CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Allison
“Are you okay?”
His soft words pulled me out of my sleep. I knew I was waking, but I wasn’t ready to open my eyes just yet. I was enjoying the feel of his body pressed against mine too much.
“Mmmhmmm,” I moaned as I wiggled deeper into his hold. He softly chuckled and it vibrated through his chest and into my ear, making my entire body feel like it was on fire.
His fingers drew lazy lines along my skin. Each time they would graze over one of my scars I tried my hardest not to flinch. But as I got lost in his touch, I realized that his fingers skimmed over me as if he didn’t even notice they were there. I smiled against his chest as a warm feeling spread throughout my body.
So much had happened over the last twenty-four hours. Time seemed to drag out the entire day. But now it was a new dawn and a new, fresh start.
“Really, baby, are you alright?” he asked sounding oddly hesitant. “Did I hurt you?”
My head lifted and I looked at him.
“It was everything I needed,” I said speaking the truth. “You owned me in the most perfect way possible.”
He kissed me and I felt his body relax the moment our lips touched. I knew last night he had been scared. He had been terrified that he would ruin me and that I would only be able to see Savage in his place. But I didn’t. That evil man didn’t even enter my mind for a second. Which was surprising, to say the least. However, I wasn’t going to question it. I wasn’t even going to think about it at all.
Axe pulled away and cleared his throat.
“We, uh, should stop. I want to take you so badly right this second, but I know Neiryn will be awake any minute now.” He smiled at me then kissed the tip of my nose.
It was a bit strange but boyishly cute. I could see that in him from time to time, the little playful charm and I couldn’t exactly say I didn’t like it. I couldn’t deny that I wanted to see more of it.
With a kiss to the forehead, he rolled out of bed.
“You make breakfast and I will get Lil man. Good?” His voice had that sexy, just woken up roughness to it.
“Okay,” I said and my voice sounded strained.
I was still a little unsure of how things would go from here and I had no idea what to expect. But then the day played on and it was confusingly normal. Normal felt like such a weird word to use to describe anything in my life, but that was what it felt like.
The next few days played out the same way. We’d wake. I would get breakfast together while he would get Neiryn dressed. We would all sit down and eat together. Then he would clean up the dishes while I got some time with my little guy. When he was done, he would join us.
When Neiryn went down for a nap, he would spend time exploring my body in the tenderest of ways. He would kiss every part of me like he wanted to imprint his scent on every inch of my skin. He didn’t linger or hesitate around my scars. He treated them as if they weren’t even there and it brought tears to my eyes every time.
In the day he worshiped my body but when night came, he owned it. It was, well, perfect. When I was with him the world melted away. All the bad things turned to dust and were gone with a gust of wind. When he looked at me he let me know that I wasn’t my past or my scars. I was me. And in his eyes, I was completely flawless.
It was the little things that he did that really got to me. In a good way, that was. Like the way he would look at me and there would be a light in his eyes. Or how he would brush his hand against me for no reason other than to touch me.
Together we created the most amazing balance between light and dark. During the day, we helped chase each other’s demons away, and at night we proved to the world that our darkness wouldn’t overtake us. That we could find a way to embrace it. Lemons into lemonade, right? But as cheesy as it sounded, I believed we were meant to find each other.
There were times I sensed he was on edge. I asked, but he just brushed it off telling me that it had to do with the club. I knew better than to push it further but that didn’t mean I liked being in the dark. I had a feeling some of it had to do with me and a lot of it was about Savage. He left a few times to go handle club stuff but seemed to come right back to me when he was done.
“I think he’s asleep,” I whispered to Axe who was holding Neiryn against his chest.
We were all cozied up on the couch and I’d just read Neiryn his bedtime stories. Axe held him the entire time. When the little guy’s eyes grew heavy and eventually fell closed, Axe continued to hold him and rub his back. It seemed like he was in no rush to give Neiryn up.
“Just a few more minutes, then I’ll go put him down,” Axe whispered back.
“Fine,” I said and playfully rolled my eyes.
“Don’t get smart with me, woman,” he shot back, eyes full of amusement.
