4

Mia

I needed to get out of there. I needed to get away from the compound and Steel looking at my sister like he wanted to fuck her on his bike. She certainly looked like that was what was going to happen, and I wanted to be as far away from that as possible.

I hid behind Darth as I waited for Creed to come back with his car keys. I knew we wouldn’t be going on his bike. If you wanted to be part of their lives, you learned how to be a passenger on their bikes, and I had ridden behind every guy in the club—except for Creed.

He told me bits and pieces about what had happened to his young wife but not a lot. To most, he was a broody kind of a guy. At least, that was what Steel called him. Their friendship was different compared to the other guys. They were loyal to each other and always had one another’s backs, and they shared a certain comfortableness. I mean they could sit at the bar together and not say a word, but it never came across as uneasy to anyone watching. At the same time, they seemed to like tormenting each other. Creed especially liked to rile Steel up.

“Ready, gorgeous?” Creed appeared from the stairwell leading to his room. He liked to be alone at night, away from the noise of the main room. I asked him why once, and his response was simple—the sniper in him liked to be alone. I liked Creed. I just wished I could like him more than I loved Steel. Smiling at the handsome road captain, I nodded my head.

“Are you sure this is okay, Creed? I don’t want to take you away from the party. I know it’s a celebration for the club tonight with Stella and Booth getting married and the pregnancy.” I felt bad taking him from it, but I didn’t belong here tonight—or at all.

Seeing Steel and Callie together was getting harder and harder for me. Especially after the fun he and I had today looking for Shiloh’s pup. Despite his devotion to my sister and his oft-times bad attitude towards me, when we were good, it really was. I loved working closely with him at the bar, and his trust in me as his manager made me feel special to him. At least in my mind, it did.

“There ain’t nothing else I would rather do than spend time with you, Mia,” Creed answered, a cocky smirk gracing his lips, but it didn’t reach his eyes. Creed had sad eyes, and I hoped the wife he buried wasn’t the only one who could make them smile. I prayed a woman was still out there waiting for her turn to be loved by this wonderful man. I just wished sometimes it could have been me, but my heart belonged to a tall, pretty boy who was in love with my sister.

————

Creed pulled his dual cab ute into one of the car parks reserved for the MC members. Cutting the engine, he made no move to remove his belt. Watching him, I tried to figure out what he was about to lay on me. Because, with Creed, I knew there would be some words of wisdom. It was one thing I both admired and loathed about him at the same time. His ability to read me was… well, quite frankly, annoying.

“Steel loves you.”

Okay, I was not expecting that. And I certainly did not believe it.

“Creed, I really don’t think—”

“Yeah, he does. This stupid shit with Callie is him being safe. Calculating the easiest path,” he interrupted me.

What on earth did he mean by that? I started to ask, but he held his hand up to stop me from arguing with him.

“Steel and I were partners in the snipers. We spent a lot of time in shit places, not talking but comfortable with each other’s company. Fucking hours and sometimes days in one spot, waiting for our target, hardly eating, sleeping, or moving. But I wasn’t the only one to depend on the ability to be quiet, and solace became my best friend.”

“Creed,” I tried again, but he was on a mission to share, and who was I to stop him? He didn’t indulge very often, so I was going to take whatever I could get from him. Despite this mess of feelings between us, Creed’s friendship was important to me.

“Being a sniper, you get training on how to shoot, how to hit and not miss, but you don’t learn the patience. That is something already in you. Steel and I can wait forever for that target to come to us.”

“What does that have to do with Steel and me?” I was a bit lost. I knew there was a message, but he wasn’t making it easy to see it.

Creed looked out the window for a long moment before he turned and looked right at me. The intensity of his look scared me a little.

“His path to Callie is easy. There is no love, just release, and she is a distraction from what he really needs, which is you. His path to you is harder. You make him want to shed the sniper and the quiet, but he doesn’t know how. The day he lost his leg, he lost that part of him that sees his appeal to women. Callie shows interest, but she also makes him feel inadequate as a whole man. He is used to her, but it would kill him if you rejected him because of his prosthesis.”

His words hit me, and I could see what he was getting at, but I didn’t believe the words. Steel knew I would never make fun of him or belittle him like Callie did.

Looking at Creed, I got a glimpse of the man behind the pain.

“And you, Creed. What would kill you?” I asked softly as I daringly reached out and laced my fingers with his.

Surprising me, he immediately tightened them around mine.

