Caution to the Wind (The Fallen Men, #7)

by Giana Darling

“The dragon teaches you that if you want to climb high you have to do it against the wind.” – Chinese proverb

I always remembered him. He seemed like some kind of heathen god, big enough to kill a man with his bare hands, so broad through the shoulders it seemed like he could carry the weight of the world.

“You think maybe I should win this one for Rocky, instead?” Glory and Rocky. Henning had nicknames for everyone, even his stepdaughter’s best friend. Hearing it from his lips always made something inside me squiggle and squirm.

Rocky because I was scrappy and loyal. He said people were prone to underestimate me due to my slight and dainty build, but they’d inevitably find out some day that I was a champion. Glory because Cleo’s full name was Cleopatra, which meant “glory of the father,” and Cleo was his pride and joy.

“Parents hope their children will become a dragon among men. That we’ll be special.” “Exceptional,” Henning echoed, squeezing my shoulder before he stretched out of his crouch to his full, immense height. Cleo nodded sagely. “Well, okay. Mei’s definitely a dragon, then.”

“The marriage line is too long,” she added. “Your reputation or theirs will be affected by this union. You are not very lucky, daughter. Not in love.”

“I’m going to be a doctor,” I told her because my parents wanted me to have a good career, but more, Henning was a doctor, and he was as close to a real-life superhero as I’d ever known.

“Because there is strength in softness too. There is purity, success, and happiness in finding balance between yin and yang. If you don’t learn this, the tragedies of your life will overtake you.”

“In real life, Dr. Axelsen, white knights rarely get happy endings. Only broken hearts.”

How did other people do this? See sufferin’ and endure without excruciatin’ empathy.

It was hard for my twelve-year-old mind not to tangle him up in the role of hero. I’d heard the story of how he’d saved Kate from her troubled past and Cleo from a childhood of dangers, and now, he’d saved me, even if he hadn’t been able to save Kate. Looking back, that was the start of it for me. Falling in love with him. Ruining his life. They would become one and the same, but right then, it was pure and simple. I loved him the way a child loved a superhero.

“Everyone has to start somewhere. But today you proved that you are already an exceptional kid, Rocky.” His words were rough, unpolished gems that meant everything to me. “You might just be the bravest girl I’ve ever known.”

This. Fuckin’ this. This was the reason parents sacrificed again and again for their kids. Why those sacrifices felt halved instead of enormous. Why I woke up every mornin’ and fought hard to be the best man I could. So this girl, my girl, could have some peace after a lifetime of pain.

In ways that might have been unhealthy but explainable given the tragedy we’d lived through together, we were fiercely bonded together. Mei and I parentheses around Cleo and her tender heart. Between the two of us, we wouldn’t let anythin’ bad happen to our girl ever again.

Lately, I couldn’t shake the feelin’ that I was lettin’ her down, disappointin’ her somehow. She’d become more and more withdrawn as Daiyu grew sicker, and nothin’ I did seemed to bring her the solace she needed.

constantly pullin’ smiles out of my dried-up heart. The truth was, Kate wasn’t the love of my life. It was no secret. I’d married her to save her, and in doin’ so, she’d saved me. Given me a family worth livin’ for when the only one I’d ever really known was ripped away from me after I left the military. We weren’t a relationship built on physicality and passion, but did that really matter? We’d chosen each other. Saved each other.

She shrugged one shoulder and fell to her knees in the bracket of my spread thighs to get close to the stab wound. It leaked blood down my left side into the growin’ stain at the waistband of my jeans. The sight of her down there made me irrationally irritated. “I said I can do it,” I growled, grabbin’ her wrist as she made to stitch me up. “Get up from there.” “No.” She wrenched her hand away and flashed me a look so cold with determination it chilled me. “Even big, bad bikers need someone to take care of them sometimes.”

I flipped the page to see a detailed image of a male hand complete with creases, shadows, veins, shrapnel scars, and corded tendons. There was no mistakin’ the hand as anythin’ other than my own.

She was beautiful, I realized in a way I hadn’t ever let myself before. Not just in the way of pretty girls. No, her beauty was written in her very bones. In the slope of her steeply carved cheeks and the faint hollow beneath. In the full brows arched delicately over large eyes that were dark but warm, vital. Freshly tilled earth instead of a night without stars. She looked almost fragile, but I mapped the strength of her character in that stubborn chin, the knit of her brows, and the flattenin’ of a full mouth into a fine line. Slim limbs carved with muscle, sharp nails painted black. A surprisingly strong jawline that had taken more than its fair share of punches.

A livin’ contrast, Mei Zhen. Our Rocky. A girl who was both named for a beautiful pearl and a famous fictional boxer.

We had sat up just like this together many nights before, sketchin’ together in our own books, the scratch of lead on paper and the soft gust of our breath the only soundtrack to our shared insomnia. But never like this. Never when my focus and art was all about Mei. It made me look at he...

The number of claws on a Chinese dragon was contentious throughout its history, but I’d given Mei’s dragon five ’cause it was considered the most sacred. And whatever Rocky was to me, it was sacred.

I never cared much about names or living up to them. And no matter how hard they tried, I never learned how to care about what people thought of me. Why should perfect strangers have any impact on my life?

“One hundred hearts would not be enough to carry the love I have for you,” I croaked out in Cantonese. Ma smiled. “One hundred hearts would never be enough to carry the love and pride I have for you, my Mei Zhen. Remember that always.”

