Spinning, my eyes meet the whisky pools that invaded my dreams last night as the visor of the helmet lifts open.
“Get on.” Asher barks the order, holding out another helmet to me.
What is he doing here?
“Lily, please help me. Stop making this about you,” Alexander snaps from behind me, and I don’t hesitate a moment longer before taking the helmet from Asher’s grip, tugging it on quickly, and climbing onto the back of his bike.
“What the hell are you doing?” Alex asks, his eyes wide in confusion as he takes me in, getting settled behind Asher.
“Hey, Mr Bennett,” Asher says in a tone that is not at all friendly.
“Asher? I thought you were in prison.” Alexander frowns, and Asher revs his bike.
“Obviously, I’m not.”
Alexander shakes his head, his eyes darting from Asher to me. “Get off the bike, Lily. Don’t be so stupid. We have unfinished business.”
“Actually, our business was finished a long time ago. Fuck off, Alex.”
Shit… I really just said that.
Yes, I’m acting all kinds of immature right now. Maybe it’sthe alcohol. Maybe it’s because I’m plain fed up. Or maybe it’s because I feel like I’m finally waking up from a dream where I let people walk all over me, and I don’t want to be that person anymore.
Well, really, I just let Alexander and his uptight family walk all over me, but those days are over now. I don’t have to answer to them.
Or maybe the Crimson Angel and I are one and the same, and I’m finally letting bits of her into my everyday life.
“Later.” Asher chuckles at Alexander’s expression before he pulls away from the curb, steering us into the traffic.
Wrapping my arms tighter around his waist, my heart races as I feel the hard plane of his abs rippling under his shirt, and I lean in close, loving how it feels to be on the back of his motorcycle.
“Where to?” Asher asks over his shoulder.
“Anywhere but here. Just get me out of this place,” I say over the rumble of the engine, and Asher nods before shifting gear and picking up speed.
It feels freeing here on the back of his bike. I’ve been on motorbikes before when I was younger. In Australia, on my family’s estate, we had dirt bikes we used to spend hours on as kids. It didn’t matter that I was a girl until I was a teenager, where the gender gap seems to start in the Marx family.
And where the women of the Australian underworld become leverage.
I learned that lesson when one of my family’s enemies kidnapped me straight off the beach. It was by fluke that I killed him. My only intention was to get away from him, but I rammed a fire poker right through his eye and straight into his brain.
It was over so fast. The whole kidnapping lasted three hours, and even though my dad and my uncles Ewan and Randall refused to give me lessons in killing after that, my brothers begged my older cousins, Leo and Conrad, to help. And they did. They took it upon themselves to make sure I’d never be untrained again.
The busy lunch rush of Hedgwick starts to dissipate as we leave the town limits and ride into the country. Asher’s bike onlyslows once we turn off the main road, and before I know it, we are travelling along the dirt tracks that surround our local reservoir.
Pulling up at a rest stop, Asher cuts the engine, and I uncurl myself from him, climbing off the bike. By the time I’ve tugged off the helmet, Asher is off too, his concerned gaze focused on mine.
“Stay put.” I point to the ground between us, and his dark brows furrow.
He doesn’t speak, though, his lips thinning as he gives me a nod, and I turn on my heel, beelining for the walking track down to the water.
I walk fast at first, and then my steps turn into a run as my building emotions start to overwhelm me. By the time I make it to the water’s edge, hot, angry tears are streaming from my eyes, and I release the scream that has been lodged in my throat since leaving the restaurant.
I bend and heave before releasing another scream, falling to my knees in a mess of helpless tears.
Sometimes I wish I never came to this country on that bloody gap year. I wish I had stayed back in Australia with my friends and family and focused on trying to make a life there.
But then, if I had, I wouldn’t have Jude and Ronan. They are myeverything. I can’t even fathom living in a world where they don’t exist. But maybe, if I had just refused to return to Alexander when I found out about Tamara the first time, back when I was pregnant, I could have gone back to Australia and raised the boys there.
