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But not on me. No. Never me.
“He’s going to regret ever thinking he was worthy of you,” he uttered. “He’s going to regret being fucking born.”
And on that, he purposefully pulled me far away from the roof’s edge with one hand then pulled his phone from his cut with the other. He stared down at his phone as he pressed the screen then held it up to his ear.
“Colby,” he grunted. “Need you on the roof now. Violet’s here, needs to be taken down safely and put to bed without you layin’ an untoward hand on her. Unless you want me to feed you your fingers one by one.”
I blinked at him as he didn’t wait for a response, putting the phone back in his cut.
Again, he pulled me, sitting me down on the chair I had previously been ruminating in.
“Stay there,” he commanded. His voice was rough, but then he brushed the hair from my face with a gentleness that didn’t seem possible coming from a man overcome with such primal fury.
“No one will ever hurt you again, Violet,” he murmured, laying a kiss on my forehead before walking off.
Walking the fuck off.
I didn’t even get the chance to follow him before Colby ascended the ladder, strutting over to snatch the bottle from my hands with a raised brow.
“Now, I’m not your babysitter, but if you’re going to mix weed, whisky and the pills they gave you at the clinic, at least do it in a place where you can’t stumble off the side of a building,” he requested dryly, his brows pinched in concern.
It took me a second to figure out the root of his concern, what with the kiss, the beans I’d spilled and the intense proclamation from a man I was low-key obsessed with.
I looked from Colby to the edge of the roof, frowning. “What? You seriously thought I was going to jump?”
His attractive face relaxed, a gentle expression on it. “I mean, you’re a strong ass bitch, but you’ve also been through a lot the past few weeks. And though regularly, Jack and weed make great dates, not so much when they’re the only ones at the party. It can make things seem dark and inescapable.”
I regarded him and his tone. It seemed knowing. Sad.
Though Colby was younger than most of the members, he had his shit together. Still had that air they all possessed, like bullets could bounce off them.
I forgot that sometimes the people who looked the most bulletproof were the ones nursing the most wounds. Ones who might bleed out quietly without asking for help.
“Now I’m going to paraphrase Albus Dumbledore,” he continued, voice peppier now, or as peppy as a man like Colby could get. “Finding our way through those dark times can be as simple as remembering to turn on the light,” he grinned. “Or you know, by finishing the rest ofThe Vampire Diaries,” he winked. “Then we’ve got all the spinoffs.”
I couldn’t help but smile as he held out his hand in invitation.
I didn’t take it straight away, though. Something inside of me was almost desperate to stay up on this roof, where reality couldn’t find me. Where I could relive Elden’s lips against mine. Where I could hope that he would find his way back up here and carry me down.
But that wasn’t how life worked. And even if it did, that wasn’t who I was. I knew that, even though I currently only had a tenuous grasp on my identity.
So I took Colby’s hand.
And I climbed down the ladder on my own, if under the watchful the eye of a friend.
A few days later, I was nursing a coffee and a hangover in the kitchen. The kitchen that my mom loved. Where she’d spent the first mornings of her time at the Sons of Templar compound. For good reason. When I arrived, I had expected some kind of ancient, stained, whiteware situation. But everything was gleaming stainless steel, clean and full of produce and various nut milks.
Lucas, the muscled, tattooed biker, was a vegan.
A biker vegan who wore a large knife on his belt and a visible gun strapped to him. Though I couldn’t be sure, and I didn’t have any evidence to prove this, I was relatively certain that being a biker in this particular club meant violence was a part of life.
I wasn’t exactly versed in urban life, having grown up in pastel suburbia, but I also guessed murder was a part of life here too.
Again, these were all educated guesses. But I didn’t think you wore two deadly weapons on your body unless you planned on using them.
I enjoyed the rhythm of the clubhouse, the freedom of it. There was always someone somewhere, even at two in the morning. And I wasn’t the only woman in residence. There was a rotation of ‘club girls’ who I soon learned were there to service the members of the club in … whatever way they needed. At first, like most of the tenets here, I’d been disgusted. These men were using women as sexual objects. But the more time I spent here, the more I got to know the women, got to understand what the connection to the club meant to them. They came from different backgrounds, yet they all felt like society didn’t fit them, had failed them, didn’t make them happy. They found what they needed here, they found a place to belong, and they were empowered. In charge of their own sexuality and unafraid to show it.
Who the fuck was I to judge?
