Chapter 20

Always keep a book with you in case of emergency. Like when you’re at social gatherings.

-T-shirt

Baylor

“I am not marrying you!” Lark yelled loudly. “I don’t know why you would even think that I would want to.”

My brother, Tobias, snickered in the corner of the room, and I shot him a murderous glare.

We were standing in the middle of the courthouse lobby and everyone was watching us have our heated discussion.

“I have been able to kick your ass your entire life. I will not hesitate to do so now if you don’t shut the fuck up.”

Tobias pretended to zip his lips closed, but I knew him.

He was the youngest, and the one most likely to do something you didn’t want him to do.

“I made a few calls,” I said quietly.

“Maybe it would help if she had a ring,” Tobias suggested.

I opened my mouth to tell him to fuck off when my mother rushed over. “Here!”

I turned to find her handing over the ring that she always wore on her right hand—her old wedding band that she wore until my father had gotten her a new wedding band for their fortieth anniversary.

“Mom, I can’t take this,” I said at the same time Lark said, “We can’t take that.”

Finally, we agreed on something.

“Yes, you can,” my mother said. “I’ve only been able to get it up to the first knuckle for years. One of these days I’m going to lose it and it’ll break my heart.”

“What if I lose it and it breaks your heart?” Lark countered. “Seriously, why am I even talking about this? Your son is a crazy person.”

My mother smiled.

“I know,” she agreed. “After he was hit by that drunk driver, he was so black and blue all over. He couldn’t walk. Could barely talk. And you know what he said to me when he saw me after waking up?”

Lark swallowed. “What?”

“He said, ‘Mom if you don’t go get me a beer, I might surely die.’”

Lark grinned and rolled her eyes.

“Why does that not surprise me?” she questioned, her eyes turning to me.

I shrugged. “I almost died. When you almost die, you’re supposed to get drunk to celebrate life.”

“I didn’t give him the beer, in case you’re wondering,” my mother told her. “But I did give him a sip of whiskey from my flask.”

Lark’s eyes went wide when my mother pulled a flask out of her purse.

“I don’t…do…I didn’t even realize people carried flasks anymore.”

Her grin was rather manic. “Six boys and two girls, darlin’.” She tucked the flask back into her purse. “I nearly died going through puberty with them. If it wasn’t for this emergency flask, then I surely would have passed away from the abundance of attitude and hormones that filled my house.”

“We weren’t that bad, Mom,” Travis muttered.

Tobias snickered. “You remember that time that Baylor and you snuck out, and Mom caught you with your pants down around your ankles while two girls gave you blow…”

I threw the nearest object, which happened to be a book, straight at my brother’s head.

Tobias caught it, chuckling, and went to toss it back.

His wife intercepted it before it could even leave his hands. “You deserved that,” she muttered. “And stop antagonizing them. You’re being mean.”

“I’m not being mean,” he said to his wife. “They’re being mean. I’m the baby. The perfect one. The one who never does any wrong.”

He continued to drone on, but I turned my attention back to the woman who was still adamant that she wasn’t marrying me.

“We’ll be back,” I muttered as I took her by the hand again.

She started to fight, and I pulled her in close, practically forming her body to mine.

I patted her ass. “No, we’re going to go have a little talk about this.”

“Fuck that.” She started to squirm. “Let me go!”

I took her to the judge’s chamber and slammed the door—which was where I’d been trying to get her to go into for the last twenty minutes.

Our family friend and local judge who just so happened to do all the marrying in this small town had happened to be at the club when this all had started. He was also a closet romantic and loved a good marriage ceremony—which so happened to be why he was more than happy to indulge me on this mission.

He’d even gone out of the way to have the clerk show up and get our marriage license sorted out—who also happened to be his wife.

There was no way we weren’t doing this officially. So, even though it would’ve been ten times easier to have this at the club, it needed to be done right. It needed to be documented, and it needed to be one hundred percent accurate in the eyes of the law.

“Get away from me!” She hurled the words at me.

She was like an angry, little kitten, hissing and spitting.

She was all meow and no bite, that was for sure.

I reached for her, and she yanked herself away.

“Go away. We’re done here.” She paused. “But make sure you leave me your keys when you do so I can get home.”

I started to chuckle under my breath.

We’d gotten here just fine. She’d been in a state of shock, but I hadn’t realized how opposed she was to this until my family had started arriving.

