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I blew half of what I had saved for my own motorcycle when I turned of age.
And when I finally, fucking finally, had enough tickets to go up to that counter and get Andi the ring she wanted so badly, I found someone else had chosen it.
I'd always remembered that ring.
When the time came and I knew I was going to ask her, I had taken that memory to a local jewelry designer, and I'd had them draw me up some sketches, finding the one closest to the one I had imprinted on my memory, then let them have at it.
What they came up with was a perfect replica of the ring she had loved so much, the ring I hadn't been able to get for her.
"Niro..." she gushed after I told her the story, dropping down on her knees in front of me, framing my face with her hands.
"You like it?" I asked, already knowing, because her eyes were flooded.
"No," she said, shaking her head as the first tear slipped down her cheek. "I love it. Almost, almost as much as I love you," she told me, arms going around the back of my neck, lips pressing to mine.
Andi - 2 years
You would think that being involved with an outlaw arms-dealing biker would mean a life of constant stress and upheaval.
And, don't get me wrong, it seemed like the club had some new brand of chaos every six months or so.
But a lot like Niro had told me Reign had said years back, that chaos, those little mini wars, most of them had been brought on by the women who—slowly, but surely—came into the lives of the men of the Henchmen MC.
Those were stories for other people, though, and not mine to tell.
What was mine to tell was about a ring on my finger and a clue in my hand.
What the clue would lead me to was a mystery.
Niro had always been an amazing gift-giver, always put more thought into it than anyone else I had ever met.
He'd outdone himself this time, though.
Because whatever this key was to was likely a part of this strange, massive, three-week-long scavenger hunt he'd put me on.
Nothing, not a single part of the process, had been ill-planned.
The first clue had led me to my parents' house, to the attic, to a box of knick-knacks, to an envelope full of pictures. It had taken me a couple of minutes to know what they were. The prints that had been on an old disposable camera my mom had given me when she'd dropped Niro and me off at a water park to spend the day on our own. We'd been fifteen and felt so grown up walking around the park all day with each other. We'd taken an entire camera's worth of pictures. It had been one of the best days of my life.
But I had forgotten all about the camera.
I guess because Niro had been in possession of it all along.
I looked at print after print of our often blurry, but smiling, elated faces and then found the next clue on the last one. One that hadn't been from back when we were fifteen, but from some unknown time in the recent past.
A picture of Nugget and Minnie standing at the place of the next clue.
It had been three weeks with a new clue every other day.
There were moments when I felt like the worst fiancée in the world because it took me a long time to figure out the next clue. Niro had a better memory for small details than I did.
But I always figured them out.
Three weeks into this thing, I was antsy to finally figure out what the present was. If he put all this work into the discovery of it, it had to be good.
This clue wasn't like that elaborate cipher he'd made me decode the week before.
This clue was easy because I'd seen something very similar tattooed right there on his very skin.
Geographical coordinates.
It didn't take much thought to figure out that the coordinates coincided with an address that would end up meaning something to the story of our life together.
And when I had plugged the address into my GPS, it didn't click at first.
It actually wasn't until I pulled into the neighborhood that I realized where he was sending me.
But, no.
Why would he send me back to the house where something so traumatic had happened to me? Even if the years had dulled the horror of that evening.
My stomach was in a knot as I pulled up to the house, not sure what I was supposed to do next. Until I saw a single daisy stuck in the door knocker on the front door.
So I guess he wanted me to go there.
Attached to the daisy, though, was a key.
