Chapter 22

If you say ‘fuck it’ before making a decision, it’s probably not something you’ll be proud of.

-Food for thought

Winnie

Four months later

It was my first 10K in over a year and a half. My first race since I’d had my stroke.

My first race that I wasn’t even remotely excited about.

After I had left Steel and moved out of state, I just didn’t find anything exciting anymore. Not when Conleigh passed all of her classes with flying colors or when Cody finally mastered his sight words. Not even when I lost six pounds or when I ran my first mile without stopping.

Seriously, there was nothing inside of me that was even remotely excited about this race.

The only thing that brought me here were a few friends who were in the marathon scene.

This race was to benefit a scholarship in the name of a fallen soldier named Dougie. They’d started this race ten years ago in his memory, and all proceeds from it went into a scholarship fund in memory of the man, who was also a parent, who had died while in combat.

Apparently, it was a big deal that I was coming back for my first race, and ESPN was covering my comeback.

And by attending this race, it would bring a lot of attention from the media to this great cause.

Which explained why I was there when I didn’t run for anybody but myself lately.

“I’m so glad that you could make it.”

I smiled at the two young women. Kayla, the one who’d started this race ten years ago when she was just thirteen, and her best friend, Janie.

I’d gotten a handwritten letter from Kayla begging me to attend. Since she’d gone to so much trouble to not only track me down but to also explain the race to me in a personal message, I’d agreed to attend.

Now, I was nervous as hell.

10K was pushing it for me right now, but I didn’t want to let on that I was nervous about it.

I was leaps and bounds from where I had been a year ago, or hell, even just six months ago.

I never thought I’d be able to walk again, let alone run, but here I was.

I was back, and I was scared.

The gun sounded, and I nearly fell.

My hands hit the ground, and I looked up to see the entire stream of racers passing me by.

I got up and ran.

By mile five, my legs were jelly.

I hadn’t felt my right foot since mile four, and my left thigh was screaming at me to quit.

But I wouldn’t quit.

I wasn’t in last place as I had feared I would be. Hell, I wasn’t even in the middle of the pack.

I was fifteen to twenty people out from first place.

I knew I wouldn’t win.

Hell, I knew that I wouldn’t even get close to the man who was running the fastest—a male around my age named Raphael according to Janie.

He hadn’t even broken a sweat, I didn’t think.

He’d fallen back to talk to me a few times, checking to make sure that I was okay before he’d then hurry back into his previous position.

At first, it was nice.

Now, I was just angry that he could speed up and slow down as he’d done…multiple times.

Who the hell could run like that?

I knew that I couldn’t.

Even when I was in peak shape, I couldn’t just slow down and speed up. I had a rhythm, and if that rhythm was interrupted, bad things happened. Such as me not being able to make my legs work anymore.

Most of the people running this race weren’t professionals. So it was understandable how he kept slipping back into first place just as easily as he held himself back.

But still.

Hell, I didn’t even think I could be counted as a professional any longer. Not with being out of the running scene for a year and a half like I’d been.

But Raphael—Rafe as he’d instructed me to call him during one of his many pit stops to speak to me—shouldn’t be able to do that.

Speaking of the devil, I watched as he crossed the finish line from about a half mile away.

We were on a long, downhill street—thank God it wasn’t uphill!—that was the final stretch that led you to the finish line. I could see the runners in front of me, making it one by one across the finish line, as I ran.

The times flashed on the screen, one after the other, as each crossed.

Fourteen. Fifteen. Sixteen.

Seventeen. Eighteen. Nineteen.

Then there was me. Lucky number twenty.

I ran, no longer able to feel my entire right leg, and crossed with a fairly acceptable time.

Then I looked up and found him standing there.

Steel Cross.

Steel ‘Big Papa’ Cross.

My legs started to give out and I would’ve gone down hard, but he was there to scoop me up.

He wrapped his arms around me, and I could do nothing but wrap my arms back around him and hold on for dear life.

The entire four months that we’d spent separated hit me with the force of a battering ram, and I started to cry.

“You’re here,” I keened, burying my face into his neck.

My legs felt like limp, useless noodles as he held me, rocking me back and forth.

But he didn’t let on that he was hurting.

Didn’t act like he was in pain in any way, really.

Then again, I knew that he wasn’t hurting anywhere near as much lately.

The burns on his chest and side had healed. That, I’d found out, from his son. His son that I called and checked in with once a week to see how his father was doing.

“Where else would I be?” he rumbled.

