Together.
Liam crossed the room in two long strides, framing my face with his hands. “I’m never going to throw us away,” he promised. “You don’t throw away a treasure when you find it. And that’s what you are.” Something moved in his face. Something still soft and kind. I wondered how long it would be there. How long that fleeting hardness would take to become permanent. “Unless you won’t wait for me.” Uncertainty, vulnerability saturated his tone, his face.
I knew Liam. Better than anyone. He was my best friend. Soulmate. I knew he was smart. He liked to take risks. Like jump off cliffs into water. But only when he knew the water was deep enough. He only jumped when he knew he would surface. I trusted him today. I trusted him yesterday. I had to trust him for tomorrow too.
I glared at him. “I’ll wait for you, you ass. Forever if that’s what it takes.”
It was the truth, that promise. Not made lightly. I was smart too. I knew that what was ahead was going to be hard. That we’d be living lives worlds away, with geography having nothing to do with it. I knew that war would change him. Like it had changed his dad. Harden him. Take away some of the boy I’d fallen in love with. But I loved him. I’d love him for who he was becoming, who he had been yesterday and who he’d have to turn into for tomorrow. It was that simple to me. We’d work because I’d make sure of it.
His face changed. Melted. Then he kissed me, long and hard and almost enough to make me forget about everything.
Almost.
“It won’t be forever,” he murmured against my lips. “I promise.”
Liam might’ve kept his promises.
But wars didn’t.
Sixteen Years Later
Jagger
It was chance that saved his life.
Not fate.
He didn’t believe in that bullshit.
Fate was a notion held by people who didn’t have the courage to drive their own lives. He may have driven his life right into hell itself, but at least it was his foot on the gas pedal.
So it wasn’t fate that saved him. Or even chance.
It was routine.
He was on a run.
On Christmas.
Because Grim, his president, the man who had sent him on these runs every year since he patched, knew that of all the things he could handle, he couldn’t handle fucking Christmas. He could see a man die in the most horrible and brutal of ways. He could kill a man in the most horrible and brutal of ways. He could withstand pain. Torture. He could give out pain. Torture another human being until they screamed, pissed themselves, cried and then passed out.
He could dig a grave, drop a corpse inside it and bury a man he’d killed with his own two hands.
He’d fight until his knuckles bled and until his opponent was on the ground, sometimes breathing, other times not.
The cut on his back made it necessary for him to be able to handle all of these things and more.
But he couldn’t handle one fucking day that was created for some false god and hyped up by big business to put people in more debt and give more people the excuse to eat more, work less and just be general assholes.
To be with family.
Jagger didn’t have a family.
Not by blood, anyway.
Though he’d shared blood with all the men in his chapter. Considered them brothers.
And they were all dead.
Every single one of them.
His president. The one who was as hard as nails, who killed without hesitation, who had ruled one of the most dangerous chapters in the Sons of Templar for years. Who may have been a hard motherfucker who didn’t give mercy to enemies, but he gave Jagger the mercy of sending him away every Christmas.
A mercy that ended up saving his life.
Levi, who’d brought him into the fucking club. The old fuck had seen something in the broken kid with fresh scars and the devil at his heels.
The fresh-eyed prospects who still smiled without stains on their souls. Fuck, even the club bitches. It wasn’t like he enjoyed anything meaningful with them, because he wasn’t capable of meaningful, but they were good women. In their own way. And they were fucking dead.
Apart from Scarlett. She was the one that called him. She was the one that fucking found everyone. Voice not even shaking. Bitch was strong. He wasn’t surprised she survived. Glad as fuck she did. She was hard. Not an ounce of soft or sweet in her, apart from in the places a woman was soft and sweet. But she was a good person. A survivor.
And Hansen and Macy. They survived.
If his best friend and his fucking pregnant wife had been amongst the corpses of his family…he slammed down another shot, hoping the burn might chase that thought away.