Vanni
“You have much to do with her? Reba Kane?”
Piper shakes her head and pulls herself up onto the table outside the clubhouse, a cigarette dangling loosely from her fingers. “Not that much. I knew her, ‘cause she was married to Marco, but I never really hung out with my dad and his friends. She’s a little older than me. She was just another of the wives, one of those pretty, trophy women men like Marco liked to have hanging on their arm, even though they spent most of their time fucking around behind their backs.” She takes a long drag on her cigarette and stares out into the distance. “I never had all that much respect for them. We had nothing in common.”
“She was a princess, darlin’. Just like you.”
Her head snaps around, her eyes locking on mine. “She was nothing like me, Vanni.”
“She ran, Piper. Just like you did.”
“She wasn’t running, she just came looking for Logan. She thought he could help her, thought all he had to do was…” She trails off, taking another, even longer drag on that cigarette. “All that time married to that asshole and she still has no fucking idea…”
I watch her for a second or two, watch the way her shoulders tighten, her whole body stiffening. Is there something I don’t know about? Some big secret she’s keeping from me?
She stubs the half smoked cigarette out on the side of the table and slides down, dragging her fingers back through her hair.
“Does it complicate things? Her being here?”
I shake my head and lean back against the wall; her body language is still bothering me. I’m not sure what I’m looking at here. “No, baby, it don’t complicate anything. Just gives us another reason for wiping that man from existence.”
“And we’ve really got to stay here, huh? Locked away in this compound?”
“You wanna live, darlin’?”
She looks at me, and she doesn’t answer that, she doesn’t need to.
“Then you stay locked away. Leave the rest to me and my brothers.”
“Don’t worry my pretty little head about anything, right?”
I frown as I watch her agitated behavior. Yeah. Something isn’t right here. “You got something on your mind, baby girl?”
She looks up, her eyes meeting mine, and she shakes her head. “No. I’m fine.”
“You sure about that?”
“I said I’m fine. You’re dealing with everything, so what have I got to be scared of?”
I narrow my eyes as she passes me, heads into the clubhouse, but I stop her by gently grabbing her wrist and she drops her gaze to my fingers as they tighten around her.
“You’d talk to me, Piper. If you had something on your mind. You’d talk to me.”
She raises her gaze and looks straight at me. “You know I would.”
I’m not sure. Not anymore. There’s something going on, something I don’t know about, but I’m gonna make it my mission to find out ‘cause if it’s shit that’s gonna affect this job, then it needs dealing with. Fast.
“Can I go grab a shower now?”
I let go of her wrist and she walks away, back inside.
“Everything OK?”
I turn around at the sound of Logan’s voice. “Where’s Reba?”
He jerks his head toward the clubhouse entrance. “Inside. Della’s introducing her to the girls.”
“And you had no idea she was gonna turn up, huh?”
He waits a second before he answers my question, and I can see from his expression that this isn’t something he’s enjoying, having his ex-girlfriend land on his doorstep like this. And after Piper filled me in on their history, I can kinda understand why.
“Must be tough, having her turn up outta the blue like this.”
“She needs our help.”
“You over her?”
“I was over her years ago, Vanni.”
“You sure?”
“What the hell is this, huh? When did you turn into a relationship counselor?”
I laugh quietly, I can understand his frustration; forgive him his attitude. There’s a lot of crazy shit going down right now, we’re all a little tense.
“Look, I’m sorry, Vanni, I just… Yeah, it threw me, her turning up like that, and then her connection to Piper…”
“It’s OK, brother. It’s a crazy situation, I know, but now we gotta pull together to make sure those women stay safe. Vierra’s coming for Piper, but if they find out we got his wife here, too…”
I don’t need to finish that sentence. We all know what the consequences of this could be, but it’s my job to make sure they don’t happen.
“When it’s done we’ll make sure Reba gets to safety. She knows the score, right? Knows she has to disappear, that we’re gonna make sure we wipe every trace of her existence away?”
“She knows.”
“We take Vierra down, and we make the rest of them believe she’s dead. Then we get her somewhere safe.”
People think I’m a crazy motherfucker but I help those here within my chosen family. I help my brothers.
“Thanks, Vanni.”
I slap him lightly on the back and head toward my Harley parked up by Dragon’s tattoo studio. Pity we gotta shut that off to the public for a few days, while we sort this shit out. He makes us a lot of money, my cousin.
“Go make sure everyone knows what they’re doing,” I call back over my shoulder. “Tell Bullet to meet me at the Glendale lock-up in an hour.”
