son.”
He shoved me against the door and tore my sweatshirt over my head, then dragged my jeans and panties down together. I stripped his belt open while he kissed down my neck, biting hard enough to leave marks I would have to cover tomorrow.
“You’re still mine,” he growled against my skin.
“Then prove you’re still mine too.”
He spun me around and bent me over the edge of the bed. I heard the nightstand drawer open, foil tearing, then his hand returned to my throat from behind, pulling me upright against his chest as the thick head of his cock pressed between my thighs.
“You want proof?” His teeth scraped my ear. “Take it.”
He drove into me in one hard thrust.
I bit down on my lip to smother the cry, my body stretching around him with an ache so sharp and perfect it almost broke me. Finn cursed beneath his breath and held still, his chest heaving against my back.
“Tell me if it’s too much.”
“It isn’t enough.”
He pulled out and slammed back into me, one hand gripping my throat while the other closed around my hip.
Every thrust was hard, deep, and furious, the bed striking the wall in a rhythm we were both too far gone to control.
I reached behind me and buried my nails in his ass, dragging him closer until he was filling me so completely I could not remember where the anger ended and the need began.
“Four fucking years,” he rasped, thrusting harder. “Four years wondering who was touching you.”
“You don’t get to be jealous.”
“Watch me.”
His fingers tightened just enough to make my pulse pound against his palm. I turned my head and caught his mouth, kissing him with teeth and tongue while he fucked me like he hated every mile I had put between us.
“Who do you belong to?” he demanded.
I clenched around him deliberately, drawing a broken curse from his mouth. “Who do you belong to?”
“You.” The answer came without hesitation, rough and furious against my ear. “Always fucking have.”
The words destroyed me.
My orgasm tore through me so violently I had to bite my lip hard to keep quiet. Finn drove into me twice more, his hand tightening on my hip as he buried himself deep and came with my name trapped between his teeth.
For several seconds, neither of us moved. His forehead rested against the back of my head, his hand still curved around my throat but no longer gripping, just holding me while our breathing slowed.
Then he released me.
The distance returned before he had even stepped away.
I pulled on his discarded shirt because mine was somewhere in the kitchen and turned to find him watching me, his chest bare, his belt hanging open and his expression as angry as it had been before he kissed me.
“That didn’t fix anything,” I said.
“Wasn’t supposed to.”
“Then what was it?”
Finn crossed the room and caught my chin, forcing me to hold his gaze. “A reminder.”
“Of what?”
His thumb dragged slowly across my swollen lower lip. “You can run from the club, from this town, and from every bastard looking for leverage, but you can’t run from what you are to me.”
I should have hated him for saying it.
Instead, I curled my fingers around the back of his neck and held him exactly where he was.
“Then you’d better remember what you are to me too.”
His eyes darkened again.
We had not forgiven each other. We had barely begun telling the truth, and somewhere beyond those locked doors, Rafe Maddox was coming for the child we had made together.
But Finn was still mine.
God help anyone who tried to take him from me again.