The more and more that crammed into the hallway of the courthouse, the more that Lark started to withdraw.

“Lark, look at me. Honey.”

***

Lark

“Honey.”

I refused to speak to him.

“Baby.”

It took everything I had not to turn my head and stare at him.

The sound of his voice was debilitating. All the love and caring he had packed in those two little words was enough to set me on edge.

Didn’t he realize what he was asking of me?

“You’re asking me to sign your death warrant,” I breathed. “I can’t...I won’t. Not to you. You’re off the hook.”

Then I was in his arms and he was forcing me to look at him.

“I don’t want to be off the hook.”

I felt the tears welling up in my eyes, blocking my throat. I choked them back, but it was hard to breathe.

My breath hitched.

“Don’t cry.”

The first tear slipped down my cheek and curled around my nose. When it got to my lips, he licked it off, causing me to smile despite the worry ripping through me.

“You’ll marry me.”

I shook my head.

“You’ll be Mrs. Baylor Hail.”

I gasped for breath.

“Rita Hail, but you’ll go by Lark.”

“But what about the men from Free making me disappear? Won’t that be a problem? They said they erased me.”

He shrugged. “They erased your tracks from what I can tell. Kind of gave you a clean slate, so to speak. But you can’t truly erase someone. Unless that person knows absolutely no one—someone will always know who they are. And what was erased can always be rewritten.”

I looked at him then.

He was saying all the right words. The words that I wanted to hear…but I still couldn’t shake the feeling.

Hearing my name linked to his coming from his lips was almost surreal. Like an out of body experience that I never knew I wanted to hear. At least not until he said them, anyway.

“We don’t have to do any hiding anymore,” he said. “He knows you’re here. Why hide the fact?”

He had a point.

“When I left, Rita ceased to exist anymore,” I told him.

He pushed my hair back over one ear. Then cupped my cheek.

“You’re Lark now. I get that.”

I nodded.

“But for the sake of this marriage being one hundred and ten percent legal, we’re going to use your real name on the marriage certificate. Okay?”

“This isn’t a good idea,” I told him. “It’s just going to make him even more angry.”

I watched as his face transformed.

“You want to see angry?”

His question was deceptively calm, but I could tell he was no longer in the mood to do any more convincing. He was in an already-been-decided mood.

“No,” I quickly backpedaled. “I don’t.”

“I have more money than I know what to do with.”

My brows furrowed. “Uhh, okay?”

I mean, I hadn’t realized that, but it was good. Right? Nobody wanted to be poor. I was happy that he would never have to worry about finances.

“I own the club.”

My brows rose at that, thoughts swirling around in my brain.

“You do?”

He nodded.

“That’s cool,” I finally said. “You don’t strike me as a club person.”

And he didn’t. Not with how much time he’d spent at home with me. I would think the type of person that liked to go to clubs—and owned one—he would actually like to spend time there.

He wouldn’t run for hours and hours at a time. And spend even longer staring at his dog that was inside someone else’s fence.

But Baylor wasn’t like other men. He was caring and smart, but he was quiet. Subdued. He didn’t like the big hubbub of nightlife.

He was like me...wasn’t he?

And that was when the doubt started to set in.

Why would a club owner, a man that had a lot of money, want to have anything to do with me?

I was a nobody. Nothing.

I had a shit ton of problems and nothing to show for it.

“After I was hit by that drunk driver, I was given hush money.” He continued, not seeing the turmoil he’d caused. “Millions. I have millions that I invested wisely and turned into more millions.”

Sal had money too. I had convinced myself that the only reason he and his family worked was because they liked having the mantle of power being a police officer afforded.

But that didn't mean that they didn't use the money they had to their advantage.

I started to hyperventilate. Had I been wrong about Baylor?

“I’d spend every fucking penny to make sure you were safe,” Baylor continued. “I’d go bankrupt. Sell my goddamn kidney if that was what was needed to keep you safe.”

“I don’t want you to sell your kidney,” I told him. “God gave you two for a reason.”

It was ridiculous to fixate on the kidney, but I couldn’t focus on the larger picture. Not and continue to stand.

He laughed. The sound vibrated his chest, which in turn could be felt throughout my entire upper half since he was plastered to me.

“I’ll make it okay,” he promised.

This time his eyes held mine, and suddenly, I believed him.

“I don’t want to marry you because you are trying to save me,” I told him. “I want to marry you because you love me. Because you can’t live without me.”

