I laughed with Killian. His woman was quiet to say the least, and the least likely to be part of any mafia empire or clubhouse but she was genuine, and I liked that about her. She was kind and sweet, and she loved her man with a vengeance, and never wanted to part with him. The two couldn’t be any different, and yet they worked. Lorcan left to head home and I got Killian loaded up in the van while I grabbed my bike and led them back to the clubhouse.
Once we got back, I thought about Orla, and how much I wanted to curl up behind her and never let her go again.
She’d been begging me to open up, to talk, but I hadn’t been able to. I’d never been able to express my feelings.That had been beaten out of me on too many occasions to count before but for her, I would.
“Kill,” I called out to him as he was about to head inside with the others. He turned and headed back to me, away from earshot. “How did you know?”
“Know what?”
“That Sloane was the only one you wanted? You know, you dated and you stopped, she married someone else. But…you kept waiting for her.”
Killian sighed. “I don’t know…she wasn’t about this world, you know? She wanted a normal life, but the thought of sharing my world with anyone else made me want to puke. I hardened myself into thinking I’d never end up happy, delved into what I liked doing and that was making people bleed, to pay for what they did to our family. But then she came bounding back into my life. I couldn’t let her leave again, I just couldn’t. She’s the light in my darkness. The one I come home to when I can’t pull myself back, she does that. She saves me every fucking day just by being her.”
“That’s fucking powerful.”
“If the woman you’re tearing yourself over does that for you, Bear, then you don’t fucking let her go. It’s hard to find.”
I nodded and he turned and headed back into the clubhouse. I pulled out my cigarettes and pulled on one hard, trying to sort my shit out in my head. I’d almost died tonight, and yet my last thoughts were about her.
I’d felt peace at knowing she was safe and I could go happily up the staircase to heaven or into the pits of hell, whatever the case be.
I finished my smoke and headed inside, past the party that was happening at the bar and down the hall to my room.
Opening the door, I expected to see a sleeping Orla, my shirt swimming over her features and my cock hardening as I slid in behind her.
Instead, I saw a cleanly made bed and a note sitting on top.
Picking it up, I read the words, almost a mirror of the one she’d sent to me when I had joined the Nomads.
FUCK YOU, ALEX.
FIVE
Bear
Ikilled the engine of my bike outside Orla’s apartment building and stomped inside. I didn’t care that she was pissed off, she was going to have to say it to my face about what she was so pissed off about. I climbed the stairwell two stairs at a time, scaring a little old lady who was trying to get inside her door before I found her floor. I pushed through the door and down to the end where I saw the number 13. I was pretty sure she only moved into this apartment building because she wanted her apartment to have her favourite number on it.
I pounded on the door.
Nothing.
Again, I pounded my fist on the door. “Orla, open up.”
“Fuck off!” she yelled out. A door behind me opened and I saw a man thinking about coming to her aid but when he took notice that I was at least a foot taller and at least two times the size of him, he backed up.
“Open the goddamn door or I’ll take it down.”
Finally, I heard the lock click and she opened the door. Her eyes were red from tears and she looked at me like I’d kicked her dog.
I pushed her back into the apartment and closed the door with my foot.
“Why’d you leave?”
It was all I could manage to get out, and I had no idea why it was so hard to talk to her.
“I came home,” she said with a shrug, but I saw the way her chest heaved and her bottom lip trembled with a held back sob.
“Why?”
