ONE
Shona
Blinding lights, startled cries and people yelling.
I felt like I was in a movie sequence. Everything was moving in slow motion as I tried to come to terms with the news. We’d all fled to Limerick in our cars, or on our bikes. We all came here, except for Maree and Butch who stayed to watch over the kids. Ryleigh was demanding to see her sister, while Sheridan was trying to hold the peace between the bikers needing to get in to protect Chains.
Chains had been shot.
He may not make it.
He may not make it.
This was the life we expected. This was club life.
You’d think I would be used to it by now and yet, the idea of one of our own dying at the hands of a monster? That frightened me to no end.
It felt like we were all being targeted now. Razor died a year ago and they were no closer to finding the killer, or whoever was targeting the club. Neal Foley had been released, his sentence overturned thanks to buying his freedom by selling his own daughter.
This world was sick. This town was corrupt as hell.
I wanted out.
I couldn’t breathe.
I needed air.
I backed up, moving back through the sliding glass doors and out of the emergency drop off point, down the side of the building. I sucked in as many desperate, deep breaths of oxygen as I could so I didn't break down/fall apart. They didn’t need that right now.
They needed strength. Resilience.
I gasped when I felt someone grab my elbow and wheel me around. I was ready to fight before Ismelled his strong, masculine cologne. Looking up into the eyes of the one man who had healed me and then broken me, I broke down into sobs as he wrapped his arms around me, holding me tight.
Savage.
As he held me tight against him, his cologne invaded my senses, making me feel warm and protected. He always had that ability. Our on/off relationship had gone mostly unnoticed for years as the others found their women. I hated and yearned for him at the same damn time.
A need and a want all wrapped up in a tidy little bow, and yet, I couldn’t let him have me.
Ever.
Just when I thought I had made up my mind and come to peace with my decision, he’d joined the Nomads to be away from me. I hated him for that, for not sticking around, but I also missed him. I missed him more than anything else I had ever had or loved.
This love I had for him went deeper than anything I had ever felt before, and it scared the hell out of me.I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know why he felt like home, or why I kept running.
“I got you,” he whispered in my ear. Tears streamed down my face and onto his shirt as I cried into his chest. I couldn’t do this anymore. I couldn’t be here and deal with the unknown, with the fact that Savage was never going to be the man who would love me the way I needed to be loved.
Pulling away from him, I wiped at my face, and looked into his dark eyes. The same ones that held no emotion, except for me.
I knew how to read him.
“What are you doing here?” I asked him, my voice a shaky mess.
“They called us in to help,” he said, his deep voice reverberating around in my skull, and I knew I was in trouble. I could so easily fall back into his embrace and ask him to take me away and I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, he would. “I saw you and I knew you…needed…”
“What? What did I need, Niall?”
He sighed, running his hand over his head. His hair was a little longer now, the dirty blond thatwas almost brown was lighter, like he’d been getting more sun.
