No. I know it was real. And Steel left me with more than just a promise.
He’s given me the key to the cage that I have been locked inside my whole life.
Chapter Nine
Steel
Iknow I’m a damn fool. A grown ass man sitting on top of the water tower on Christmas Eve night just because I know it’s the placeshelikes.
It’s late. The stars are out in full force, a sliver of silver moon riding high in the sky with no clouds to obscure it. The heat of the day has faded away, and I am glad for the protection of my leather vest against the stiff breeze so high up.
Christmas Eve. It’s just like any other day for me. For my brothers. For the club. Those who had kids stayed home and did the family thing before they came out for a drink or two and a game of pool at The Canteen. Those without came with their old ladies like it was any other night of the year.
I stayed home with Harley. She cooked. It choked me up to see my baby so grown up that she could make her old man a turkey dinner. It was just about the best damn thing I had ever tasted. She’d made dessert too, a peach pie. After I was sitting in our living room, Harley surrounded by her gifts, which as a teenage girl, were getting increasingly hard to buy, I thought about how fucking blessed I was, and it killed me to think that I might not get many more holidays like this with her alone.
One minute she was this squealing little red, scrunchy-faced newborn handed to me by the nurse, because her mother refused to have anything to do with her child. We weren’t in a relationship. Meghan was just a casual hook up. She’d told me that when she found out she was pregnant that she wasn’t raising no kid. Said she’d give birth to it and that was that. I agreed because that kid in there was my daughter from the second she was two pink lines on that fucking stick.
I loved her madly in that instant, the second I saw her. I wasn’t in the room when she was born, because Meghan didn’t want it that way, but the very second the nurses brought her out, swaddled in a little pink blanket with a matching pink cap, I was utterly in love.
Harley was the first person I ever loved.
It was me and her for years, a fucking kid with a kid, struggling to get by. Then the club happened, and Harley had a hell of a lot of men looking out for her. Later, she had their kids to play with and love, and their old ladies to guide her in place of the mother she never had.
And here I am sitting here going on midnight, staring out at the sky and the blinking lights of the town below me. People’s lives are going on at my feet, and I am sitting here thinking about it all, but mostly I’m waiting.
I’m waiting for her because I know this is her place.
I don’t even really know Leah, and yet Iknowher. I can see why she would come up here. To escape. To dream. Because it’s lonely and sad and quiet and so beautiful that it takes your breath away.
I might be pathetic, waiting for her on the off chance that she’ll get lonely and show up, because I know the people raising her, and they don’t want her any more than Meghan wanted to stick around and have a family. It’s Christmas Eve, and I am willing to bet she’s entirely alone. I couldn’t go to her like I wanted. I said I’d find her, and I meant it.
I don’t want to ask her if she has what I want. What I need. She already has it, and it’s nothing to do with information on her fucking piece of shit father.
A shadow moves in the night, catching my attention below. My eyes cut through the darkness. I watch the slight figure creep along the street, her sandaled feet noiselessly cutting through the night, her bare, shapely legs on full display underneath, of all things, a yellow cotton sundress. She has a black sweater thrown over the top, but, of course, it does little to disguise the ripe curves of her hips, breasts, and ass.
I nearly let out a groan when she gives her head a tiny shake and darts across the road, cutting from the sidewalk towards the grassy area where the tower’s located.
My body reacts in the most primal sense. My shoulders peel away from the cold metal as I lean forward, straining to watch her for as long as I can. Something hard knots in my stomach, and my blood feels like it is roaring.
I want her. I want to claim her. Mark her. Make her understand that she is mine.
Mine.
My cock punches against the zipper of my jeans, and I grind my teeth so hard that my jaw makes an audiblepop. I would try and talk myself down, but there isn’t any fucking point. I have been this way since that night I first pulled Leah up against me when I thought she was gonna jump. I’ve been hard as a fucking rock for three fucking years, and no amount of fucking or jacking off has helped.
The truth is—I need her.
I need her like I need my next fucking breath.
I know I’m older, but she’s not a teenager. She’s a woman and can make up her own damn mind about what she wants. She made that more than clear to me.
Tonight, she belongs to me.
The tower trembles with her quiet ascent. She’s so small that there is hardly a sound, just a shiver, like the proud metal structure grew its own heart and is beating quiet, strong and confident with every passing second.
She pulls herself over the edge, unaware that I am here. I’m hidden in the shadows of the overhang. I get an unguarded moment to just watch her. She’s barefoot, I realize, since she must have kicked off her shoes to climb. She flexes her toes beneath the cold, smooth metal, and looks out over the city. She sighs wistfully.
Fuck. She’s so beautiful that it’s not just a punch to my gut; it’s like a battering ram was just shoved up in there, and I can’t catch my breath. I finally understand the meaning of moving heaven and earth because I would fucking do it just to see those pretty bow lips arch all the way up into a full, dazzling grin.
