Cutter
They spent the rest of the morning in bed together, their bodies pressed against one another. It had been ages since Cutter had even let a woman stay in his bed this long, years it felt like since he hadn't just immediately kicked them out on their asses.
But, Liona was different. Clearly.
As he twisted her long locks around his finger, touched her soft skin, and reveled in the feeling of her warm body pressed against his, he secretly worried. Worried about what she meant to him, worried about the future, and worried about the Vanguard. She couldn't take focus away from his MC. He owed that much to his men, the boys who trusted him with practically their lives.
All those years had gone by since he'd seen her last. But for him, the attraction was still there, just as much as it had been once upon a time. Still, though, he knew he needed to stay focused. The situation was coming to a head and any slip up on his part could have far reaching ramifications far beyond what just tomorrow, or the next day, would bring to his door. Now was the time to be cautious, disciplined, and aware.
“Cutter?” Liona asked from in front of him. He grunted in acknowledgment. “What do you really want out of life?”
He'd thought about this a lot, actually. Ever since he'd joined the Vanguard. “Security, and freedom.”
“Just that?” she asked as she re-situated herself to face him. She reached up, stroked his stubbly cheek, his jaw, as she looked deep into his eyes. “No kids, or a family, or anything?”
Her eyes were two of the most beautiful gems he'd ever seen in his life. He grumbled again. “I wouldn't mind kids, I guess. I dunno, I've never really thought about it. Never really considered it. Hard to put a baby carrier on a bike, though, you know?”
She laughed and playfully slapped his shoulder. “I'm serious, though.”
“Well, what about you?” he asked, deflecting it back to her. He was enjoying himself with her, but this prying into his life, and so quickly, was a little much for a man like him to take in. “You ever wanted kids, or anything?”
She rolled over on her back and looked up at the ceiling. “I did. Once.” She shook her head. “Not with Wyland, though.”
He stayed on his side, just as before, and watched her face as she became lost in her thoughts and walk down memory lane.
“But, yeah, years ago I dreamed about it. Now, though, sometimes I just think that I might feel trapped by it all. I mean, I'd have a little life inside me for nine months, then, poof, I'd have a child. And, for the rest of its life, I'd be its mother. That's a big responsibility. I don't know if I'd want it, to be a prisoner of my actions like that.”
“What about the other times?” Cutter asked, feeling uncharacteristically introspective for once.
“The other times I think to myself, 'Well, what else are you going to do, Liona? You got any better ideas, girl?'”
Cutter grinned and flipped over on his back. “Well?” he asked. “Do you?”
She was quiet for a moment, then grinned. “I really don't know. Start up a small gift shop? Maybe a book store?”
“Ah, come on,” Cutter said, “don't you read the news? Print's dead.”
“Well, how'd you end up opening a restaurant?”
He wanted to tell her. He really did. But how do you tell the girl of your dreams, one whom you've been trying to forget for nearly the last decade, and, coincidentally, was set to marry the assistant DA just the day before, that you only opened the restaurant as a way to launder money? And that the only way it finally began to go legit was because of stupid luck? How do you say all that to a woman, particularly when you're trying to hide your drug dealing, your gun running, and all manners of other regrets?
He just shrugged. “Meh. It was kind of on a lark.”
Liona laughed at his poor, off the cuff response.
Before she could dig further, though, he added. “Hey, do you want lunch? It's past noon already.” The faster he got away from this question, and all the consequences of his truthful answer, the better.
“I could eat,” she replied.
“Good,” he said, getting out of bed and pulling his pants on from where he'd just dropped everything on the floor before crawling back beneath the sheets with her.
She slid out of bed behind him and started to grab her clothes from where she'd carefully draped them over the back of a small chair he kept in the corner. Together, they padded out of his bunk on bare feet, headed through the hallway, out through the rec-room, and into the kitchen. All around them, the clubhouse was silent as a tomb. All the guys were still off working their shift at Farm to Fable, making sure the doors stayed open through this troubled time. A little bit of guilt tickled at Cutter for abandoning them like this, especially when they were two men down, but Smalls had been insistent. He knew they needed Liona protected, knew that she was the key to all this.
“What's for lunch today, Chef?” Liona asked as she took her spot from the previous day at the barstool.
“I was thinking a Hot Dutch,” Cutter said as he went over to the big industrial fridge and opened it up. He squatted down and began digging through all the piles and piles of groceries, fresh produce, cold cuts, and various cheeses they kept the place stocked with.
“Hot Dutch?” she asked from behind him. He could practically hear the face she made. “What's that? Sounds like a bad sex position.”
