I sit cross-legged on Ramsey’s bed and fire up the laptop. Despite everything being so up in the air, I feel surprisingly calm knowing that I’m where I’m truly supposed to be. I feel settled in all the chaos. At home with all the violence and uncertainty. Because now I have two things I never had before.

Blood family. My dad. I never imagined I would ever find him again, let alone be thrown into his world without even realizing it. I had resigned myself to Vaughn being as close to family as I was ever gonna get, and I didn’t know it at the time, but it wasn’t enough for me. There was always something missing in my life, until now.

And love. I know I’m falling in love with Ramsey. I know this because I’ve never felt like this about anyone before. I’ve never felt alive. But although I’ve lost so much in my life, my heart seems full. In fact, he’s touched dark, cold corners of my heart that I never knew existed until now. He’s awoken parts of my body, found desire so deep that I never knew it was there. Only love could do that, couldn’t it?

But I won’t lose myself for either of them. I will not be an old lady that sits back and lets her man do all the work. I refuse to lose my voice, my independence. Ram didn’t fall for a weak woman that won’t put up a good fight. He fell for me, and I have no intention of losing who I am.

So, I work. I sit here for several hours, staring down at the screen. Coding and building the website I was commissioned to do last month. A website that’s due to be complete and live next week. I intend to earn my own money and pay my own way, and they might try to fight me on it, but they won’t win. What would I do if I didn’t work? Can’t see that I’d be happy as the little housewife. I laugh to myself. A little housewife with an arsenal hidden under her pinafore, ready for anything, while baking cakes and casseroles.

My neck aches from looking down for such a long time, and I circle my head, easing out the cricks as my bones rotate, stretching my back out. Then I hop up off the bed, needing a drink, and knowing Ramsey keeps some kind of liquor in his cabinet, I look there first in the hope of finding a soda or something to quench my thirst. But there’s no soda. Just three and a half bottles of Jack. I know if I go up to the bar to get a drink, I’ll most probably not come back down, and my head’s in the game, so if I don’t get distracted, I could have this website up and running by the end of the day.

I pour out a double measure of bourbon into a tumbler and take a sip. It burns my mouth, but the sweet aftertaste settles on my tongue, and I take another sip. I guess now that I’m living with a load of bikers, I’ll have to get used to bourbon and shots, as it seems they do a lot of drinking around here.

I cross the room, going back to the laptop with my glass in my hand and with the intention of working while I slowly drink.

But something catches my eye. The light glints off a silver chain which sits on Ramsey’s chest of drawers, and I move closer to see. A tightness pushes across my chest and dread fills my nerves, weighing them down and causing everything to happen in slow motion.

I pick the chain up between my thumb and the forefinger of my free hand, letting it swing in front of my eyes. 

It’s Nate’s chain.

I noticed it was missing. He said he had lost it. What the hell is it doing here? Why does Ramsey have it?

I shakily drop the tumbler onto the cabinet and take the chain between both hands, holding it up at eye level in disbelief. I don’t understand why Ramsey has this.

It’s…all too close.

The situation. I thought I was coping with it.

The air around me—I’m struggling to breathe.

My past and my present are colliding in a messy war of uncertainties, and we’re just waiting for the casualties. Because there isn’t such a thing as a war without loss.

The door bursts open as I clutch at my chest and gasp for air.

“Sadie?” Tex frowns, moving quickly toward me. I hold out my hand to stop him. I don’t want to do this in front of a stranger. I mean, I know Tex is one of the Souls, but he’s still a stranger to me. “Shit,” he snaps. “I’ll get help.”

He dashes back out of the open door, and I feel my way along the furniture. My vision is blurred by panic. The walls are closing in on me and widening again, but it’s all distorted, and nothing feels level or real. Dropping to my knees by the bed, I put my head in my hands, screwing my eyes tightly shut and searching desperately for Ramsey’s voice that has helped me calm myself before.

But it doesn’t come.

This attack is bad.

I can’t hear Ramsey, but the noises echoing through my head are deafening. I can hear Vaughn, my mom, Nate…

“Sadie?”

Whose voice is that? I turn my head to the calming presence, my blurred vision making out JJ at my side, kneeling next to me.

“JJ…” I pant.

“It’s okay, princess.” He rubs my back in a soothing, circular motion and holds my gaze while he talks to me in hushed tones. “It’s going to be fine. You’re okay. Just breathe. Deep breath in, that’s it…” He reassures me with his eyes, a soft, familiar gaze. Seeing him look at me like that again reminds me of how he made me feel as a small girl. I was happy. Innocent, carefree and…happy. After my mom took us away, I don’t remember that kind of carefree feeling. It was hard, stressful, and most of all, lonely.

“Sadie, look at me, sweetheart. You’re okay. You’re with me. I’ll make everything okay,” he says, as the breaths slow down in my chest and he guides me off my knees to sit on the edge of the bed with him.

“I’m sorry, I—”

“Don’t ever apologize for something that’s out of your control, princess. It should be me that’s apologizing to you.”

