Where We Started (Stone Riders MC, #1)

by Ashley Munoz

You need to know that you were my sun, Callie. Everything since has just been cloud cover and rain. I’ve learned how to live with it, but I’ve been miserable every day since.

“You think I want to get rid of you, or throw you back.” I shook my head. “Callie, if you want to use a fishing metaphor, then you’d be the river, not the fish inside it. You cut a path through me, filled it, and now it’s always shifting and moving. I can’t wait to see what our life will look like someday, but for now, I’m happy taking it one day at a time.”

I don’t owe you a place in town, or anything else, but I will always be sure you’re protected.”

“What? Your perfect fucking family wasn’t enough, you needed mine too?” Gripping my wrist, he glared down at me. “Yes. I wanted yours too, River. I wanted all of you, everything you touched, all the air you breathed, the fucking dirt under your nails. I wanted it all. You knew I didn’t have a choice after that night, yet you punished me regardless.”

“Your daddy often talked about how there was no love on this planet like the kind Wes had for Callie. The whole club joked and razed them for it, but behind closed doors, it was an awe-inspiring thing. Their love was the most solid thing we’d ever witnessed, and the way it kept flourishing year after year…then everything changed when that Raider took you.”

Once you love someone so thoroughly, there’s pieces of you they claim, and whether you work out or not, the tear in your soul can’t be mended.

I’d wage war for that girl. I’d go to hell and pick a fight with the devil if I had to. In every scenario, she was on my mind. How to keep her, how to love her, how to make her mine. Nothing would ever change that.

“Like fuck is another man going to date you while you’re here. If you leave, then that’s one thing. I can’t control who you’re with. But in this town, you’re mine. It’s me you’ll date. Me you’ll call. Me you’ll fuck. You need romance, then read one of those books you love so much. When you go back to DC, you’ll have your fuck buddies again, but here, there’s not a chance I’ll stand by and let you be with anyone else.”

“You left me, Callie. You ended things with me. I was good to you, never gave you a fucking reason to leave. Yet, you moved on.”

“I never could touch anyone after you. You were my first, and fuck, if you ended up being my only…there would never be another after what we had.”

“And she’s my entire fucking soul. We’re bound, her and I. In this life, and even in the next. She will haunt me for eternity, and when the devil tries to pry my soul from her grasp, he’ll realize there’s nothing to claim because it’s hers. All I fucking am, and all I ever could be belongs to her. There is nothing inside me that would have tolerated waiting. You’ve never once asked if I loved your daughter, and I know it’s because you already know. What you don’t know is that she’s my ending, Simon. She was my first love, there when I just barely started in this world, and she’ll be the only thing on my mind when I leave it.”

Even after I left you, I couldn’t let go of you.” His gaze searched mine. “I loved you…I begged my dad to free you of the club so you could leave with me. I left so I’d have a chance to chase my own dreams, free of the club and all the trauma from it, but my biggest dream was always being yours. I was so young…and I made the biggest mistake of my life.”

“Every piece of you belongs with me when I ride, especially what’s drawn from that body after we fuck.”

“You did not lose me, River. You left me.” Stomping past me, she yelled back, “This is impossible. I did lose you. And long before I left. You weren’t coming home, Wes. You were late every night, you seemed to forget that I didn’t want to belong to the club or be forced to go to parties. You forgot that I used to run away from those parties, Wes. I’d run to you, and all the sudden you weren’t there for me. You were the one dragging me into them. You were my safe place, and then everything changed. I did lose you, you’re just too enamored with your new life to see it.”

“You think you scared me with that bullshit about birth control, River? You think I’m afraid of marking you over and over, filling you up to the brim with my cum, until you give me a baby?”

“You think I’m afraid to play the same game as you, tempting fate to tie us together in some sort of toxic, fucked-up way? Putting a baby inside of you isn’t going to scare me off, River. For as long as I have you, consider us in a game of Russian roulette with fate. Each time we fuck, we’re going to see if that’s the one that’ll ruin us. Because I know you’re going to leave me, and even with a baby, but it’ll still tie you to me, River. You won’t be able to walk away without being marked by me.”

“I want forever. You agree to stay, to be mine, you need to understand it’s for good.