Prologue
Abby
“What do you think of this one?” I ask, holding a black dress up to my body.
Riley, Lila, Sunny, and Eli are sprawled across my room like a best friend invasion. I should feel overwhelmed.
Instead, I feel… numb.
“That’s the one,” Riley says.
“Yeah,” Lila nods. “It’ll look so good on you.”
I smile, looking down at the dress.
It’s plain. It’s simple. It’s safe.
“I don’t like it,” Eli says, shocking us all. “It’s not you. You don’t wear black. Ever. You literally design and create your own clothes, Abby. Why pick something that doesn’t feel like you?”
Because I don’t want to mess this up.
Because I don’t want to give anyone a reason to walk away.
Because I’m so tired of getting my heart handed back to me like a rejected return item.
“I just… I don’t want to mess things up,” I answer honestly.
“I get that,” he nods. “I do. But do you really want to meet someone while pretending to be someone else?”
No, I don’t. But what else can I do?
I’m not exactly normal. I’m littered with scars. Maybe not on the outside, but on the inside, they cover every inch of me. That’s not something I want anyone to see. The one person whodoessee that can’t stand being in the same room with me for more than a minute.
“You’re amazing just the way you are,” Eli says, moving to my closet and flipping through hangers with determined confidence.
“Here,” he says, handing me a dress I made ages ago but never wore. It’s a light pink, spaghetti-strap dress with a skirt made for twirling.
I designed this dress with Tank in mind.
I spent days hand-stitching every flower along the bottom of the skirt, a smile on my face and hope in my heart. It was when I first arrived here at the compound a couple of years ago. I thought for sure my feelings for Tank would have lessened since I hadn’t seen him in over a year, but the second my eyes landed on him, they amplified instead.
I saw it in his eyes, too. The interest. The pull.
I didn’t even meet Tank until after I was kidnapped by Los Fantasmas and my brother’s club, the Iron Shadows MC, came to rescue me. Tank wasn’t there when they pulled me out of that pit. He was somewhere else, leading a team to take out the men who took me.
I didn’t actually meet him for several days after that.
But something about him called to me.
Maybe it was his size…but Skip’s almost as big as Tank, and as hard as it is to believe, Maverick is even bigger. And I didn’t feel as safe with them as I did with Tank.
So it couldn’t have been that.
It was him…Just Tank.
But no matter the interest I saw in his eyes or the way his actions contradicted his words, he pushed me away every chance he got. Said I was tooprecious. Said I was too vulnerable after what happened.
Then, when I moved away to live with my other brother, Sammy, I tried calling Tank on nights I was too scared to sleep. I just needed to hear his voice. He would talk me down, tell me togo to bed… and then remind me that nothing could ever come of us talking because I was a club Princess.