I got word that Vierra’s not far from California now. He’s closing in, he knows where Piper is, and we gotta be ready for when he finally finds her. ‘Cause that bastard, he isn’t gonna win this one. He isn’t gonna win shit…
Piper
I wrap the towel around myself and step out of the shower, run a brush quickly through my damp hair and head back out into the room Vanni’s commandeered for our stay here at the clubhouse.
“You look good, all wet.”
“Jesus Christ, Logan, what the fuck are you doing in here?” I back up against the wall, clutching the top of the towel. “If Vanni catches you…”
“Vanni’s heading over to Glendale, I’ve just watched him ride out of the compound. He won’t be back for a while yet.”
“You still shouldn’t be here, what if anyone else saw you come in?”
“Nobody saw me. Do you really think I’m that stupid?”
That’s not the point, and he knows that. He shouldn’t be anywhere near me, not here, not at the clubhouse. Not like this.
“Where’s Reba?”
Just saying her name makes my throat tighten, and I don’t know why, I don’t feel shit for Logan Sandero. He doesn’t feel shit for me. We were nothing more than a dangerous mistake, one we need to put behind us, now more than ever.
“Della’s taken her to check out Dragon’s studio.”
“Getting inked, is she?”
“I have no idea. I don’t care.”
“You don’t, huh?”
He moves a little closer to me, and I feel my heart start to beat faster, faster than it should be doing, it’s racing!
“I needed to see you, Piper. Alone.”
“Why?”
“Reba being here… I know it’s the kinda coincidence nobody could’ve predicted, but… Shit, Piper, it’s happened. And it’s messed-up and complicated and… I don’t feel the same way about her, not anymore.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“You don’t know me, Piper. So you don’t get to have an opinion on that, you just have to believe me.”
“I don’t have to believe shit, Logan. And it’s got nothing to do with me anyway, whether you still feel anything for Reba or not. Whatever we had, whatever we did, that’s over. Done. So you shouldn’t be here, you need to go.”
But he isn’t leaving, instead he moves closer still, tucks his fingers into the top of my towel and pulls it away, and I try to frantically grab it back but he tosses it aside, taking my hand and clutching it so tight he almost crushes my fingers.
“I’m going nowhere, Piper.”
I need him to go, and this time I can make him. I don’t have to have him stay because making him leave would look suspicious, I’m free of that now. I can make him go, if I want to. And there’s the stumbling block.
I close my eyes as his mouth lowers down onto mine, his kiss soft and deep and I fall against him, his arm circling my waist as he pulls me closer.
“I can’t go back to her, Piper.”
“And I can’t be your distraction anymore, Logan. It’s far too dangerous.”
“The danger didn’t stop you before. What makes it so different now?”
I manage to push him away and retrieve the towel, covering myself back up. “A clubhouse full of people for starters. Jesus, Logan, come on! One of those people is the woman you used to love, for Christ’s sake!”
“Used to, Piper. Past fucking tense, sweetheart.”
“Bullshit!”
He cocks his head slightly, his eyes narrowing as he stares at me. “You know what I’m feeling now, huh?”
“I can see it in your eyes, when you talk about her. I saw it earlier today and I’m seeing it now. And I won’t be that distraction anymore, Logan. It’s real now, all this shit, it’s real. We’re not cooped up alone in Vanni’s hideaway, we’re here, and we have to accept what’s in front of us.”
“Which is?”
“Maybe Reba’s come back for a reason…”
He throws back his head and laughs, which kind of pisses me off.
“You’ll be telling me there’s really a pot of gold at the end of the fucking rainbow next. I don’t believe in fate, Piper. It’s a crock of shit, there’s no such thing as happy-ever-afters, life isn’t a fucking fairy tale.”
“You just won’t let yourself be happy, will you?”
He comes over to me, reaching out to touch my face. “I’m happy, fucking you.”
I swipe his hand away and step back from him. “Let’s face it, Logan, fucking me was a way of you ignoring all the shit you just won’t face up to.”
“You really are spinning a great line in crap right now, you know that?”
“You don’t give a shit about me, Logan. I’m nothing to you…”
“You’re wrong.”
I look at him, right at him, our eyes locking, and I feel my stomach dip, a strange feeling taking over my insides.
“I’m nothing to you, Logan.”
Logan
A few days ago she would’ve been right. When this all began she really was nothing more than an escape, a risk I took to get myself some kicks, because fucking Vanni’s wife, man, that was such a freakin’ turn on. The danger, that gets me hard, but now – now things are different. Things are so fucking different.
