Phoebe hadn’t cast a spell giving me one night to remember what it was like to be loved by this man.
He was real.
He was standing in front of me, in my bedroom, as real as my grief. He’d fucked me against the wall of my bedroom, without a word, without an explanation.
“Morgan,” he whispered.
I couldn’t breathe. My grip on reality was fading quickly. How was this possible? How was my husband, my dead fucking husband, standing in front of me? Making love to me as if he’d never left.
“What... how...?” My mind refused to comprehend what I was seeing. What I was feeling. The smell of his cologne was so strong, I should have known it was real. The sound of his voice was too perfect.
I gasped for breath. My hand went to my stomach, trying to stem the nausea that churned in my gut. My mind tried to catch up with my senses, or maybe it was the other way around. I couldn’t tell anymore. Nothing made sense.
Jude couldn’t be here.
Couldn’t be real.
If he was, that meant he’d... Even in my mind I couldn’t say the words. Couldn’t accept the reality of what his absence from my life meant all these years. And yet, he was here now.
Standing in front of me, demanding to know why another man had touched me. His wife. The wife he’d left. The wife he’d stayed away from.
I moved before I realized what I was doing. My fingers clenched into a fist. My arm swung, and my hand made contact with his nose. The crunch was deafening. My father had taught me how to hit with purpose. How to cause the most damage, giving me time to get away.
That was what I did.
I left.
I turned and walked out of my bedroom. Hurrying to the front door, I ripped it open, only for it to be pushed closed before I could step outside.
“Morgan, let me explain.”
I spun around. Blood dripped from his nose, staining the front of his shirt. I raised my knee and connected with the cockI’d just had inside me as I screamed, “YOU MOTHERFUCKING BASTARD!”
Chapter Nine
Chasm
An hour earlier...
I sat at the bar and watched her dance with her friends. Watched as she smiled and laughed. Her face relaxed, unburdened by the past, by the pain she lived with every day.
Pain I had caused.
My hand tightened on the glass when the man walked up behind her. When he put his hands on her hips, I clenched my jaw. It took every ounce of self-control I possessed—which wasn’t much when it came to Morgan—not to grab him by the back of the neck and throw him through the wall.
But when she walked away from him, and he followed, grabbing her hand, I lost it.
I’d just stood up when King’s old lady stepped up to him. She handed him his ass without ever lifting a finger. That was the power the club president’s old lady wielded. That was only one of the many instances that would put a target on her back.
I wouldn’t let Morgan endure that. I wouldn’t put her at risk that way. When Morgan went back to the table with Bailey, I followed the bastard outside.
I took my anger out on him.
And my guilt.
I left him lying in the parking lot unconscious and made my way to Morgan’s house. Picking the lock, I let myself in and looked around.
It was a nice home. It wasn’t large; two bedrooms, an open living room-kitchen combination. Everywhere I looked, I saw my gorgeous wife. Every aspect of this house was decorated with her touch. From the soft green throw pillows a shade lighter than her eyes, to the art I didn’t understand that hung on the walls.