“Why?” I frown.

“I should have fought harder for you—searched wider…fuck, I should have kept searching and never stopped until I found you.”

“Don’t be crazy, how could you have known where we were?”

He hangs his head, shaking it gently from side to side. “That’s not a good enough reason, Sadie. I gave up too easily, and you suffered because of it.”

“That was certainly not the reason I suffered.” I turn to him, placing my hand on his shoulder. “She took me, without a word. You could have ridden out every day for the rest of your life and not found us.”

“But I didn’t, and I’m truly sorry for that, Sadie. I really am.”

“I know. But I’m here now.” I smile, and he turns his head to look at me, mirroring my smile. I love the way it softens his features. It creases into little lines around his eyes, life lines. Stories on his skin. I want to know everything about him. His life in the Steel Souls. His relationship with Lia. I want him to tell me every story behind every line that paints his handsome face. I want to make up for all the years we’ve missed out on with each other. And as if he knew how to calm my troubled mind, by changing the subject, getting me talking, and by listening to him, the panic subsides.

“You’re here, and I can’t tell you how grateful I am. I know I don’t deserve your time, but I want to know you, Sadie. I won’t let you go again. It was the most painful thing to have ever happened to me. I would like to say I was glad she took you—away from me, away from this life. What kind of life is it with all these guns and violence on the doorstep? Your mom, she…she was doing what she thought was best for you at the time. She was trying to find a safer life, a happier world for you to grow up in.”

I shrug and smile sadly. I know she was doing what she thought was best for me. I know everything he’s saying is right. How could he have been responsible for a child amongst all this madness? Would my mom and I ever had come above his duty for the club and his desire to one day become the President, which he is now? But I wasn’t protected, was I? I wasn’t safe, and I wasn’t kept from harm.

“What happened, Princess?” he asks as if he can feel the pain from my thoughts. “Your mom…how did she die?”

I straighten my shoulders and take a deep breath. “She was murdered, along with my brother.” Those words never get any easier to say. They’re like shards of glass on my tongue as I push them past my lips. But this is something I have to tell JJ. I need him to know everything. Not because I want him to feel guilty, but because I want him to see that his life, this life is good enough for me. I want him to know that a life with him in it, no matter where it is, is much better than a life without him.

“Fuck.” He rubs his head with his thumb and forefinger. “Were you…there?”

“Yes,” I say, recalling every vivid detail as though I were standing and watching it unfold. “There was a break in. They were shot as they slept. I…” I pause, needing just a moment to bring the words to the surface. Words that have been buried for a long, long time. “I was…” My breath falters, making my words shaky and small. “Raped.”

“Oh, God, Sadie…My Princess.” He jumps off the bed, his eyes glistening with anguish as he paces back and forth. “You were…I mean…how old were you when this happened?”

“Eleven,” I say, dropping my gaze to the floor, unable to meet his pained, raging expression.

He drops to his knees in front of me and holds my face in his hands. “I am sorry. With all my heart, fuck am I sorry. The bastard scum who did it—he’s behind bars? Because if not, you just tell me his name and—”

“The man was never caught.” I hold his gaze, and his eyes flare with fire and the desire for retribution. “All evidence has gone. The case closed. They killed my mom and my baby brother, and they took every piece of the little eleven-year-old girl that I was. That’s how…” I smile at him. “That’s what led me back here. Retribution, revenge. I will find him, JJ, and I will make him remember every painful detail before I slit his throat.”

“Not if I find him first,” JJ growls, getting to his feet. His large frame heaves with frustration, and anger pulses from him in waves.

“I’m okay, JJ,” I try to reassure him, standing and placing my hand on his shoulder to stop him from pacing. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in the last few weeks, it’s to make peace within yourself. Make room for your past in a locked box in the back of your mind. Revisit it from time to time to remember that you’re a goddamn survivor and nothing can beat you down. But lock it away again, and don’t let it infiltrate your future. Your future is a blank canvas, one that only you can paint.

“No.” He shakes his head. “You’re not okay. Look at the panic attacks you have. Did you suffer before…that happened?”

“No.” I frown. “But—”

“Whoever he is, is going to die a very slow, very painful death. I will make up for every second of pain you have suffered, Sadie.”

“JJ…Dad,” I say quietly, sensing his need to hear it, and making this whole situation more real.  “That’s my battle to fight. You don’t have to—”

“Princess.” He smiles, cupping my cheek with his hand. “Your battles are mine, now. We’re one big family, here. Your battle is shared, and your troubles halved. Everything we do from here on in will be together, do you hear me. You’re not alone anymore, and you never will be. I would gladly lay my life on the line for you, do you understand?”

His soothing voice, his gentle but insistent reassurance, and his protective presence makes everything all right. He calms my panic like no one has ever managed to before—not even Ramsey can calm my racing thoughts as quickly as JJ can. We might have missed out on many years of each other, but we have a lifetime to make up for it.