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My casual drug use being the least of it.
I realized that there were going to be many things I kept from my mother. Not because I didn’t want to tell or because she wouldn’t want to know. I knew she’d want to know, to be there for me, to give me all she could give. Which was the problem. My mom had already done that. My mom was her own complete person with her own traumas, with her own set of battles. I couldn’t expect her to always fight mine.
She’d spent her whole life protecting me from a truth that would shatter my world. It was my turn now.
She was opening her own restaurant. We’d had a party celebrating a few days ago. She’d been glowing with excitement, happiness. A purpose. Something of her own. I’d been struck with inspiration of what to create for her and had been spending a lot of time on my computer, planning out the space. It had been a very welcome distraction, focusing all of my energy on creating something for my mother, being a part of this new life she’d created. But there was only so much time I could spend in front of my computer. The second I closed the screen, reality rushed back in.
Movement in the corner of my eye jolted me out of my thoughts. But because my thoughts were so thick and thorny, because my mind was cloudy from the booze and weed, the man had been able to come close to me without me noticing.
Which was no mean feat since you had to climb up a ladder on the edge of the building in order to get up to the flat space on the roof cluttered with patio chairs and a side table with an overflowing ashtray. I was not the only one who sought out this place. Because of that, the ladder, while sturdy, creaked a little when you ascended it.
I didn’t hear the creak.
Or the thump of motorcycle boots on the concrete as he walked toward me.
None of my survival instincts kicked in to let me know this man was near. And they should’ve. Because one look at him and you’d know … you’d know that he was dangerous. Something would prickle at the back of your neck. Your leg muscles would tense as if preparing to run, but your feet would grow roots to keep you in place. Your heart would beat so wildly in your chest that the bones would rattle. Your thighs would press together, you skin would turn damp.
As would your panties.
Okay, so maybe noteveryonewould be turned on by standing in front of a six-foot something biker with muscles and a thousand-yard stare from icy blue eyes. A man two decades older. With a carob-colored beard that I wanted to scratch the insides of my thighs.
Yeah, I had all of those feelings the second I laid eyes on Elden.
I had all of those feelings despite everything going on in my life at the time I met him. And I hada lotof things going on in my life when I met him.
He didn’t say anything when his boots landed in front of the chair I was sitting in. That didn’t surprise me. Elden was a man of few words. Very few. In the short amount of time I’d known him, I’d only heard his low, gravelly voice a handful of times, uttering only the bare minimum words needed to get his point across.
None of them had been directed at me. He’d seemed to have made a concerted effort not to make any kind of conversation with me. Yet still, he was always close by, always somewhere, always unnerving me with his nearness and his forced disinterest in me. And it was forced. I may not have known the man, but for whatever reason, I knew that he wanted me. And I wanted him. Despite everything.
Andeverythingwas a word that encompassed a fuck of a lot.
I was disgusted that I could be so … wanton in desiring a man so forbidden while my body was not entirely my own.
I didn’t know why he came to the roof tonight. Maybe he didn’t even know I was there. Maybe that was where he went to get some peace when the craziness of the club parties became too much. But that wasn’t likely. Though Elden was older than most of the men who engaged in the craziness, he wasn’tthatmuch older. The club had varied shapes and sizes of men patched into the Sons of Templar, all from different backgrounds but all searching for the kind of freedom the cut offered.
The cut. The leather vest they all wore at all times that signified them belonging to this club.
The one that had become my mother’s family at some point while I was across an ocean, ruining my life.
He was standing in front of my chair, looking down at me. His figure was imposing, all encompassing. He blocked out the moon and stars, took over my vision. Though I didn’t have measuring tape on hand, he had to be over six foot. If I stood, I’d come up to his shoulder, maybe his chin.
And he wasn’t just tall, he was wide. All muscle.
His shoulders were broad, biceps stretching the fabric of the tee he was wearing. I had the urge, a very strong urge to lick the sinewy muscle of his forearms. His dark hair was pulled back into a low bun, and not in a hipster man bun, but a bad ass biker man bun. Silver threaded through that dark chocolate hair, and the goatee that should’ve, would’ve looked insane on anyone else—well, apart from Jeff Bridges of course—but made him look rugged and chiseled at the same time. There were creases in his forehead, the kind of creases that made a man looked weathered, wise and impossibly handsome. Creases that communicated he frowned often, and not many lines on the edge of his eyes that hinted that he smiled rarely.
And I had real life knowledge to back those claims up, in the time I’d spent here, I had yet to see him smile, his default expression seemed to be a glower that should’ve scared the pants off me. Instead, it melted my panties.
Those eyes. That was what drew you to him. Okay, the height, the muscles, the impossibly sexy man bun and goatee drew you to him. But the eyes held you captive. Mediterranean blue, endless pools of intensity, of a masculinity that I should’ve bristled against. Eyes that rooted you in your spot.
I had to do something about the way Elden was looking at me. Either to stop him from wanting me or to stop him from thinking I was some perfect, pure thing he couldn’t touch… I wasn’t sure which.
“I had an abortion this week,” I said, looking straight at him.
I needed to say the words out loud. Needed to stare into his icy irises as I said them. And though it didn’t make a whole lot of sense, I needed to tell him. Needed this one stranger to know the thing I hadn’t said out loud. Not even to my closest friends.
Not even to mymother.
My first instinct, that morning in her bathroom when seeing those two lines, was to go running to her.
