A laugh I didn’t recognize tumbled from my lips, leaving a bitter aftertaste in its wake that chased away the sweetness of Priest’s gift. “He can always get to me. That’s the problem. I know you’ve had concerns about my secrets, my past,” I continued. “Well, I had one secret I thought would always stay buried. That day with the Petrovs, Unc—Roarktold Mikhail and Riordan something that I’ve never told anyone.” I shook my head, and Priest waited in an uncharacteristic display of patience. I took a sip from my cooling mug and set it down on the cooler between us. Priest’s eyes were kind as they watched me wrestle with the shame and helplessness that overwhelmed me whenever this particular ghost escaped the crawl space of my mind and started throwing punches.
“Honestly, I never really thought it would be anyone’s business but mine. I never thought I’d experience an intimate relationship after…everything. I didn’t even dream of a time when it would matter to anyone other than myself.” Such an innocuous way to refer to years oftrauma and pain and loneliness. “What Roark said reminded me that I can never be what you—what they—will want me to be.”
Priest shook his head and placed his mug down on the cooler. Both feet were planted on the ground now as his eyes bored into mine. “I won’t ask you to be anything other than who you are. Don’t let him get into your head. He doesn’t deserve to be there. It’s prime real estate, angel.”
My knees drew up into my chair, and I wrapped my arms around them. “You don’t understand,” I whispered.
“Make me understand, then,” Priest said, a note of desperation in his voice that I hadn’t heard since our time in the confessional.
“One day,” I said in a small, tight voice, “you’re gonna want to settle down. Have an ole lady, and eventually maybe you’ll want little baby Crows. Right?” I asked, putting him on the spot. Priest floundered for a moment, caught off guard by my line of questioning. “I will never be able to be that person for you, Priest. I’m too broken.” Priest tried to argue, tried to deny the truth of what I said, but I spoke over him. “Ican’t.” I stood from my chair and walked over to where he sat. He widened his knees as I moved to stand between them. I pulled my shirt up so it rode high on my belly and grasped Priest’s hand. I brought the tips of his fingers to my skin and slowly guided them downward. His fingers skimmed just below the waistband of my shorts and low on my abdomen to trace a silvery scar, surgically precise and faded. I’d borne the mark of the absolute and ruthless nature of Roark’s loathing for years and years since I first began to bleed as a girl. It was just one scar among many, but at the same time, so much more.
Priest used his other hand to tug my waistband down to confirm with his gaze what his fingers already knew. “There was a vet who owed him money,” I whispered. “Or maybe he had some kind of blackmail to hold over his head. Doesn’t really matter, I suppose.” I was no longer holding Priest’s hand to my hysterectomy scar. His fingers were tracing the thin white line on my lower abdomen with gentleness while a storm raged in the crystalline depths of his eyes. Bob, he was angry. “He wanted to make sure…” I swallowed, trying to keep my coffee and yummy chocolate croissant from making an unfortunate reappearance. “I can be your friend, and we can have fun together, but in the end, I will never be enough. Eventually, you’ll want a family, kids…and I can never be the woman to give it to you. So don’t you think it’s better if we just end whatever this is between us now? Before someone gets hurt?”
Priest tugged me forward gently, bringing me closer to him. I was firmly wedged between his thighs now. In a startling display of tenderness, Priest leaned forward to kiss me gently across the length of my scar. The intimacy of the press of his lips on an old wound soothed a fraction of the hurt within me, or perhaps it was the dizzying compassion in the act of loving something that represented pain and loss, theft and heartache. Another choice taken, another potential future for myself destroyed before I could even think to want it. Maybe I never would have wanted to have babies of my own, but I should have been allowed the choice.
“Angel, surely by now, after all your time with us, you know that blood isn’t the only thing that builds a family.” Priest pressed his forehead into my stomach, hugging me tightly, and I was left standing there, struggling between my desire to hold fast to the man who was quickly building a home in my heart and the need to protect my broken pieces from future damage. A girl could only take so much. I hiccuped as a sob overtook me and quickly found myself pulled onto the lap of my grumpy, growly biker. Lochlan ran his fingers through my hair soothingly as I cried, murmuring sweet words to me.
“You ever heard ofkintsugi,angel?” Lochlan asked, pressing a kiss to the top of my head. I shook my head, tears staining his shirt. I buried my face into it, finding comfort in his warm scent. “It’s a Japanese art form, where broken pieces of pottery are joined together with colored lacquer. The lacquer doesn’t hide the imperfections. Rather, it highlights the beauty that can be found in embracing imperfections and honoring the strength that transformation demands.” I sniffled, turning watery eyes upward, searching for confirmation in his expression that he meant what he said. “You been watching documentaries without me, Growly? Or are you just taking this opportunity to seduce me with art history?”
A small smile graced his lips, and he shook his head. “I didn’t fall in love with you because I thought you’d be a means to an end. Honestly, I’ve never felt the desire to have children, and breeding kink isn’t really my thing.” I opened my mouth to argue that he might not feel that waynow, but eventually he may. Before I could, Priest held a finger to my lips and continued speaking. “If, in the future, we wanted to be parents, there are many ways to build a family. Surrogacy. Adoption. Fostering. But far in the future, and only if that’s something we both want.” Lochlan continued to hold me until I cried myself out.
