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“Anytime, soldier.” He winks, and I doubt this man will ever stop surprising me. He has it all worked out, and I’m in awe of him. Ryder King is a living legend and I’m the lucky one who gets to witness that first-hand.
When I make my way back to Faith, she is sleeping. They both are, and I take a moment to stare at the beauty before me. Faith was always a stunner. Even as a child, I realized that. She was a pretty little thing with dark, naturally curly hair, the tawny highlights that caught the sun, marking her out as different somehow. Her amazing aquamarine eyes couldn’t decide if they preferred to be blue or green, so settled for an unusual color in between.
Her beauty attracted me, but her personality made me fall—hard because Faith, as it turned out, was a force of nature I had never seen the like of before. She was adventurous, a little wild, and cheeky. It was hidden behind a protective wall of shyness that was adorable and brought out the protector in me.
When we first met, she was in awe of me. It was obvious. I had a reputation and most of the folks in the town couldn’t figure me out at all. They didn’t trust me. The devil boy. I heard them whisper it when I was coming and some even said it to my face. It stemmed from my visit to the good reverend. My own parents created the stigma when they punished me for being a small, unruly child.
Subsequently, I grew into an unruly teenager, angry with them—with the world. My world was Heaven then, and it was only when I used to watch the delivery trucks disappearing out of town did I dare to imagine there was another life out there.
I took my chance one day and never looked back and when I returned, I discovered nothing much had changed except for one thing. One person and I’m looking at her now because on the fateful day I bumped into Faith, my life changed forever.
She stirs and a small smile graces her soft plump lips, and my body reacts to her as it probably always will. She appears so fragile, and yet when we’re together, it’s as if an electric storm is lighting up the heavens. I wonder if that still exists. Will she even want me in that way?
The doubt in her eyes is hard to see. She ran from me because of something I did. Possibly believing the rumors and deciding I wasn’t worth the trouble. I knocked her up. I was the orchestrator of her downfall and I’m guessing there weren’t a lot of people in town who congratulated her on her good fortune.
As I sit beside her, I physically ache to lift her hand and bring it to my lips. To hold her, to comfort her and to love her. To be a team, a partnership and, when our beautiful daughter is sleeping, to be the lover she deserves.
Instead, I take advantage of her dreaming. To stare at her without interruption and marvel that she even gave me the time of day. Together we created perfection and as I stare in awe at my beautiful daughter sleeping peacefully in her arms, something stirs inside me that feels a lot like love, devotion, and adoration.
My entire world sleeps in an airline seat and I am unsure how to make them want to stay.
CHAPTER25
FAITH
Iwake up as the engine noise changes. It pulls me from my dreams that I wish were reality.
In them, we are a normal family. Jonny, Hope and me. Living by the sea in a white house set on a cliff edge. Hope played on the beach and was happy. We were happy, and Jonny was the best husband I could ever wish for.
As I crash back to reality, I wake to a huge problem because I am not in my dream. I am in my worst nightmare. The only saving grace is that they are in it with me because, despite everything, I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.
I blink my fear away and turn to see Jonny staring at me with an intensity that takes my breath away and, as always, when I look at him, a shiver of excitement passes through me.
How did I get so lucky? How did I get so unlucky at the same time?
I am so afraid for Hope, me and Jonny, because we have been thrust together through circumstance and I am so worried he is only doing the right thing by us. He has moved on. I pushed him away and now he is dealing with a whole pile of shit because of me.
He killed a man. One of many, so I believe, and I don’t know how he can live with that. Make no mistake, Reverend Peters deserved everything coming to him but to take another man’s life – any life, goes against everything I grew up with. I hate how that impressed me deep down. How I cheered for him and delighted in the reverend’s passing. It makes me a sinner just like Jonny, and that worries me more than anything.
“Hey, gorgeous.” His husky voice makes desire wrap me in the urgent need to be as close as we once were. To enjoy the slide of his skin against mine. Soft touches and hard kisses. The familiarity of lovers with the excitement of strangers meeting and the unknown. Jonny always did throw a grenade into my world, which is ironic when a grenade blew up my life back there. Like the one that rolled down the aisle in the church, I am waiting for it to go off and I just hope the explosion doesn’t kill me in the end. It will wreak havoc; I already know that and so the urge to run away from it is so strong I hate myself.
“We’re coming in to land. We’ll soon be home.” His husky voice breaks my thoughts.
“Is it far?”
I’m nervous and it must show as he reaches across, and I hate that he hesitates before dropping his hand on Hope’s sleeping little head. He touches her with a reverence that makes my soul weep. She is a stranger to him, an unwanted burden perhaps, but even now he looks at her as if she is the most precious thing in the world. The way he looks at me. The way he hasalwayslooked at me.
“You have nothing to fear, despite what the people of Heaven have told you.”
“What’s it like?”
I’m intrigued and encouraged when his face lights up as he thinks about the place he calls home.
“It’s different. I won’t pretend otherwise, but when you get over the shock, you realize it’s the perfect place to live. It’s full of strong men and women who are fierce in their love of our ways. They are free, Faith. Freedom is something the Rubicon encourages and offers in bucket loads. The Reapers encourage you to be strong, fearless and brave and reward you well for it. They drag your soul out into the light and build you into a better person and inside those walls, you can be anything you want to be.”
“It sounds…” I hesitate because on the one hand, it sounds like paradise, but I’m scared of the people who live there. They have been undoubtedly kind but I’m not like them. But Jonny is. He isexactlylike them, and I fell in love with him before he wore the jacket of death and sharpened his rough edges. He was a soldier, not a biker, and I’m still struggling to understand that.
“I’m still the same man I always was.”