The sound of his voice was like a soothing balm to my very soul. Everything that had been rioting inside of me after the fires at Steel’s house and then at the safe house where Steel was severely burned dissipated.

No longer was I scared. No longer was I weak.

Why? Because Steel was there.

He always would be.

I’d tried to stay away, and now I realized how stupid I had been.

It hadn’t been until this very second, until Steel had reminded me how it felt to be in his arms when we didn’t have doom hanging over our heads, that I realized what we’d been missing. What I’d been missing.

“I’m sorry,” I breathed.

“Yeah,” he rumbled. “We have some things to talk about, but right now, I’m just happy that you’re here and with me. Happy that you finally made it through a race again. Happy that your son just told me eighteen useless facts while we waited for you to cross the finish line. Happy that your daughter was there to wrap her arms around me and tell me all about how her mama had ridden her ass for the last few months.”

I choked on a sob and then squeezed him tighter.

“Did you see your time?” Steel asked a few moments later.

I licked my lips, then looked up to the giant screen that would tell me my time…and then gasped.

“Steel…” I breathed. “What did you do?”

“Nothing,” he laughed.

I let go of him and stood on my own two shaky feet, and stared.

“Steel…” I murmured.

When I looked back at him, it was to find him down on one knee.

“Winnie?”

I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. Couldn’t decide whether I wanted to throw myself into his arms or let him finish with what he had to say.

“Yeah?” I croaked.

“We’ve had some good times, and we’ve had some really bad times,” he started.

I dashed a tear away from my eye.

“Yeah,” I agreed. “We have.”

“And, over the last four months, I’ve done a whole lotta thinking.”

“You have?” I asked.

Because I had, too.

I’d already decided I was going to go back. I was going to beg him.

I was going to do anything it took to get him to give me another chance.

He nodded, then pulled out a box that was in the front of his leather jacket.

The one I’d bought him for his birthday a few weeks before a fire that had destroyed everything.

“Yeah,” he nodded. “And I know three things for sure.”

I found myself smiling.

“And what are those?”

“One, I’ve missed the hell out of you the last four months.” He grinned.

“Two?” I breathed.

“Two, I don’t think I can live without you anymore.”

I blinked back a tear.

“And three?”

“Three, I want you to marry me. I want you to hassle me about putting my socks away. I want you to yell at me because I forgot to put the tea up the night before. I want to lay next to you while you say sight words in your sleep.” My lips twitched. “I want to watch you grow old. I want to sit at your side while we watch your daughter get married. I want to teach your son everything that I forgot to teach mine. I want you to be there when I take my last breath. I want you to never, ever leave me again. And to do that, I need you to say yes.”

Before he’d even gotten the last syllable out, I threw myself into his arms while also screaming one word. Yes.

***

Hours later, we lay sated and breathless in the bed that I’d just bought.

It was a piece of crap from a surplus store, but it was a bed.

The kids had one identical to mine.

It’d been all I was willing to pay for at the time. Subconsciously, I think I knew that I was always going to go back to Mooresville. I knew that I wouldn’t be staying in Kilgore long.

“Were you responsible for the three tactical vests that came to the office last month?” he questioned hours later, his breath tickling the skin at the back of my neck.

“Yes,” I instantly replied. “But only for the one. The other two were matched by a local farmer’s market. They thought it was a nice thing they could do. It was part of the proceeds of this race. We sponsored a few police officers in the state of our choosing. You were my chosen.”

He started to snort.

“I’m glad I’m your chosen.”

I was glad he was, too.

“Steel?” I asked after a while. “Did he really break into your hospital room?”

Something about what Sean had said had bothered me.

When I’d left that day, the black bag had been in our car that Sean had used to drive us to a safe house in Benton, Louisiana. We’d stayed with a fellow member of the Dixie Wardens, Loki, and his wife, Channing.

That bag, I specifically remembered grabbing a t-shirt out of before he’d left.

That bag had been with Sean.

Sean wouldn’t have had a reason to be at the hospital after visiting hours if not to bring his father that bag. The bag that just so happened to have his backup revolver with it.

The bag that had magically appeared in Steel’s hospital room with Sean nowhere in the vicinity.

“What you don’t know won’t hurt you.”

“Steel…”

“No.”

“Steel…”

He shut me up with his kiss. “No.”

I didn’t need his confirmation, though.

I knew that Sean, and maybe even the entire club, had brought Anderson to Steel. Then Steel had taken care of a problem he didn’t see getting fixed any other way.

Steel Cross killed Anderson Munnick.

And I didn’t care.

I highly doubted that I ever would, either.