I could have pushed and played along, but I wanted to enjoy this moment of the three of us sitting there in a peaceful calm. I wondered if it would always be this way. And I dreaded the day it would all be taken away.
I felt like I was on shaky ground. Sure, things seemed good—no, fucking great—but I couldn’t help but feel uneasy about what the future really held for us. I believed him when he said he wanted all of me, forever, but I wondered if we weren’t both lost in the newness of the whole thing. Or that he would wake up one day and realize that I was broken beyond repair. Would there be a point when all of my demons would be too much for him? What about raising a kid that wasn’t his? That wasn’t an easy thing. And let’s not forget where Neiryn and I came from. Would he always be able to see past my entanglement with Savage?
In a sense, I was waiting for reality to slap him in the face, for the day when he wised up and realized we weren’t worth the trouble.
But for now, I would just enjoy it. I learned a long time ago that you couldn’t control the future and that in the blink of an eye your life could change. I was going to take the good, however it came and for however long it let me hold onto it.
“I can hear you thinking over there,” he said and his words brought me back to reality. I shook my head, clearing away everything.
“I’m fine,” I said with a tentative smile that I tried to pass off as confident. I could see it on his face that he didn’t believe me for a second.
“A woman is never fine. Learned that a long time ago,” he responded as he shifted Neiryn in his arms. “I’m gonna go put him down. When I get back, you are gonna talk to me.”
With that, he stood. My eyes followed him until he was upstairs and out of sight. When he returned, he flopped down on the couch, reached over and grabbed my waist, then pulled me onto his lap. His arms went around me, holding me tightly against his chest as if he was letting me know he wasn’t going to let me go.
“Now, bitch, tell me what the hell has got you looking so lost,” he said then kissed the side of my head.
“I just…” I started but had a hard time grasping the words that followed.
To have said that I was bad at communicating would have been putting it mildly. I’d basically had only myself to talk to for the last seven years, and well, Neiryn, but he wasn’t much for conversation.
“Baby,” he said as he ran his fingers through my hair and pulled my head back so that I was forced to look into his eyes. “I might not be great at this relationship shit. Truth is, I know I downright suck. But none of that has to do with you. In fact, I’ve never even really wanted to try like this before. I want you to know that I will bend over backwards, dive to the deepest depths of the ocean, and jump into a damn volcano to make this work, to do right by you.”
I couldn’t say anything in return. This man had my heart and he was doing his best to hold onto it and not crush it at the same time. I understood that for him it was trial and error on getting it right. But that meant that he was trying with everything that he had in him. Not that I was exactly miss-know-it-all when it came to relationships either. I was just as blind as him.
“I love you,” he whispered, his voice suddenly sounding choked up with emotion. “That ain’t gonna change today, tomorrow, or fuck, fifty years from now.”
“You don’t know that,” I said, trying my best to blink away the tears.
“Yes,” he stated. “Yes, I do. Because I’ve never felt as whole as when I’m here with you and Lil man. I’ve never felt the calm that I’ve craved my whole fuckin’ life. And that is what I get the moment I see you, a peaceful stillness of my soul.”
He kissed me as if he were kissing all of the bad, self-doubting thoughts away. He held me like he never wanted to let me go. He touched me like I was the most precious thing in the world.
He pulled away from my lips and I whimpered in protest. His fingers grazed the side of my face as he gently tucked my hair behind my ear. I loved the tenderness that he could give me as much as I craved the force with which he would take me.
“We may not be normal,” he said. I raised my brow at him and he chuckled. “Okay, we are definitely not normal. My point is, there are a lot of things about us that may not seem like they would work. But they do. This is us, baby, and admit it, its fucking perfect.”
I smiled because he was right. We weren’t like most people and so, therefore, our relationship would be like that either. But in our individual darkness, we became each other’s hope. He was the light that lit my way and I was the flame that kept his demons at bay.
The next morning, our blissful little bubble was popped with the loud ring of his phone. The moment he answered, I knew things were about to go sideways and I got a twisted feeling in my gut. I suddenly felt like things were about to get really bad, the kind of bad that you didn’t come back from. And I wondered if it would be my end.