“Losing another person I love. When I lost Lila, I swore I would never love again. So please, gorgeous, don’t ask me to because you are the one I really would like to love. But I can’t, so just don’t.” He brought our joined hands up to his lips and kissed my knuckles gently. “Please don’t,” he whispered again, his voice full of devastation and heartache.

I felt tears prick at the corner of my eyes as I thought about how much he must have loved her. Losing her in that accident had taken his heart, as well. Suddenly, I thought of the rose he left behind the morning he left my place. The rose… Lila Rose—his wife. He left it as a symbol to tell me why he hadn’t been able to make love to me. He couldn’t betray her memory, just like he couldn’t risk his heart again. A heart he no longer had the courage to give to another person.

“Don’t give up on love, Creed. Don’t lose yourself in the sorrow of the past.” I took in a shaky breath. “I don’t know if Steel will ever admit to any feelings for me, and I don’t know if I can take too much more of seeing him with my sister. But I do know the feelings I have for him are like nothing I have ever experienced, and no other man will ever do for me. But I am realistic, Creed. I know I may have to let Steel go and get on with my life elsewhere.”

When I said the last part, Creed’s eyes narrowed, and his fingers tightened painfully around mine.

“You can’t go anywhere, Mia. Apart from the fact the entire club would be hurt, there is a crazy man out there looking to get at us through our women, and we can’t protect you if we can’t see you,” Creed said emphatically, repeating the mantra of the club. His concern was sweet, but it was coming from the wrong man.

“Why can’t I love you instead?” I whispered instead of reassuring him I wouldn’t go anywhere because I couldn’t promise him that. Seeing Steel agreeing so easily to help Callie tonight, even after the horrible way she treated me, hurt too much. It hurt that he chose her every time when I treated him so much better than she did. Unlacing my fingers from Creed’s, I let myself out of the huge truck. Damn, these men had to learn that not everyone was as tall as they were.

“Mia, don’t leave tonight without an escort out to your car,” Creed warned me as I moved away from his truck, heading to the back entrance of the Bar and Grill.

Raising my hand above my head, I acknowledged that I’d heard him, but I didn’t look back. I didn’t have a death wish, I really didn’t, but I would rather Rogue got to me than to Shiloh or my two pregnant best friends.

————

 “Mia, I’m going down to the cellar to get some more Scotch and to hook up another keg,” Rainn called out to me. The bar was slamming tonight, and Rainn, the kitchen staff, and I hadn’t had any breaks. I was so tired, I’d lost the ability to feel my feet about an hour ago. When I volunteered to fill in for Tori, I completely forgot my shift was after hers. So here I was, pulling a double on one of the busiest nights in the bar’s history. Giving Rainn a thumbs-up, I continued to pour a round of beers for the group of university guys that had been in here since I started the first shift. They were rowdy and a little handsy with the waitresses, but they were spending gobs of money.

“Hey, beautiful, how would you like to get up close and personal with my mattress?” one of the guys asked me as I handed out the mugs of beer.

I tried hard not to roll my eyes, and I came close to succeeding, too, but the blonde ‘boy next door’ uni student had been at me all night, and my patience was starting to wear thin. I had heard every single come-on ever written from this lot, and I was getting pretty pissed off with them. It was times like now that I wished I had some of that sniper training in patience—that, or the ability to shoot and kill.

“Here are your beers, fellas. One hour till closing time, by the way,” I reminded them all for the second time. I just wanted them out of here. After we closed, there would be at least another hour of cleaning up before I could drag my tired body back to Rainn’s house. When Callie and I had our last falling out, I’d asked Rainn if I could sleep in her spare room. She was fine with it, and I had been there for about two weeks. Two weeks of peace and quiet since Rainn was barely there. She spent much of her sleeping time in Mannix’s bed at the compound.

Lost in my thoughts, I didn’t register the hand that had snuck over the bar top until it grabbed me and pulled me halfway across the bar.

“Hey, let me go,” I shouted, wildly looking around for the bar security or one on the MC guys. Steel was supposed to be on tonight, but his plans must have changed. Getting sexy time with Callie trumped security detail and looking after me. All thoughts of Steel left my head as the hand on my arm turned into hands all over my breasts. I felt the idiot’s fingers bite into my soft flesh, making me cry out in pain. Oh, God. I think I may be in over my head.

“Take your fucking hands off her right now, arsehole.” I felt nothing but relief when I heard the sweetest words ever roared from behind the students.

Looking up, I stared straight into the very pissed off green eyes of the Wounded Souls’ VP.