Chapter 19

I’m old school. When I wake up, my eyebrows are already on my face.

-things you shouldn’t say to your girlfriend

Baylor

10 days later

They don't see what I see.

Them? They look at her and see the curvy body, the full head of beautiful hair. The ass. The tits.

Me? I see everything—including that. Tits and ass for sure. But even deeper than that, I see the caring heart. The need to be needed. The love she had for life. The worry that she wasn’t good enough for me.

I watched her the other day when we went to the dog show.

It’d been a spur of the moment thing, and since I was still on light duty, I was willing to do just about anything to get me out of the house and moving—even go to the grocery store.

When she’d suggested the dog show that was in town over the last weekend, I’d literally begged to go.

She’d looked at each and every dog like it was the finest canine specimen she’d ever seen in her life. Then she went home and curled around Pongo and had a conversation with him about how she felt he could win at that dog show. She didn’t see the scars on his nose or his one ear that was almost always crooked. Nor did she notice the patches of hair missing on his right and left paws where they consistently took blood from him.

No, she only saw the beauty in everything around her.

And that’s what humbled me.

I didn't have that thirst for life like she did. I’d nearly died five times by my count. But my girl? She lived in her own personal war zone, thinking she was going to die every single day of the horrible years that she was married to her ex. She never knew if this time would be the time that Sal would go too far. She lived knowing that one day he would kill her.

Still, to this day, she enjoyed life. How that could be possible, I didn’t know, but she did. And I was in awe of her for it.

“You ready to go?”

I grinned when a relieved smile lit her face.

We were at a company barbeque. I had to go seeing as I was the brother of the owners. It was an annual one we had every summer for the families, and it was at the club that the family owned—a club in which I also owned the majority of—but nobody knew that.

I’d kept it a secret, being quite content to be in the background. It wasn’t often that my brothers consulted me—not Dante seeing as he still wasn’t around—but when they did, it was normally about expanding this or that. I honestly didn’t care what they did. I was easy.

I was probably one of the least demanding men in the world. I was a joy to be around—my brothers told me that at least once a year when I freely paid the taxes on the company.

Though, I had a feeling that it was due to me paying the taxes and not because they actually thought I was a joy.

“How did you know?”

I frowned and brought myself back to the here and now. “How did I know what?”

“That I was ready to go.”

I snorted. “Maybe it’s the way you’re holding yourself with both arms wrapped tightly around you. Or maybe it’s the way when I go away for a second, I find you in the deepest darkest corner of the club.”

She grimaced. “This anxiety...it’s because Sal is a dick. He made me go to all of these police functions. And everyone thought I was just a bitch because I wouldn’t talk. But really it was because Sal told me if I talked to anyone when he wasn’t around—and I do mean anyone—that he’d beat the shit out of me when we got home. And me being the smart woman that I am, I didn’t. After the first time, anyway.”

I was almost afraid to ask.

“The first time?”

She looked pained.

“The first time I literally thought he was joking. Surely by talking to someone at one of these parties, he wouldn’t think that anything special was being said between us. Unfortunately, I’d made the mistake of talking to another man who was being nice and making small talk since we were seated at the same table. Sadly, it ended up being the chief of police. The top dog. The head honcho. I never knew how screwed I was until I got home. We hadn’t talked about anything in particular. The weather. The table decorations.” She started to pick at her cuticle. “I think he said something about Sal being a good cop…I don’t know. I must’ve frowned, shut down, or something because the next thing I knew, Sal was there. He said polite hellos to the man, then we went to the dance floor and never returned to the table that night.”

I waited for the other shoe to drop.

“I never suspected he was upset until we got home. The minute the door closed...he broke my arm.” She drew in a sharp breath. “Made me repeat, word for word, what I’d said to the guy. Then, when I started vomiting due to the pain, he kicked me in the stomach like that would help.” Her laugh was anything but happy. “I hate him so much.”

I folded my arms around her and picked her up, turning us so that her back was now to the wall and mine was to the rest of the club.

It’d been decided not to close the club down while we were having this party, but the bouncer at the door was under strict instructions to only allow people in that we knew and wouldn’t start any shit with our families here…sans kids.

Though, the kids were all upstairs in my office with a babysitter—my mother.

My mother, whom Lark still hadn’t met yet, but I knew she wanted to.

“Tell me what’s going through your head,” I ordered.

Her eyes met mine, and the only thing enabling her to see was the disco light that periodically shined over our faces at random.

“I’m scared he’s going to find me and take away my happy.”

Those words were enough to bring me to my knees.

“You’re scared he’s going to take you away from here?”

I was hoping for more.

She hadn’t repeated the ‘I love you’ that she’d said all those days ago. And I wanted her to. Badly.

“I’m scared that he’s either going to take me away from YOU—not necessarily here tonight, but soon—or that he’s going to kill you.” She reflected. “Both are unacceptable at this point.”

“Why?”

Her eyes narrowed. “Why do I not want you to die?”

