Page 56 of Life Or Death

“Why?”

“Marriage was never in the cards for me.”

“Because you don’t like the idea of being tied to one woman?”

I wouldn’t mind being tied to one woman at all, so long as it were her, but there’s no fucking way I’m telling her that.

“If the right woman came along, I’d be fine with making her my ol’ lady . . .” My words trail when I notice her brows pinch together in confusion, and the corners of my mouth lift. “Ol’ lady is a term bikers use for their women.” I point between us. “If this thing between us was real, that’s what you’d be.”

“So, instead of calling me your wife, you’d call me your ol’ lady?”

I don’t know about that. I like both terms, which is surprising.

“Yeah,” I say. “And I’d be your old man.”

She hums thoughtfully. “I don’t know how I feel about that. ”

“What if I told you it was the highest honor a man like me could give a woman?”

She looks at me curiously. “How so?”

“Well, when a man declares a woman his ol’ lady, he’s making a statement. He’s putting everyone on notice. She becomes an extension of him and something sacred to his brothers. The same brothers who would die for him, now would die for her too.”

“So, what you’re saying is when a biker takes an ol’ lady, he’s head over heels in love with her.”

The word love hits me square in the chest, but I don’t flinch.

“Yeah,” I tell her, my thumbs still working circles into the muscle of her calf. “And that he’d rather die than live without her.”

“Pretty deep stuff.”

I nod. “Yeah.”

She holds my gaze for a beat longer.

“You’ve loved no one like that.”

It’s not a question. It’s an observation, and it cuts deeper than it should.

“I guess I haven’t,” I admit.

She looks away then, her gaze dropping to her hands where they rest in her lap. The silence that follows is heavy, weighted with something neither of us seems willing to name.

“Yeah,” she murmurs. “Me neither.”

Silence stretches between us, and I avert my focus to her legs. Instead of kneading her muscles, I just let my hands skate over her skin mindlessly. If I’m crossing a line, she doesn’t seem all that bothered by it.

She looks relaxed.

Her head falls back against the couch, and her eyes begin to drift around the common room, taking in the chaos that surrounds us.

“So, this is the infamous clubhouse, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s a pigsty.”

I bark out a laugh, my hand pausing on her leg. “It’s not usually this bad. With the wedding having to be moved here, things got out of control.”