Chapter Twenty-Seven
AJ
I forgive you.
The moment she says the words, the tension breaks. I feel it deep in my veins. Like the resulting flood if the Hoover Dam ever came down. A tsunami of relief.
She’s still mine.
I didn’t know if bringing the whole motorcycle club here would be enough. I didn’t know if that would impress her.
Holding onto her now, I can’t quite pinpoint the moment when I became a slave to her.
I think it was the night she yelled at me.
The night I confirmed she was the girl that I’d kissed, and suddenly, nothing else mattered, because I’d never forgotten that kiss, blindfolded in Amber’s parents’ closet.
After that night, my whole focus became about her.
About kissing her again. I never understood the level of shittiness she endured because of me and my dumbass friends in high school, and the pain it caused her. But I know now.
Mostly, I’m a lowkey kinda guy. I go to work, hang with my friends, drink some beer or whiskey, shoot some pool and hook up with a chick every now and then.
Standing in this laundry closet, with Hollie in my arms, it feels like that was the old me. The douchebag version of me. The guy who ran a mile when shit got real.
Well, shit just got real. And now I’m in love with this girl.
The way she kisses me back, it feels like she’s lost her previous inhibitions. That she’s gained confidence in the time that we’ve spent together. Her tongue meets mine. Her body presses into me. And I know she wants me as much as I want her.
I press my hands into the globes of her ass. Sweep her up and she wraps her legs around me. Kiss her like these are our last few minutes together on planet Earth. When I lower her back down, I know what I need to offer her is more than just an apology. It’s a vow.
‘I swear, I’ll never hurt you like that again,’ I tell her, my hands cradling her face between my palms. ‘And if anyone else tries to hurt you, they’ll have to come through me first. I’ll protect you from anything, anyone.
And it doesn’t mean I’ll forget about what an ass I was to you.
I plan on taking my sweet time to make it up to you. ’
No more hookups. No more random chicks in my bed whose name I can’t recall the next day because I was too much of a selfish a-hole to ask. No more Mom being worried about me turning out like my deadbeat father and not knowing how to love somebody.
I found somebody. And she’s everything.
‘Oh? How do you plan on doing that?’ Hollie asks me coyly.
I kiss her. I plan on taking her back to her apartment. Undressing her slowly. Worshipping her body. Giving her a dozen orgasms through the night. More if she’s still capable.
‘Take me home with you and I’ll show you,’ I whisper against her lips.
‘I’d like that,’ she whispers back. ‘But how do I get twenty Venom bikers to go home?’
I laugh. Pull back. ‘Could be a problem. Venom members pride themselves on being thorough.’
Her eyes soften. ‘Thank you for bringing them all here today.’
‘Echo advised me to go big. If I was serious about us. About you.’
She’s smiling sweetly at me. Damn if I don’t just wanna grow old with her by my side.
‘Are you? Serious about me?’
I run my thumb across her lips, slide my fingertips down the slender column of her neck, and whisper the words before stealing another heated kiss, ‘I’ve never been more serious about anything, my entire life.’
At six p.m, I watch Hollie thank every member of the club individually for coming out to help at Sunset Pines today.
Tawny, the manager, is also full of thanks and praise.
She told Echo the mayor turned up and gave a press conference, but at least we made a huge difference in the community.
So, now Echo’s happy as a pig in shit too.
In the reception area, I watch Chase flirt up a storm with the girl on the front desk. Things are better between us, since Nicole sat both our asses in the same room yesterday and forced us to apologize to one another.
‘Who’s the girl?’ I ask under my breath, when he comes over.
He runs his fingers through his hair, a pleased smile on his face. He’s holding onto a yellow sticky note. ‘Name’s Aubri. Gave me her number.’
‘Willingly?’
‘Fuck you.’
‘Prolly liked your bruises. Makes you look like an MMA cage fighter. You can thank me later.’
‘Whatever. You comin’ back to Rapture?’
‘Not tonight. Heading to Hollie’s.’
He’s quiet for a moment. ‘Hollie’s a real nice girl, you know.’
I nod my head. ‘She is.’
‘I’m sorry I didn’t catch on earlier.’
‘Me too.’
‘Me and her, we’re, like, buddies now. She tell you that?’
‘She told me.’
He punches me lightly in the arm. ‘I’m happy for you, man. Feels like you grew up. Made me figure I should prolly do the same. You and Reyes… you’re all settled down now. Coupled up.’
‘You’re holding a girl’s phone number, Bren. That’s your starter marker, right there.’
He folds the sticky note and pockets it. ‘Got any advice for me?’
