So no. I didn’t just choose to stay away. I chose to run. To keep running. Because it’s all I’ve known for a very long time. It’s pretty much the only thing in the world that I’m good at.
Chapter 2
Gage
I’d say that my wife is a Grade A bitch, but that would be too kind. Even still. I always wondered if she’d come back. Her sisters said it wasn’t a matter of if, but when. I guess they were right. In her classic, selfish, dramatic fashion, Ami Olson chose this day. Her nephew’s christening. A kid she’s never seen or even asked about, until today.
Other than her eye and hair color, her height and her body type, and the fact that she’s a lying bitch who tried to ruin my life, I know nothing about my wife. We were married as strangers, and stayed that way, given that she chose to skip town the morning after our nuptials, telling everyone that I’d attacked her. I’d passed out after drinking too much and couldn’t remember anything. But I’d never hit a woman before, and I knew I didn’t do it.
Eventually, the truth came out that it was a plan by a traitorous former club member to wreck the alliance between Steel and Ami’s father, Viking. The traitor, otherwise known as Tracker, is now back at our club, being rehabilitated, like we’re a fucking halfway house for fallen fucking bikers.
Suffice to say, there’s no love lost between me and Ami. I stayed just long enough for the cake to be cut and to watch my brothers shamelessly hum and haw over a chubby-cheeked baby just like their old ladies. I didn’t think anyone noticed me slip out. I was wrong.
Because, when I roll my bike down my driveway, I seehersitting onmyfront porch.
The dark haired, dark eyed devil with a body made for sin.
I thought about it once, the day I married her. Thought about getting her home and fucking her until we were both raw, but then I learned that all her beauty is wasted on her. In reality, she’s a frigid ice queen and if I were to stick my dick in her, it would probably turn black with frostbite and fall the fuck off.
I park my bike by the garage and throw a leg over, making sure my boots hit the ground hard to let her know just what kind of pissed off fury she’s inspired in me just by daring to show up at my fucking house after she very nearly ruined her nephew’s party. Her sister would have been devastated. Her father would have been ten shades of furious, and Steel probably would have lost his shit with her once and for fucking all.
I would have liked to see the latter two, at least if it could have somehow meant that Steph’s feelings were spared. She’s a good woman and she and my brother, Wing, are very happy. Leena, Ami and Steph’s other sister, married another brother, Wraith, and they’re also blissfully in love.
Clearly, someone broke the mold when they made Ami.
I want to ask her what the fuck she thinks she’s doing sitting on my porch steps, but I already know.
I know that I’m an intimidating motherfucker. At least when I want to be. Six three, two hundred and fifty pounds, shoulders the size of a mountain and a face that has seen too much living to be considered anything close to handsome or youthful, even though I just cracked twenty-seven… I put it all to the best use possible.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” I snarl, and there is no mistaking the rage rolling off me like a storm about to let loose its full fury.
Ami cocks a black brow and stares at me like I’m the stupidest person on the planet. Like a man who looks like a thug doesn’t actually have a brain or feelings.
“Divorce? The papers? Did you think you could just walk out on me, and I’d leave it like that?”
Fuck, does she have to be so beautiful?It’s maddening. Porcelain cream skin, dark black eyes with the thickest lashes on the damn planet, a straight tiny nose, full lips, high cheekbones, and a dainty jaw that rounds out the heart shape of her face.
“Walk out on you?” The words come out choked, as though my lungs are collapsing. “That’s fucking rich considering it’s been over a year since I saw your face, and you were the one who chose to leave.”
I don’t let my eyes linger on the swell of her breasts peeking out of that damn dress or realize how short the hem is. I don’t eye her pale, slender legs that seem to go on for miles, even though she’s barely past five fucking feet, or the curves that the bloody dress manages to both streamline and outline so neatly.
She, of course, is probably fully aware of how she looks in the thing, or she wouldn’t have put it on in the first place. The only thing better than crashing your nephew’s christening party is to look like a goddamn seductress doing it.
“We both know why I left.”
“Do we? Because last time I checked, it was because you sold my brothers on the idea that I’m a wife beater when I’ve never laid a hand on a woman in my life. Even when the truthcame out and everyone knew I hadn’t done a fucking thing, you still stayed gone.”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t think there was any point in coming back. Kicking a dead horse.”
“That’s how you refer to me? A dead horse?”
Her full lips tilt into an evil smirk that I want to kiss off her face and the fact that I have that urge to do it makes me want to slam my fist into something. Drywall. Concrete. Wood. Doesn’t matter as long as it’s hard and it hurts.
“How would you like me to refer to you? As the husband that I never wanted? Or maybe just as the sack of shit who I already can tell is gonna give me a hard time about signing these papers.”
“You’re a class act, Ami.”
“I learned from the best. You have a problem with it, thank my father. Who, I’ll remind you, signed me up for this shit in the first place. I never wanted to marry you. You never wanted to marry me.” She produces a stack of papers from behind her back. “Sign these and it will be over for both of us.”
