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PROLOGUE
BRODY
“God, the sky is so beautiful out here,” Aurora sighs against my chest, snuggling into me against the chill of the night breeze. “You can see so many stars. Way more than in town.”
We’re lying in a deserted field, about five miles outside of our hometown of Ironwood, Ohio. There’s a new moon tonight, and the sky is an inky black. The stars show up even more clearly against it. I pull Aurora closer to me, and the blanket we’re lying on rustles against the grass underneath us.
“You ever seen the Northern Lights?” I ask her. I feel her shake her head. “If you like this, they’ll blow you away. I’ll take you to see them someday. The fancy name for them is the Aurora Borealis. Named after you, I guess,” I tease.
Aurora giggles. “Probably the other way around, Brody.”
“Nah, Princess. The sky can only hope to be as gorgeous as you are.”
“You’re so romantic,” she murmurs against my chest. “Where did you see the Northern Lights?”
“Up in Minnesota in the winter. Way up north toward, the border with Canada. My dad took me ice fishing up there once. We’ll go there, you and me. Or maybe Alaska, or Norway, or Sweden. They got ‘em there, too.”
“What about Iceland?” she suggests. “It sounds so mysterious.”
“Sure. Iceland would be cool.” I don’t give a damn where we go, as long as she’s with me. I’d promise Aurora the whole world if she asked for it. And I’d do anything I had to, just to make sure she got it.
The two of us lie there quietly, listening to the crickets chirping around us and the steady beat of our breathing in tandem. Life would be fucking perfect if we could just stay like this — the two of us together, alone out here in a cabin in the woods.
Out here, it ain’t hard to believe Aurora when she says she’d rather be with me and have nothing but us. She always tells me that would be a hundred times better than living in a mansion like her parents do — with all the money in the world, but no love between them at all.
I kiss her forehead, and then her lips.
“I love you, Brody,” she whispers as she kisses me back.
“I love you, Princess,” I rasp. Her sigh of contentment turns into a moan when I move against her, my hands sliding under her shirt. And for a while we just drown in each other, the rest of the world so far away it just disappears.
Eventually, though, reality comes nosing its way back in.
“What time is it?” Aurora stirs in my arms and pulls her cell phone out of the pocket of her jeans, which are lying in a crumpled heap next to us. “Ugh,” she groans as the screen lights up her beautiful face. “I should probably get home. Dad’s been on this good parent kick lately where he’s started caring about how late I stay out. Why, I have no idea, but I don’t want to push it. He might give me a curfew if I’m not careful.”
I don’t argue. Aurora’s mom likes me okay, but her dad has had a problem with me ever since he found out that the gardener’s son was dating his only child and daughter. I guess I ain’t exactly what he had in mind for his little girl.
We pull on our dew-damp clothes. I watch as Aurora finger-combs her hair and pulls it back into a loose ponytail. I think about how it will be someday when we’re done with high school and we’re living together. I’m gonna ask this girl to marry me as soon as I can. Then she’ll be with me all night, every night. I’ll be able to watch her fall asleep next to me in our bed. When I wake up in the morning, she’ll still be there. It’s all I want. And I know it’s what she wants, too.
I’ll always love Aurora. She’s deep inside me, in every cell, in my blood and in my bones. Other guys my age talk about settling down with one girl like it’s cutting off your balls and handing them in with your man card. I’ve already done my share of playing the field, though. Probably more than my share, compared to guys my age. But ever since I met Aurora Wilkins, she’s been it for me. I may not know a lot, but I do know that no other girl could ever compare to her.
We’ll go through life together. What we have together is strong as hell. It can’t be broken. I may not know a lot about a lot of things in this world. But I know that.
ROGUE
THIRTEEN YEARS LATER
“Heads up, assholes!”
I shout the words at a couple of the prospects hauling concrete blocks. Mensa and his sidekick Weasel jump back away from the road as I whiz by. I swear to Christ, the two of them together have just about one normal-sized brain between them.
I steer the skid loader past the construction site of our new clubhouse, and head down the gravel road leading further into the compound.Fuckers are lucky I didn’t clip one of ‘em, just for laughs. Least maybe they’ll be more careful not to get run the fuck over next time I drive by.
The bucket on the skid loader is full of pavers. They’re for the patio I’m building in back of the rustic cottage I’m constructing, on a patch of the ninety-plus-acre property the Lords of Carnage Ironwood recently bought for our new compound. Our old clubhouse was torched last year by enemies of the club and burned to the ground. After getting our revenge on them and assessing the damage to the property, the club voted to buy some land out in the country, and start again from scratch. Out here, we’ll have a clubhouse more than twice as big as the old one. Since it’s outside the city limits, the law ain’t gonna touch us out here. We’ve got more land, too, and room for any of us who want to build our own place on the property. So far, I’m the first and only one of the Lords to build a house on the property for myself. But I bet I won’t be the last.
About a quarter mile past the clubhouse, just around a bend in the road and a thicket of trees, my destination comes into view. I swing the loader to the right, and drive into a dirt driveway to the right of the cottage. I put on the brakes and kill the engine. Climbing out of the cab, I immediately get to work pulling the load of pavers out of the bucket and stacking them with the others.
Minutes later, I’ve got all the pavers out of the bucket. I hop back in and make the drive back to the clubhouse construction area. My club brother Mal comes striding up to me as I’m climbing out of the Cat.