I start to laugh. ‘For sure. Don’t waste the opportunity by being a jackass. And if she wants to shoot some eight-ball with you, maybe let her win.’
It’s getting dark out by the time we pull up outside Hollie’s apartment on my motorcycle.
‘Oh, shit,’ I hear her say behind me, on the back of the bike.
I lean down to my left, turn the key to the off position to kill the engine, but she doesn’t move, just clings to me.
‘What’s goin’ on?’ I ask, steadying the bike. I turn my head, still in my helmet.
She lifts her visor, looking across the parking lot. ‘That’s my dad’s car. He must be inside,’ she says.
‘Right. You wanna come out to Rapture? Or you wanna go say hi?’
She squeezes me tighter. ‘I don’t want to risk Evelyn being here too. Let’s get out of here.’
She doesn’t need to ask me twice. I lean down and switch the key back on, then restart the engine.
She clings to me on the ride back to Rapture. There’s a sense of anticipation in the air, like we both know what’s gonna happen no sooner than we’ve walked through the door.
We barely make it through my door. Reaching the top of the staircase, in the dusk light, we’re all over one another.
I struggle with my key, the pair of us practically falling over the threshold, tearing off each other’s clothes, our kisses heated and messy, hands pawing at one another.
I have to force myself to get to my feet to close the door behind us and switch on the light.
When Hollie’s in just her underwear, I scoop her up into my arms and lower her to the bed.
When I’m about to peel off her underwear, simultaneously tryna wrestle out my jeans, she pulls back. ‘Hold on a second,’ she says. ‘I want to talk to you about something.’
‘Okay,’ I say, composing myself, nerves hitting my chest. ‘What is it?’
‘When we went to the river, Nicole said something to me. She told me you said you had competition.’
I look down. I’m embarrassed that I talked to Nic about my insecurities. Nothing like this ever bothered me before. ‘Poetry Boy,’ I say.
‘Owen,’ she says. ‘But we can call him Poetry Boy if you like.’
I bring my gaze back to hers. ‘What about him? Do I need to be worried?’
‘On the contrary. I want you to know what happened.’
‘Okay,’ I say again.
‘When I met Owen, I was in a good place. I was happy. I had a year left of uni. I mean… sexually speaking, I’d only had sex once, with this random exchange student, that was it.
I was still pretty shy, and he brought me out of my shell.
We got on well. And I was trying not to think about you anymore, of that one mind-blowing kiss at Amber’s party. ’
I grin. ‘That kiss was legendary, baby, it’s forever imprinted on my brain.’
She smiles. ‘Yes, but I honestly thought I would never see you again.’
I trail my finger in a circle around her belly button. ‘That’s fair. I was an idiot.’
‘Anyway. Poetry Boy. Owen. He actually liked me. We went on some dates, talked on the phone, and eventually… you know.’
‘Don’t need to hear that part.’
She smiles again and tilts her head to one side. ‘Okay, so I didn’t have anything to compare it to, but like… I thought it was good. Decent. I mean, now I know better. Much, much better.’
I can’t help but grin. ‘Keep going.’
‘So, eventually, we were exclusive, I spent most of the time at his place. All that stuff. By then it was getting closer to graduation. There were all these questions about what I wanted to do next. We were all studying hard. There were parties. Owen and I kind of drifted a bit. We weren’t getting physical as much.
Then, one night, I saw a message exchange on his phone. ’
My face falls. And here was me thinking Poetry Boy was the romantic type. ‘You’re kidding.’
‘I found out that he’d spent the night at this girl’s house. And afterward, they’d talked about it.’
‘Shit,’ I breathe. ‘What happened?’
‘I confronted him about it. He said it was nothing, that he was drunk… that it was a stupid mistake… that they’d had sex, just once.
He was crying when he told me. I believed him when he said he was sorry, and that things with us hadn’t been great.
He wanted us to fix things. He told me he still loved me. ’
‘Wow,’ I say. ‘So, what did you do? Did you stick around?’
‘For a while. Until graduation. We slept together a few times, but every time I would just picture him with her, and it was a complete turn off. So, after graduation, I told him I was going to come back here for the summer. Just for a reset. Except I never went home again. I stayed. That’s when the poetry started. ’
I exhale. ‘I’m sorry you had to go through that, Hollie.’
‘It’s all right. Anyway, the night before I found Noah at Sunset Pines, I emailed Owen to say that I was thinking of coming home again.’
I swallow. ‘You did?’
‘I thought maybe Owen was the best boyfriend I was ever going to get. But maybe it was a sign… because the next night I found you again. The person I’d never stopped thinking about.’
I move closer to her. Lay my hand against her cheek and search her face.