Steel whips his head back around. “I said it doesn’t fucking matter,” he grinds out slowly. “You’re off limits to any man in the club. They fucking know that. Besides that, he’s too fucking old for you.”
Harley sucks in a breath. She can’t contain her anger any more than her father can. “That’s fucking rich, coming from you. Leah’s only two years older than me and she was good enough for you.”
Leah’s normally pale complexion has gone completely white, all the blood drained from her face.
“Sorry Leah,” Harley says. “I’m just saying, you’re almost twice her age and that didn’t matter to you. It doesn’tmatter to anyone. You don’t get to pick who you fall in love with.”
“Love?” Steel chokes. His face crumples like a piece of paper wadded up and tossed carelessly away. “Love? You don’t know anything about love. You’retwenty-one.”
“You had me when you were eighteen,” she counters.
“Do what I say, not what I do,” Steel spits out.
“That’s like saying—”
“No. Leah and I are not up for discussion.” Steel’s face closes off, that mask of rage falling back into place. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. Your head is fucked up because you’re confused by a pretty face and some frilly fucking words.”
Harley shakes her head so hard that a few strands fall loose, framing her delicate face. She’s far too beautiful, too good, too kind and giving, to have to go through this. I already know what’s coming, a hell of a fucking fight that is going to last for months, years, hell, maybe even the rest of my life. I knew the moment we first kissed that it would come to this. There’s no chance of a happy ever after for people like us. That’s why we’ve been sneaking around. We talked about telling Steel, but both decided it was for the best.
“You’re too late,” she seethes. The thing about Harley is that she’s smart. Not just any smart. Like, really fucking smart. She thinks that she can save us, and I can’t do a damn thing to stop her.
“Harley,” I choke out, the word shredding my insides, tearing me up like glass and knives. I make sure she can see me speaking to her. She ignores me anyway.
“You’re too late. I’m his. He’s claimed me. I’m Edge’s old lady now. You can’t change it. No one can.”
And that, my friends, is the beginning of the goddamn end.
Steel lets out a bloodcurdling roar that thunders through the evening. He charges at me, closing those fifteen feet between us in a blink. Harley has the good sense not to jump the fuck in front of me right before Steel takes me down like a feral fucking animal, an enraged bull.
He slams me into the ground so hard that it feels like the dirt rose up to meet me. Instead of cradling me in its lover’s arms, it beats me from the back, tearing the breath out of my lungs.
I rasp and wheeze, but I keep my hands at my sides. I won’t fight him. I won’t fucking lay a hand on the man I’ve wronged, because Ihavewronged him. This is our code, a code of blood and violence and brotherhood. I’ve wronged him and justice is his to dole out as he sees fit. I’ll accept it, because I know that he won’t put me in the fucking ground. He’ll break me until his rage is spent and I’ll let him.
One huge hand finds the pulse jumping at my neck and closes over it like he wants to squeeze the life out of me. He pins me to the ground by my throat while his other hand rears back and smashes into the center of my face.
Pain explodes in a blinding storm that rips like a knife through my body, shredding me limb from fucking limb. I open my mouth to gasp for air against the white lightning jolting me like an electrical current, but I barely get the breath out before that huge fist draws back. It glances off my cheekbone this time, a different spot, but the pain is the same. White hot,like my veins have been opened up and molten lava poured into them. That fist hammers me again and an explosion of glass shards erupts in my face like an exploding grenade.
Steel is a smart fucking man. He’s tough as fucking leather and he gets to his feet to survey the damage. Apparently, he’s not above kicking a man when he’s down. I don’t move. Just stare up at the man I call brother, through my one good eye. He meets that gaze and he shifts away, rears back. I can’t fucking help it. I let him beat on me because I fucking deserved it, but I do have an ounce of self-preservation left in me. I curl into a ball to protect myself from the brutal kick that’s coming from that steel-toed bike boot.
A scream breaks through the clearing and for a second, I’m horrified to think it came from me. Didn’t want to go down like this, crying like a bitch, but with Steel coming at me like he wants to be the one to usher me straight to the ground…
A black blur descends, as if from the heavens. A dark angel wraps herself around me. Warm. She’s so warm. So soft, her sweet arms closing around my neck, her gorgeous scent, like wild flowers, untamed and raw and so astoundingly sweet and heady, fills up my nose. Her hair blankets my face as she lays her perfect head against my broken one.
“Stop!” Harley’s cheek presses up against mine when she turns to face him, and I’m horrified that my blood is going to stain her beautiful, flawless skin. “Stop it! If you ever touch him again, I swear to everything I hold dear, that I’ll never speak to you again. I’ll never see you again. I’ll move so far away that you won’t be able to find me. Even Tracker won’t find me. We’ll leave and while that might make you happy because Edge won’t be here, I won’t be either. You’ll lose your brother and your daughter. Is that what you want?”
I can’t see Leah do it, but I hear her calling to Steel. “Steel! That’s enough. Please, let’s go home. We can all talk about this in the morning when we can think straight.”
I imagine that Leah touches his arm, her touch always enough to save Steel, to bring him back from whatever brink he’s stepped out onto, but not this time. There’s a gasp, wrenched straight from Leah’s soul, as he likely pushes her away. Steel, my brother, a man I’d give my life for a thousand times over as my Prez and as the man who basically saved my worthless ass life over a decade ago, spits,fucking spits, in the dirt right next to my face.
“Get your ass home, Harley, and maybe I won’t fucking kill him,” he growls before his heavy booted steps retreat off into the distance.
The blackness is closing in around the edges of the eye that isn’t swelling shut and it’s a struggle to hang on to consciousness. I waver in and out of it, fighting against the sick tide that wants to suck me under. Fighting the nausea twisting up my guts from the amount of metallic blood trickling warm down my throat.
“Edge… oh my god. Edge… please, get up. Let’s get you home.”
Harley’s sweet voice—a voice she’d practiced at over the years, helping her with the words so that they came out clear and crisp and perfect and if you didn’t know it, you’d never be able to tell that she was deaf from the way she spoke, because she wanted more than anything to be like everyone else—brings me back.
Her tears drip onto my face, little warm splotches like rain, a gentle rain, baptizing the dry, thirsty ground. I don’tdeserve them. I’ll never be worthy of them, but they keep on falling like gentle rain, thundering into my soul, tearing me apart and fitting the pieces back together.