I processed his words as I sniffled and hiccuped, letting them settle into my mind and the deeper recesses of my bruised heart. Roark’s words about the Petrovs and Crows not wanting me if I was an incomplete and broken person struck a chord inside me, just as he intended them to. It thrust me back to who I was, trying to scare me away from who I was becoming. Who Iwantedto be. Someone valued, someone appreciated, someoneloved. Mikhail had tried, in his unsuccessful way, to warn me.
I sat up in Lochlan’s lap abruptly, his words from before finally filtering through my brain. “Did you just tell me that youloveme?” Lochlan squeezed my hip with one large hand and used the other to cradle the side of my face. He was so gentle and patient with me, something I knew he wasn’t used to. That fact made his efforts even more heartrendingly sweet.
“You finally caught that, did you?” He chuckled a bit. “It surprised me too, angel. I’ve been trying to show you, in my own way, how I feel. I’m not really good with words, but I’ll say it as many times as you need me to until you believe that my feelings for you are real. Indigo Evans, you captured my attention the moment you Spartan-kicked Bard into the dirt, and no matter how hard I’ve tried since, I can’t get you out of my head.”
Lochlan tipped my face to his until our eyes met, his thumb gently caressing my cheek. “You’ve seen me like no one else has, even when I was too stubborn to know what was standing right in front of me.” His thumb traced over my bottom lip before his hand slid down the side of my neck. “You are perfectly imperfect, and I swear I’ll spend every single day proving to you that you belong right here, in my arms. I love you.”
The warmth, sincerity, and acceptance in Lochlan’s words washed over me. All my life BLC (before Los Cuervos) I struggled to survive and had never been shown what love looked like unless it was on a pageor a screen. I knew how to hurt, how to starve, how to hide, and how to claw out an existence. But love? I hadn’t known what that looked like, not really. Secondhand emotions felt through a screen or read off a page were a pale comparison to the real thing. I was learning, though, more every day, what it really meant to love someone.
I knew I loved Lennon. She felt like a sister to me in the same way Sheila did. Like we were always meant to find each other, and once we did, we’d never ever have to feel lonely again. Like sister soulmates. It was justright. I knew I loved Bones and Cricket, but it was a different kind of love. Where Sheila and Lennon felt like instant best friends, I’d had to learn to trust Bones and Cricket. We’d begun on rockier terms, what with Cricket trying to hit me with his fancy bat and Bones tying me to a chair in the confessional. Small acts of kindness, patience, and van pampering went into the development of my feelings for my conscience and Sheila’s aesthetician. I loved both like brothers.
Priest, though? I couldn’t love him…not until he began to give me glimpses ofLochlan. Who he really was. Priest started to slip, tiny little flashes of Lochlan at first, but enough for me to guess that there was more to the growly VP than an entitled, crotchety dickbag in an LCMC cut. He showed me how much he loved his family, especially the sister he’d lost. Priest showed me Lochlan when he told me about Ellis’s nightmares, and how he’d soothed them with the magic of chocolate. He helped me see Lochlan more clearly when he started to sneak gym equipment into the Crow’s home gym, always in some shade of blue or purple. The white paper bags he left every morning, even enlisting help to make sure he never missed a day, were like a love letter Lochlan had written me every day, one line at a time. Priest might have begun by calling me trash for daring to wear his sister’s donated clothes, but Lochlan sat with me underneath the stars and confessed his deepest regret in order to relate to me and my guilt over Ace’s death.
The man below me, who held me on his lap and looked at me as if I were precious, had been slowly revealed to me over time, and my feelings for him unfurled in tandem. Emotions were something I processed a little differently than other, more normal people tended to.
How do I know this is really love? If I’ve never been loved before, how do I tell the difference between actual love and somethinglike…gratitude? Or friendship?My insecurities and fears loved this line of questioning, and there were many nights I’d tossed and turned in my clubhouse bed, swimming against the tide of anxiety these questions evoked.
But one look into his eyes, Priest’s…Lochlan’sexpression calmed the raging sea of insecurity inside me. Roark Callahan’s voice quieted and died, washed away by the feeling ofhome.This was love. Love was acceptance and devotion; it was using wordsanddeeds to show the person you were with every day that you chose them, and you would continue to choose them, always. I didn’t fall in love with Lochlan and make my peace with Priest immediately like some naive fairy-tale princess, agreeing to marry some dude she just met. We’d put in the hours, and I decided then and there that he was mine now. I’d earned him.
“I love you too, Lochlan Abbott,” I said with a wide grin. “You’re mine now. And I’m yours, of course.”
“Of course,” Lochlan agreed with a small, smug smile.
“No take backs,” I warned. Priest raised the hand that wasn’t grasping my hip, pinky finger extended. He raised an eyebrow, as if in challenge. The audacity of this man! I raised my hand to his, and our fingers interlocked. Using his grip (which was strong for a pinky finger, damn!), he tugged me into his chest as his lips slammed down onto mine.
We sealed our vow to each other with a kiss and a pinky swear, the ultimate commitment as far as I was concerned. I didn’t care about a piece of paper from the state or need some preacher’s signature for me to know that I’d found the person who helped me to feel like I was enough, that I was precious, and that I deserved to be accepted, as is. Broken bits included. Lochlan kissed me breathless until I was forced to pull away for air.
“How do you feel about raccoons?”
“What?”
Oh, we were gonna have so much fun!
Chapter 32
Priest