“I care about you, Piper.”
“I never said you didn’t. But you don’t love me. You loved Reba. And now she’s back, and she needs your help…”
“And I can’t go there again, I can’t do that. Besides, when this is over she has to disappear. She has to go someplace where your fucked up family won’t find her, I can’t go with her…”
“Why not? Why can’t you go with her?”
“My life’s here now, Piper.”
“And what life is that, huh? You live alone, you hang out here at this clubhouse, risk your fucking life doing shit for my husband, for what, huh? You’re not changing the world, you’re fighting stupid fights over property and territory and women, Jesus! It’s all so pointless, Logan. And you’d really put that above finding love again?”
“Finding love…? Come on, Piper, have you heard yourself? This isn’t some freakin’ romance novel, there are no heroes here. We’re all just getting by the best way we can, with the life we’ve been given…”
“You think this is the life you’ve been given?”
“You need to stop talking, Piper. You need to shut up, right now…” I can feel an anger starting to rise from the pit of my stomach, swirling around my gut just waiting to be set free, but I’m trying to control it. I’m fucking trying. “I went through hell, do you understand? I put myself, through hell, to forget what she did to me. I wanted to become a different man, the kind of man who doesn’t need the kind of shit that only, ultimately, tears you apart…”
“You’re a coward.”
Jesus fucking Christ, I swear, she is pushing me. “I said, don’t ever call me that.”
“You’re a coward, Logan.”
I stride over to her, take hold of her wrist and slam her back against the wall, that anger now threatening to explode out of me. “Don’t do this, Piper, don’t call me that…”
“Then face up to what scares you. Face up to it. You said you went through hell, saw the kind of shit that changes a man forever, you faced all of that. Yet, you can’t face up to the fact that you might just want to fall in love again. Because you’re scared you might get hurt? Jesus, Logan, if everyone felt like that we’d all be alone.”
I shake my head, she’s wrong. My grip on her wrist tightens, my eyes burning into hers, but she is wrong.
“You really need to stop talking, Piper.”
“You really want to be alone forever, huh?”
“You know shit about me, darlin’…”
“I know I’m looking at a coward.”
Is she deliberately trying to piss me off? I slam her back against the wall again, ripping the towel away from her before I yank her naked body toward me, kissing her so hard I don’t actually give a shit whether she can breathe or not. And her fingers are clawing at my back, her nails digging into my flesh, scratching my skin, but she’s responding to that kiss, she isn’t fighting me.
I lift her up and throw her down on the bed, push her legs wide apart, and I’m in her in a heartbeat, sinking into her warmth, and she’s pulling me in, gripping me tight, Jesus! This is messed-up, it’s fucking crazy, but we’re both taking this for whatever the hell it is.
She bucks her hips, arches her back so her perfect tits point straight to heaven, and I watch as my cock slams in and out of her in a breathtaking rhythm, until I’m exploding inside of her… shit! But this was never gonna take long.
I pull her up and she straddles me, and I reach down to touch her as my own climax ends, I need to feel her come, too. She drops her head and rests her forehead against my shoulder as I take her clit between my fingers, her almost inaudible moans vibrating against my skin as she comes quietly, her beautiful body shuddering in my arms. And then she stills, it’s over. We’re done. But she stays straddling me, and I keep my arms around her. I don’t want to let her go.
“You’re right, Piper.”
She pulls back slightly and looks at me, cocking her head to one side.
“This – this scares me. You scare me. What I feel for you…”
She slowly shakes her head, and that irritates me, that she thinks she knows everything I’m feeling. She doesn’t. She knows shit.
“Whatever we have, Logan, it’s nothing more than a barrier.”
“I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about, Piper. Really, honey, I don’t. But let me tell you one thing, OK? I want you. I fucking want you…”
“You want me because you can’t have me. I belong to someone else and that’s fine with you, even if you don’t realize it. I belong to someone else, which means you can keep me at a safe distance, you don’t have to fall in love with me, you don’t have to have those feelings. Me being with someone else is safe for you, Logan. It’s safe. You can’t get too close, you can keep that distance…”
I rest a hand against her neck, keeping her face forward, I need to look at her. I need her eyes to stay fixed on mine, I need to look at her. “You don’t know what you’re talking about, Piper. You think you know it all, but you don’t.”
“You won’t let yourself be happy, Logan.”
“I want to be happy, Piper. I really want to be happy, don’t think I don’t want that, I do. But I can’t be happy with Reba, are you listening to me? I can’t do that, I can’t go back there, because she killed us the second she walked out on our life.”