I chuckled. “No, I’m looking for three words here. Three words that I feel like you need to tell me immediately.”

Her eyes turned understanding.

“You’re crazy, baby.”

“Those weren’t the three words I was looking for.”

The ‘baby’ though did something weird to my heart.

Made it jump and leap like she’d called me something more than just ‘baby.’

“I love you.”

Her eyes widened.

The sight was so comical that I started to laugh, and her arms tightened.

In fact, they constricted so tightly that she cut off the oxygen to my head.

“You know what?” Lark whispered in my ear.

I turned as best as I could, given her death grip on me and stared at her.

“No, what?”

“I love you, too.”

I snaked my hand up the back of her t-shirt and held her, breathing in her scent.

“I wish I hadn’t broken your wiener.”

At that, I burst out laughing.

“I don’t think you broke it as much as my own exuberance did,” I pointed out. “And it seems to be working just fine right now.”

Her eyebrows went up.

“What…”

She trailed off when I shifted her so she could feel the length of my erection.

There was no more pain. Not even a little bit. Thank God.

There was, however, reluctance.

I’d only ever felt pain like that once before, and I couldn’t say which pain was worse. Having my dick broken—or nearly—or being shot in the testicle with a button.

Though the discomfort didn’t stop me from getting an erection—it was just more uncomfortable than pleasurable due to my memories of the event.

And I was just about to tell her that there was no more pain when my pocket rang.

I grumbled and pushed away from the wall.

Lark’s legs dropped from around me and she looked at me in confusion.

“Phone,” I muttered, reaching my hand into the pocket of my jeans.

She nodded and started to walk away, but I hooked her around the waist and held her in place while I answered.

“Hello?”

Luckily this quiet corner that Lark chose enabled me to hear the person on the other end of the line because I was able to hear everything…even my mother’s angry warnings not to have sex in the middle of the club. Seeing as her and all the kids were playing a game on who they could spot on the security monitors. Apparently, my mother had spotted me.

I rolled my eyes and hung up.

“Do you want to go meet my mother?”

Lark’s eyes widened.

“Was that who that was?”

“No,” I lied. “Wrong number.”

She narrowed her eyes at me in suspicion but nodded her head. “I guess I’ve avoided it long enough.”

“You’ve been avoiding meeting her?” I questioned as I shoved the phone back into my pocket.

She winced. “I guess you could call it that.”

I chuckled and reached for her hand.

Once she placed it in mine, I led her through the club, around the bar, and up the stairs that led to my private office.

But before we could get there, I spotted Rafe on the phone.

When I went to move past him, he held up his hand for me to wait, so I stopped.

My brows furrowed, but then I heard what he was saying.

“Where was he last spotted?”

My stomach clenched.

“In Texas? Oh, okay. That’s better. Does he know her exact whereabouts yet?”

My gut clenched.

And that was when Lark finally caught on to what the man was saying.

He wasn’t talking about some random person. He was talking about her ex.

The man who’d tried to kill her knew where she was—or at least the vicinity.

Son. Of. A. Bitch.

I felt her trembling beside me, but by the time Rafe wrapped up his phone call, the trembles had turned into full-blown shakes.

“He knows where she is. Our sources have determined that he requested two weeks off from work. He’s left the house that you both previously shared and is presumed to be on his way here.”

Lark lost the battle and collapsed.

She would’ve hit the steps and rolled had I not caught her around the waist and hauled her against me.

“Please don’t let him kill you.”

It wasn’t the words that felt like a sock to the stomach, but the tears that were rolling down her eyes.

“He won’t kill me,” I snapped. “In fact, your lack of faith in my abilities is damn near emasculating.”

The anger worked, and her spine stiffened.

“I’m not saying that…”

“You’re not saying that you don’t think I can handle myself?” I asked. “Baby, you’ve divorced him. That’s not a criminal offense. He doesn’t like it? Too fucking bad. You’re mine now.”

“But I’m not yours,” she said. “I’m more his than yours. We were married for nearly eight years. He sees me as his property now. At first, he wasn’t happy to be marrying me. It meant that he wasn’t free to fuck with other girls so openly. But then he saw the benefits of having a wife at home. One sweet and quiet like me. He could take me to the social activities and police functions, presenting an acceptable wife while at the same time being his sick twisted self in the shadows. Doing what he wanted, when he wanted. I was a convenience, and I was his. Nobody took what was his and got away with it.”

My eyes narrowed. “So, being married will make you feel more comfortable?”

She shook her head.

She couldn’t deny it, though. I could see in her eyes that she literally thought I could be taken away from her that easily.

If being married to her would make her breathe a little easier…then that was what I would do.

“Where are you taking me?”

I had her hand in a flash, and I was walking up the steps in the next instant.

“Somewhere.”

That somewhere ended up being my office.

And since I had my whole fucking family here in the club—including my two brothers with their families who both lived hours away—then I didn’t see a better time to do this.