He laughed. “It's like a grilled cheese, but it's got ham on it.”
“Why not just call it a ham and cheese melt, then?”
“Because, it's got Gouda on it,” he said, pulling all the necessary ingredients out and putting them on the counter. “It's different, okay? My mom used to make them for me all the time.”
“Is it even a thing?”
“It was in our household,” he said.
They talked while he cooked and prepped, bantering back and forth just like they used to, when they were back in high school. Questions about his family, telling stories back and forth about what they'd done after high school. He was impressed she'd gotten a psychology degree, even if she wasn't overly enthused about her academic accomplishment. It was better than he'd ever done in school, that was for damn sure, and he told her as much.
“But what do I do with such a useless degree?” she asked, laughing.
“Well, why'd you even get it if it's useless?”
“Killing time,” she said, honestly.
He was watching the sandwich grill up and grunted without turning around to give her the go ahead to continue.
“I hate to say it, now,” she went on, “but, I think I was just getting a degree to get a degree. Like, my mom and dad expected it out of me. And, I figured, what would it matter what I got? I was going to be eventually married to Wyland West anyways, right? I'd be taken care of, having babies like I was supposed to, doing everything life had planned for me ...”
Cutter plated her sandwich and filled her empty bowl with soup. “But, that was before law school,” Cutter finished for her.
She nodded, her hands folded tightly together. “Yeah.”
“Well,” he said, gesturing to the food. “Eat up.”
She dug in with gusto, just like the night before. To Cutter's pleasant surprise, she seemed to like the Hot Dutch even more than the grilled cheese. “So, this is like a grilled cheese with ham added to it, right?” she asked after he'd turned back to finish preparing his own sandwich.
“Right.”
“Why don't you just call it that, instead? You know, a grilled cheese with ham on it.”
“Because a grilled cheese has two primary ingredients,” he said as he looked back at her. “Bread. Cheese. You add in anything else and it becomes something besides a grilled cheese. Calling it a grilled cheese with ham is a perversion. It's a Hot Dutch for a reason.”
Liona laughed and dipped the sandwich into her soup, rolling her eyes at his adamant insistence. “Whatever, Cutter.”
As Cutter was plating his own sandwich and setting down to eat, he could tell that something was bugging Liona. For once, he decided not to pry. She'd tell him when she wanted to. After a few minutes of silence, it finally came out. “I've been thinking,” she slowly said, picking her words carefully as she moved through the sentence. “Unless you plan on letting me wander around here naked while I'm doing laundry ...”
A crystal clear mental image of the slight woman wandering the halls of the clubhouse popped into his mind. He immediately shook it free and realized what she was getting at. “Go on,” Cutter said around a mouthful of Dutch. “What's your point?”
“Well, I only had the one set of clothing when I took off.”
“And you need more, then?”
She nodded.
“Okay,” he said, and tapped his chin. He wiped his mouth with a napkin and tossed it aside. “But, Liona, you know you can't leave. At least, we can't just take you shopping. What if Wyland finds you?”
“Well, I was thinking about that,” she said, grabbing her bowl with both hands and beginning to bring it to her lips, “and I think I have a solution. Carly!”
“Carly?” he asked, confused. “Who's that?”
“My maid of honor. She's my only real friend here, besides you. And, I think I can get her to bring me some outfits from my apartments.”
“But, won't Wyland try and stop her?”
She set her bowl of tomato bisque back down, untouched. “I don't know. I mean, maybe? But, he can't just hurt her and make her disappear, can he? He'd just make proof against himself!”
Cutter shook his head. “I don't know about this, Liona. I mean, this is a pretty big risk, for you and your friend.”
She sighed and looked away. “Look, Cutter,” she said, her voice wavering a little. “I need clothes. I can't wear the same panties for days on end, or the same clothes over and over. You have to help me with this.”
The plan was perilous for everyone involved. But she was right. A person needed clothing. While it was her fault for not planning better, he couldn't exactly blame her for poorly executing a spur of the moment plan. He sighed and popped the last bite of sandwich into his mouth.
As he chewed his sandwich, and thought over her words, she added one more shot: “Are you my protector here, or my captor?”
That one actually stunned and shocked him a little. He hadn't felt that way, but he admitted that he had to control her movements a little bit, if only to protect her from the dangers in the outside world. He dusted his hands free of crumbs. “Fine,” he said. “Call her. But she's going to have to meet us in a place we can be sure she's not being followed to, especially if she's getting clothes from your place.”
She nodded and gave him a little smile. “Thank you.”