The thing is, no one ever hears their heart breaking. It’s something that’s felt, an all pervasive death that the body endures, long before it too crumbles to ash and dirt.
Chapter Fourteen
Harley
Ican only sit, numb. Numb on the outside, broken and raw on the inside, old beyond my years. I feel absolutely ancient, exhausted beyond simply tired.
My eyes hit the whiskey bottle. They burn, but it’s from the dryness in the room, not because I’m going to cry. There are no tears for a wound this deep, a wound that severs all nerves and feeling, a wound that you don’t even feel before you realize that you’ve bled out.
My fingers curl around the cool, smooth glass but I don’t raise it to my lips. I’m comforted just by grounding myself to something tangible. I don’t need that burn like an old friend, to wash away the pain that no substance will ever drown out.
Slowly, I raise my head, uncurl myself from the ball I’ve bent into over the table.
I was raised the daughter of Steel Vanderbilt, President of Steel Riders MC. A band of misfit men who went to hell and back to come out on the other side. I was proud to be a part of that family, a family who would fight and die for each other. I was taught that’s what love is. Fighting. Dying. Not just a physical death. A death of ego. A death of pride. A death that puts your club brother before yourself. That’s the vows that those men take when they swear in. For those men, the love of their brothers is the only thing they have left in the world.
They’re fighters.
And so am I.
Because I was taught that above all, love is worth fighting for.
I push myself up from the table on unsteady feet. I realize that my arm is throbbing, burning into my wrist and hand and fingers, sending sharp little pricks of glass flowing through my veins, but I don’t care. I use that pain to ground myself, to still the disastrous current sweeping through my shattered heart.
Surprisingly, it works, and when my bare feet pad across the vinyl tile and old hardwood floor that long ago lost any of its luster, they’re sound.
There are two bathrooms in the house. A small half bath that adjoins the master bedroom and a larger one, with a tub and stand up shower, just down the hall, past the living room, across from the smaller bedroom that doubles as a storage room.
I can’t hear it, but I’m sure that the shower isn’t running. The door to the bathroom is closed, but I know it doesn’t lock. I creep up to it and set my palm flat against it. It’s cool to the touch, no warmth or steam escaping beneath to tickle my feet, so I know the shower definitely isn’t running. I trace the rough grain of that door, an old wood door, with cracked white paint. I trace one of those cracks with my index finger before I ball my hand into a fist. I’m going to knock before I think better of it. I’ve never just pushed open a door before, when someone obviously wants their privacy, but I sense the pain in there like a beacon, like red light flooding under the door, sweeping up my feet and legs, enveloping me and holding me in its thrall.
I turn the handle slowly, enough to give an obvious warning, but the door isn’t tugged open in my face or braced shut from the other side. I slowly swing it open, inch by inch. It gives with a creak of hinges that I feel in the knob as a distant shiver. The same shiver that traces its way up my spine, permeating my muscles and bones.
The sink is set back a few feet, in an ancient wooden vanity. Edge stands there, his leather jacket hung up on the backside of the door where the peg is, so that he’s just in his black t-shirt and jeans. The same kind of black t-shirt that I’m currently swimming in, is stretched tight across his chest, straining over his muscles. His forearms are extended straight, the striated muscles straining and the snakelike veins that twine their way up, straining against his sun bronzed skin. The smattering of dark hair stands out in stark contrast against his skin, some of it lightened by the sun, some of it still the same mahogany color as the hair on his head.
He leans hard, like that vanity is the only thing holding him up. His knuckles are completely white where his hands are fisted at the edge of the wooden lip. Even though he’s standing like he wants to look himself in the eye in the square mirror above, his head is bowed.
The vulnerability of the stance shoots through me, an arrow that lodges in my chest. Pain blooms from the spot, wringing me out and rendering me useless. He could have stopped me from coming in, from seeing him like this, but he didn’t.
I release that door handle, though it feels like letting go of the only lifeline I have left. I say nothing as I walk slowly behind him. I wrap my arms around his waist and press my cheek to the warm, solid wall of his back.
“Just let me love you, Edge,” I plead softly, into the fragrant cotton of his shirt.
He smells likehim, but moreintimate, all the smells that I never was privy to before rushing up to meet me because of our proximity. I love that he smells like leather and the rush of the open road. He smells like something darker and I know it’s not aftershave and he never wore cologne. The last lingering effects of the pomade he uses for his hair maybe, or the delicious scent that’s just him, clinging to his skin.
He’s raw and terrifying. A low rumble flows through his chest and then suddenly, in a dizzying rush of movement, he falls out from under me as he whirls. He steadies me, a hand on each shoulder. I love the way his heat leaches into me and I lean into his solid touch.
I hate that when I look up at him, his face looks so ruined, and not because of the bruises. I wish I could reach up and run my hands over it, to undo the damage, the pain and distress, the regret and loathing, with just my touch the same way he used to pick me up when I was a kid and did stupid shit like fall off my bike or fall out of a tree.
He touches me first, running a brutal knuckle down the side of my face so gently that it makes tears finally prick at my eyes. I swallow hard and stare up into his electric gaze.
“You don’t know what you’re asking. You think you do. You think you want this, but it was a fantasy for both of us. I can’t even protect you when you’re supposed to be my own fucking woman. So what I need you to do is get your clothes on and go back home.”
I don’t flinch at his words, even though it breaks me further, tears at those fissures already formed in my insides,ripping them wide open, to see the anguish contort his beautiful face.
I reach up and set my hand on his chest, right above his wildly beating heart. I’ve never felt it slam like that before, but then again, I’ve barely ever felt it at all. I can count the amount of times I’ve ever touched Edge of my own volition over the years, on both hands. He might have kissed me here and there, and I always let him take the lead on that, but I never touched him. I was afraid of what would happen if I did.
To both of us.
“This is my home.”
