Her body stilled, and her beautiful blue eyes turned up to catch mine.
“My sister means nothing to me. No more than a bug that hit my windshield and splattered all over it.” she whispered. “What worries me is that I’m going to have to go back.”
As much as I hated to admit it, the only person that could figure this all out for sure was her. In the end, she was the part-controller of all that money.
If this was ever going to end and that father of hers was ever going to pay, it had to come from Theo.
“Theo, baby,” I said softly. “I’m a millionaire in my own right. We could live here. We could continue to live our lives the way it was always supposed to be lived. Quiet and peaceful.”
She looked down at her hands. “You wouldn’t take me as a coward for taking that road?”
I immediately started shaking my head. “No. I think that you’re brave and courageous, selfless and kind. I think that you’ve lived a very hard life, and you can’t win a battle you didn’t know that you were fighting for your life in. I think that you’ve given it your all, and that you’ve finally been given all the pieces of the puzzle that will help you move on with your life, but still know why everyone in your family did what they did. If I was being a hundred percent honest? I think you should leave it alone. I think that you should stay here, and we should live our life.”
“What about your family?” she asked. “What about your club brothers? Your job? Your life there?”
I shrugged. “I’d miss the absolute hell out of everyone but…I love you, Theo. I’ve gone months without you, and I know which one that I can stomach living without more…and that’s not you. It’ll never be you.”
Her eyes closed, and her hand went to her chest to rub over her heart as if it was hurting her. Hurting her because of me being hurt.
“Baby, listen,” I ordered. “I’ll be okay.”Chapter 23I only do butt stuff at the gym.
-T-shirt
Theo
I had no doubt that he could.
But I now knew what a loving family felt like. I’d seen how Liner had been treated by his club brothers. Had seen them come around and shoot the shit with him just because they were in the neighborhood. And I didn’t want him to have to live without that for the rest of his life.
But then his mouth was on mine, and I no longer was thinking about the future or the past.
I was thinking about the here and the now.
The way his mouth felt on mine.
The way his hands were running down my shirt, urgently seeking the hem so he could push it up and over my head in one swift, suave move.
My hands did their own thing, going to his face and his beard, stroking it as I slowly started to grind myself down onto him.
“We need to take this to the bedroom,” I said. “Linnie went to bed, but there’s no way of knowing if she’ll actually stay there after all those cupcakes and muffins she devoured.”
Linnie had been right.
The place that she’d been begging to go was a massive bakery.
There were muffins, cupcakes, cakes, scones. Anything you could ever want was there in that one perfect shop.
And though the wait in line was thirty minutes long, it was well and truly worth it.
Liner didn’t waste time scooping me up off the couch and taking me to my bedroom.
Nor did he waste time closing the door and locking it.
“You set the alarm, right?” I asked as he laid me down on the bed.
He nodded his head and reached for his shirt and grinned and hunched his back, curving it to allow the shirt to slip free more easily.
“Yes,” he answered as he reached for my jeans. “I did.”
I licked my lips and watched as he unbuttoned them, then slowly shimmied them off my hips.
His eyes were so intense that it was almost hard to keep my eyes on his, but I managed it through sheer force of will.
That, and I had a feeling if I let his gaze go, I’d never get it back again. Mostly because he was watching me with so much intensity, as if he was trying to convey his every thought and feeling that had crossed his mind while we were apart, that I knew he was having trouble holding my gaze, too.
“I missed you,” he said simply.
I felt tears start to gather in my eyes and the familiar burn behind them that indicated that I was only seconds away from letting them fall.
But I managed to hold onto them somehow, and he gave me a sad smile.
“I spent every night dreaming of this,” he said. “Every single night.”