Scar

Four Months Later

Me and Lynn have been pretty much living together in the safe house for the past three months. She still goes home to her mom from time to time, but those times are growing shorter and farther apart. That woman hates me, but she loves Lynn, and that's all that really matters.

This place is a shit hole and she deserves better, but she won't move in with me at Sanctuary, because being around large groups of bikers still terrifies her from time to time. I won't force her.

Besides, I've enjoyed this domestic bliss we have going on here way more than I ever imagined I could. And she's fixed up the place real nice, it's almost like a home already.

She's awake, since she got a phone call a couple of minutes ago, and I can hear her moving around in the bedroom. I've been awake since dawn, thinking about shit and waiting for her to wake up. It's a special day today.

I just got off the phone myself. With Cross. It's been some time in coming, but I finally told him I want to tone down my involvement with the MC. What I did for them is no longer required, not the way it used to be, and we both know that. I'll still ride whenever he needs me, but I'm moving out of Sanctuary.

I've seen enough death and caused enough pain. I have to find out if there is anything other than that out there for me. Lynn gives me hope that there could be. Cross listened, didn't say much, but I think he understood. Then he wished me good luck.

"Bethany sold the ranch!" Lynn informs me as she barges into the kitchen.

Even when she's angry like she clearly is right now, her voice is soft and inviting like a sweet little bird chirruping. She’s so damn pure.

"She didn't even say anything, she just sold it!" Lynn rants.

Her hair's a mess, her cheeks are red because she's pissed, and her stormy sky blue eyes are shooting lightning, but she's still the most beautiful woman I've ever seen. I still don't know if I deserve her love, but I sure as fuck mean to keep earning it.

"She told me," I say and get the full force of her thunderous look. It cuts me right to the bone, but not painfully, far from it.

I chuckle and dig in my pocket for a set of keys. "But the good news is, you now own it."

I hold out the keys, but she doesn't take them, her face a frozen mask of confusion now.

"I guess it was a bad idea for a surprise," I tell her, since, yeah, maybe I didn't think this through all the way.

She looks like she's having a silent heart attack, but there's nothing for it now. I have to power through, so I jingle the keys at her again. "Bethany's been talking so much about getting rid of it, and you've been talking so much about keeping it, so I bought it."

She flies at me so fast she's a blur, nearly knocks me right off the chair I'm sitting in.

"Thank you! Thank you so much!" she says, nestled in my lap and holding me so tight her voice is muffled. "I went to the bank about a loan to buy it last week, but they said no way, since I have no work history to speak of."

"I know all that too," I say, wrapping my arms around her even as I lean back so I can look at her face. "And I wanted to give you something you really wanted."

"You've already given me so much," she says breathlessly. "How can I ever repay you?"

I chuckle and squeeze her ass. "Don't sell yourself short, Lynn. You're a real catch. Not many guys out there got a real-life beauty queen at home, but they all wish they did."

She frowns. "I was being serious."

And I know that. All I just said is true, but it's just the tip of the iceberg of all the things she means to me, of all the ways I can't imagine living without her.

"You've already repaid me and then some," I say in a serious voice. "You keep crediting me with giving you your life back, but you did the same for me, and you keep doing it everyday. So we're even."

She kisses me in that spur of the moment impulse she gets sometimes, a sudden need to show me she loves me. I never actively missed being loved by a woman, never spared it much thought, or any at all, but damn did I miss it all these years she wasn't in my life.

"We're not even, not by far," she says. "You're just saying that to make me feel better."

"Nope, am not. When do I ever do that?" I say and chuckle.

"Only all the time," she says and she's not wrong.

"That's just 'cause I want you to feel good and nothing else matters as much as that to me," I say and that's the complete truth, so she better never doubt it. She hugs me tighter, melts even more into me.

"But I'm not just saying it now," I add, since maybe I really don't tell her enough how much she means to me for her to know it. I'm no good at talking, but she needs to know this. "You've shown me there's more to life than just hate and rage and that even a guy like me—someone who's had a lifetime of that and then some— can change. You showed me that I still have a heart. So yeah, you've given me life back too."

That's about it as far as words go for me, so I'll have to show her the truth of it if she still doesn't believe me. Show her over and over again until she does. Giving her the ranch so she can continue running the shelter is just one of the ways I plan on doing that.

I kiss her and she kisses me back. There's things between us that can't ever be put into words, but need to be expressed, and we both know that. Soon I need more than just kisses and going by how she's writhing in my lap, so does she.

I stand up with her in my arms, startling her. But if she's afraid I'll drop her, she can rest easy that it'll never happen.

"We got a little time now," I tell her and shift her in my arms so her pussy is up against my hard cock. "But then we gotta go up to the ranch and start fixing it up. That place is as run down as they come."

She gives me the most grateful and the most seductive look I've ever seen all rolled into one.

"We have all the time in the world," she says as she wraps her arms even tighter around my neck.

And she's completely right.

* * *

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