“Lark?”

My eyes returned to his. I hadn’t even realized I’d looked away.

“Yeah?”

“I can’t.”

My brows furrowed. “You can’t, what?”

“I can’t live without you.”

I would’ve laughed had I not read the sincerity in his eyes.

“You don’t even know me…not really. We’ve known each other for a very short period of time. What if we do this and you find out you don’t like me?” I looked away. “I’m a nobody. Nothing. I have a college degree. In art. I am a certified phlebotomist. I have three jobs that I work part-time. I don’t own anything. I have fat thighs, and sometimes I can’t find the energy to get out of bed. And when I’m on my period, I can be a real, raving bitch.”

His mouth twitched.

“This is not funny.”

“Are you through?”

I crossed my arms over my chest and glared. “Yes.”

He moved away from me and walked toward the door, peering out into the hallway before closing it. Then locking it.

My brows shot up.

“What are you…”

He was on me in a moment.

His mouth touched mine. His hands went around my back and pulled me in close, and then he was staring directly into my eyes.

His gaze was so intense that it was almost hard to look back at him.

“I run because I can’t sleep,” he said. “I have PTSD that flares up when fireworks go off. I always have to sit with the wall at my back. If I see a fucking plastic bag or a goddamn piece of trash on the side of the road big enough, my mind automatically goes into ‘oh, fuck’ mode.” He banded his arm behind my back and pulled me even closer so that we were now touching from chest to knee. “When it rains, everything fucking hurts. That’s also why I run. If I don’t, I get so stiff and sore that I’m impossible to be around. That happens every single time it rains. And when I’m hurt, I’m an asshole, I’ll just tell you that now.”

My lips twitched.

“My family is certifiably whacko and highly fucked up,” he continued. “Dante has a family that he’s refusing to think about. Travis has a business that he’s running and wants me to go in with him, but I don’t want to because I can’t stand the thought of doing what he does. Reed has a crush on his ex-girlfriend and has since he was a teenager and old enough to get a hard-on.”

I laughed softly under my breath. “Then there’s Tobias and Finley, who live so far away from us that my mother can’t stand it. She never misses an opportunity to remind us that we were the ones who pushed them so far away—which we really didn’t. It was one fucking argument about how he was always up my mother’s ass, paired with some other shit that is a long fucking story, so Tobias decided to send a big f-u to us and went to live where Finley was. Finley has a daughter that my mother never gets to see, and while we’re on that subject, my mother will never miss an opportunity to tell you that she wants more grandkids. Now.”

I was shaking with silent laughter at that point. “My father is the only sane one of us all, but he’s a little sad because he misses his girls. He loves us, but he loved them more.”

At that, I sobered.

The thought of Baylor losing his sisters like he had was obviously still a fresh wound, even though it’d happened a while ago.

I threw my arms around his neck and hugged him tightly.

“The thought of you being a bitch to me kind of turns me on because then I can turn that frown upside down.”

At that I really did laugh.

“Your thighs are not fat. They’re fucking perfect, and when I go down on you, and you squeeze my head with them, my dick gets so hard that I want to fuck the ever-loving-hell out of you.”

I blushed.

“As for that degree in art? I don’t have one at all.” He paused, making certain that I saw that he didn’t care. “Does that make me less of a person?”

I immediately shook my head. “No.”

“You can be anything you want to be,” he told me. “You can go to school and become a goddamn clown for all I care, as long as you’re with me.”

My lip quivered, and my arms around his neck tightened.

“The three jobs, though?” he murmured. “Those are going to have to go.”

My mouth dropped open in surprise. That hadn’t been what I expected to hear.

“Hear me out,” he squeezed me lightly. “Pick one that you like…keep doing it. The other two? They’re not necessary.”

“But I have a rent payment…”

“You won’t have to have one if you move in with me…which you will be doing.”

I looked away.

“We’re going to get married. You’re going to have my name. We’re going to walk into the fucking sunset hand in hand, and if that little testicle tickler decides to rain on our parade, I’ll show him why he’s mistaken.”

“Testicle tickler?” I started to laugh. “And okay.”

“Okay?”

I shivered. “Okay.”

We were married twenty minutes later, and a five-minute drive back to the club after that, I was at a party that was solely for me and Baylor…and I didn’t freak out.

In fact, I’d go as far as to say that I’d had a good time.

Within reason, of course.