Where We Started (Stone Riders MC, #1)

by Ashley Munoz

To Kailey, my first adventure. You entered this world under a star-speckled sky, bursting with colors. I’ll never tire of telling you the Fourth of July was really all done in your honor. You’re on the cusp of becoming an adult now and I still think back to that chaotically humid night. How I realized you were the culmination of all my fears and hopes. I thought having you would be the hardest part of becoming a parent, but with a horrific realization, it’s letting you go that will be my undoing.

I stayed on my side of the blanket and closed my eyes, but sleep didn’t come. I found myself watching to make sure no one else came up, so she’d be safe all night.

“Sometimes rescuing someone can lead to a pretty fun adventure. I bet Peter enjoyed it.” She didn’t ask anything else, and I started to drift off. Right before I fell asleep, I heard her whisper. “I think Wendy loved Peter more.”

My eyes focused on the distance between me and Callie, and how tears began to trail down her cheeks. I was in front of them within seconds. I guess I had started running at some point. Then my fist flew. The fire came out, and all I could see was red. He had made her cry. He made her blush. He touched her.

I’d never been in a fight before, didn’t even know how to throw a punch, but all I knew was that he needed to remember this moment.

He looked older. The tiny lines around his mouth, the few days’ worth of growth along his jaw that he never allowed to grow before. The scar running through his lip, even the arch of his dark brows, felt like he’d lived an entire lifetime already. All without me.

This was the effect Wes had always had over me. He was sunshine, and I was always the sleepy flower, waking up to bask in his warmth.

He said rough family, but all I heard was real family. My parents shoved faith and family values down my throat so often I wanted to tear through them with my teeth just to get some air. Dad was strict, but he was also a hypocrite. He didn’t think we knew about the lipstick on his collar when he came home, or the fact that he smelled like a perfume brand that Mom didn’t own. He didn’t think we saw Mom’s jaw grow tight when she greeted him or how she swiped at her eyes when she wandered back toward the back of the house.

“Right now, it doesn’t go to anything, but I was thinking maybe one day we can get it made for our house⁠—”

“I love you too, and one day, when I have a house for us, that key will be the one to open it.”

“You do realize you sort of make it seem like you might want to marry me someday, Wes, with this sort of thing?”

“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.

My heart was tangled in the same barbed wire that Wes had tossed around it back when we were kids. It had never gotten free, no matter how much time had passed, or how good I had gotten at functioning without the use of my heart. That bloodied organ belonged to him.

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.

But as I watched her walk out the door, I knew deep in my bones, to my very marrow, that I wouldn’t want it any other way. 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.

“She’s mine, Simon. Make an exception.”

“I haven’t forgotten a single thing about you, River.”

“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.”

“I’m hungry, River, and if you don’t move soon, I doubt you’ll appreciate the meal I select.” His gaze flicked down my body in a slow, measured way, slowing at my waist until he was boldly staring at the space between my thighs.

“Do you really want to know, Callie? I sure as fuck don’t want to know a single thing about anyone you’ve been with. I don’t want to know if you have someone waiting for you in DC, or if you got engaged or married. I don’t even want to know if you had some stranger kiss you on New Year’s.”

“Because as far as I’m concerned, they all belonged to me. Every kiss. Every moan. Every touch. Whatever you chose to do over the past seven years was all owed to me. You robbed me of an entire life, Callie. Forgive me if I don’t want to hear about some guy named Craig who showed up at your apartment at midnight, only to show up at your doorstep two more nights after that.”

“Or some fucker named Joe who picked you up at a farmers’ market and took you to his place, where you stayed until midnight. I certainly don’t want to know about some asshole with a cowboy hat who found you at a rodeo and thought he had the right to fuck you in the bed of his truck.”

Why are there tears IN MY EYES

“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.”

I slid slowly off the bed, tugging the cut out from under it. Holding it out to her, I knew right then and there I’d never get the look on her face out of my head, not for as long as I lived. Not the way tears coated her lashes as she gently took the leather from my hands, not the way her lip wobbled as she traced my name, nor the way she sobbed as her nail passed over the fox patch.

“You think you love her in a way that would have challenged a father’s love for his own child? You think I wouldn’t burn the world down for her? She’s my blood.”

“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 would always be that little girl who found refuge in his treehouse, and that same girl eventually realized the peace wasn’t the space, but the person.

“You once said if you could tattoo it onto your skin as a way to make it happen, you would,” Wes muttered, almost in awe as he stroked the replica of the key he’d given me.

“I don’t ever want anyone else on this planet to see you like this. I’m an obsessed motherfucker, too zealous for my own good, but fuck, you’ve ruined me.”

No one ever explained that love was going to feel like you were losing your goddamn mind and heart all at the same time.

I had no warning before Wes briskly stood, depositing me in his chair. It all happened within a single breath. Killian lifted Silas by the arms, holding him still while Wes stepped up and punched the Roman in the nose with a sickening crunch. Then he threw another hit, and another. I winced each time I heard his fist connect. “You think this is funny? Think you can come in here and say that fucking name?”

“She is not a commodity in this club. She is not a piece of property to be traded or discussed. You don’t look at her. You don’t speak to her. She is mine, and only mine. Do you understand me?”

“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.”

The hit came with a sickening crunch, paired with a sound that echoed off the walls that practically tore the skin from my bones, and it wasn’t my scream. It was hers, and that hollowed, painful sound would follow me straight to hell, and like the selfish fucker I was, I’d be grateful for it. Because in the end, that kind of pain could only mean one thing. River loved me, and perhaps she never stopped.

Callie Stone just walked in wearing my property patch, looking like she was ready to fuck the devil, and I was completely at a loss for words. She looked like she just stepped out of one of my wet dreams.

“I have a question for you, sir.” Smiling like a love-struck idiot, I laughed. “Whatever it is, the answer is yes.”

“Is this…” Callie turned her head, inspecting the space. “A treehouse?” I smiled, bending my knee while staring at her. “It’s our treehouse.”

“Peter loves Wendy.” Her gasp was cut short as she spun back to me. “I wrote that while you were sleeping when we were ten. It was always about us, but I was too shy to ever admit it.”

“Is that a threat?” Wes laughed, tipping his head back. “No, little man, you’ll know when I threaten you. For example, look one more time at my wife, and I’m going to shove that pen through one of your eye sockets.”