“And you don’t believe in second chances?”
I shake my head. “I can’t give her that, Piper. I can’t. Because when I told you I don’t feel the same way about her anymore I wasn’t lying. That was the truth. I still care about her, I want her to be safe and happy and… but she can’t be those things with me, not now. It’s too late. I moved on, I became that different man I needed to be and even though my head’s still fucked up, seeing her again… I’m a different man now. And that man doesn’t want her anymore. That man wants you.”
She breaks the stare and climbs off of me, starts covering that crazy-sexy body of hers with jeans and a T-shirt.
“Piper…”
She keeps her back to me as she runs her fingers through her hair.
“Piper, I’m serious, I’m not spieling you shit here…”
She swings around to face me, and the look in her eyes, man, I haven’t seen that in her before. That look. I don’t have a clue how to read this one.
“You can’t have me, Logan. You do understand that, right? I’m married, to Vanni Colletti, a man who would take you down in a heartbeat if he knew what we’d done… You can’t have me…”
Her whole body sags as she says those last few words, her shoulders dropping as she leans back against the wall, turning her head away from me. And I know something’s happened here. Something’s changed, and I don’t know if that’s a good or a bad thing, I have no fucking idea.
“We should never have started this, Logan.”
Her voice is quiet, and there’s a sadness to it, too, I’m not that much of a bastard that I can’t sense that.
“But we did, Piper. And we can’t take that back now.” I go over to her, gently guide her head around so she faces me. “We can’t take it back.”
“Then we need to forget it ever happened. Before it’s too late.”
“You can do that, can you? You can forget this never happened?”
She looks up at me, her eyes wide, and that sadness, man, it’s so evident now. “I don’t know.”
I cup her cheek and lower my mouth down until it almost touches hers. “I don’t want to, Piper. I don’t want to forget.”
“He’d kill us both, Logan.”
“I know. Baby, I know.”
“Whatever we want, we can’t have it. So we have to let it go.”
“And I’m not willing to do that.” I kiss her slowly, I actually want to taste her properly now. I want to taste her and feel her and know that what I’m feeling now, it’s real. “Everything you said was right,” I whisper, keeping my mouth close to hers as I speak. “I was scared, of letting myself feel this kinda shit again, I was fucking terrified. Before I became this man I am now I was a very different one, the kind of man who bought his girl flowers and pulled out her chair for her at dinner, I wasn’t the man you know now, Piper. And Reba, she killed him, that man who wrote love notes and left them stuck to the fridge. The hopeless romantic who watched chick flicks just because she wanted to. She killed him. And he’ll never come back, because he can’t go through what she put him through, not again. And the man I am now, I thought he couldn’t deal with that either, and yeah, I guess he shut himself off from even trying to be happy again, with someone else. But you changed that, Piper. Now, here, today, in this room you changed that. And you made me realize it’s OK to fall in love again, and if it all turns to shit… If it doesn’t work out I’ll deal with it, because I’m a very different man to the one who let a woman break me. That won’t happen again.”
“So go be happy with someone who loves you, Logan. If you don’t want Reba…”
“I want you.”
“We’re going round in fucking circles here…” She takes my hand and pulls it away from her cheek, and she walks away, over to the other side of the room, her arms crossed against her chest, she’s putting a barrier up now, between us. And then she turns to face me, and her eyes are still full of sadness, even though it’s obvious she’s trying to mask that sadness now with a harshness that isn’t really coming through. “I’m glad, that I’ve helped you realize you don’t need to be lonely anymore. I’m glad, because you deserve to be happy, everybody does…”
“And are you? Happy?”
“We’re not talking about me.”
“Are you happy, Piper?”
She looks at me, and that harshness in her eyes, it’s starting to make its presence known now. “You should go now, Logan.”
I shake my head as I stride over to her, and she doesn’t back away, she doesn’t even flinch when I slide a hand around the back of her neck and kiss her. She doesn’t do shit, she lets it happen.
“Who’s not facing up to what scares her now, huh?”
She doesn’t say anything, she can’t, say anything.
“You really think I’ve come all this way, gone through all that shit, just to walk away from you, Piper?”
“We can’t be together, Logan. We can’t…”
“You tell yourself that enough times and you’ll start to believe it, but I don’t think you want to believe it.”
She frowns slightly, but she is gonna get this, if it fucking kills me. She is gonna believe I’m serious, that I want her, I know that now, I fucking want her. And she is gonna get that, if it fucking kills me. Because, Jesus, it just might…