There was a popular adage, “men do not fight with women,” and traditionally, it was men’s duty to protect them. But we weren’t in China, and in Canada, equality was practiced almost to the detriment of gentlemanly behaviour and all chivalry.

“I don’t care about boys, Lin.” Henning entered the kitchen then, drying off his paint-smudged hands on an old rag that he then tucked into the back waistband of his jeans. His hair was collected in a messy knot at the back of his head, streaks of honey, caramel, and gold shining in the red-gold light of sunset spilling through the big window over the sink. There was a smear of vermilion acrylic paint on his cheekbone and some turquoise on his stubbled jaw. The tee stretched too tight over his broad chest was old, thin enough to trace the planes and hollows of dense muscles. My mouth went dry at the sight of him. “Boys, maybe,” Lin muttered.

I wanted a man to tremble as he held back his strength to touch me like I was made of glass, not because he thought I was weak, but because he thought I was precious. I wanted a man to change his career because it would have meant too much time away from me even though I’d never ask him to do so. I wanted a man who’d join a criminal motorcycle gang just to find justice for my murder. I wanted a man who would always try to save me, even when I tried to sabotage myself. I wanted what Cleo had, but not how she had it. I wanted Henning. Not as a father figure. But as a man. My man.

I tried to breathe and failed again. Because he was so beautiful, the most beautiful man I’d ever seen. Why didn’t women talk about men like that? It wasn’t only feminine to be so beautiful. It spoke of his goodness, the generosity of his heart, and the power of his kind, keen gaze. It spoke of a man who was confident enough in himself to be soft when needed and strong enough to take on the whole world if someone he loved was at risk.

And at that moment, I knew I’d never love anyone better than I loved him.

It was in this way that he made me feel worthy. If I could earn the kindness and love of such a man, I had to be worth something even though I so often felt less than in the eyes of my overachieving family.

I couldn’t bear for Henning to know what I knew now. That I loved him. Not tenderly, not softly like a song or a poem. I loved him in all my dark places. In the way I would die for him, impaling myself on a sword intended for his side. In the way I would kill for him––a happy murder, a giggling death with blood on my teeth that tasted like love and sin.

What cruel, tragic irony that he should be so forbidden to me. My best friend’s dad. Sixteen years my senior.

As quickly as I realized I would love him forever, I realized I would never have him. Henning watched as my heart swelled and broke, a wave against the sheer rock of reality.

Guilt crashed over me. Here I was lusting after Henning when I’d committed myself to taking care of him and Cleo in Kate’s stead. What kind of selfish creature was I? “I’m sorry Kate can’t be here,” I echoed his sentiment, the words brittle and cracking to pieces on my tongue. “I know it’s a poor as hell substitute, but I wouldn’t be able to do this without you guys.”

Lin peered down at the photo on the screen of the camera and grinned. “Henning and his girls.” Henning and his girls. And there I was, aching with the desire to be his woman.

He was the best man we knew, bar none. A white knight didn’t just come in shining armour. My knight came in leather.

It was a mean-looking hand, a threat wrapped in skin, but it was all softness as I automatically slid my hand into his. “It would be a fuckin’ crime not to have at least one dance with you in that red dress.”

“Can’t sing for shit,” he confessed. “So, you’ll just have to imagine music playin’.” I didn’t have to try very hard. The thump of my heart was a deep bass, the rush of blood in my ears a symphony of strings, and the sharpness of my breath the twang of an acoustic guitar.

“My love for you isn’t conditional on you loving me back,” I told him even though my heart hurt, my head hurt, my very soul hurt. “So this won’t ruin anything between us unless you want it to. I hope you don’t. I know I’ll never be yours that way, but having you in my life is better than nothing. I…I don’t have many people I love, and I’ve already lost too many.”

The idea of a romantic relationship with my best friend’s daughter was wrong and utterly fuckin’ impossible.

Then again, how could any man who went by the name of Axe expect to be seen as anythin’ other than a weapon?

It didn’t matter the colour of your skin or your criminal outfit, homosexuality was still viewed cruelly by any kinda thug. I had Jiang’s life in my hands, and he had to trust I was just as vulnerable if he was gonna let me live.

I knew without turning exactly who that voice belonged to. The low, quiet weight of Henning’s voice would be familiar to me underwater or whispered down a faulty telephone line. I knew it better than I knew my own.

It was what he did next that undid me. His broad forehead tipped down to press to mine, and he closed his eyes, a pained expression on his rough-hewn features. And I knew he’d never love me the way I loved him. Like I was the oxygen he needed to breathe. But at least he loved me like this. Like losing me would be living with half a lung.

I shivered and fell to my knees, dislodging Cedar’s hold so I could walk on my knees to Henning. “Don’t make me leave you.” “I’d pay any price for you,” he whispered fiercely, his blood-soaked hands clutching at my face so hard it almost hurt. “Is that enough love for you, Rocky?”

Tragedy. Every single man in The Fallen MC had been through hell and come back, willingly or not. We didn’t have just one hardship, one tiny tale of woe. We had a string of them like black beads in a macabre rosary.

To think he might hate me as much as he did Rooster Cavendish or the people who killed Kate made acid eat through the lining of my gut.

We pressed together gently because Cleo was still so weak, but our molecules fused back together so tightly it seemed organic, two magnets meeting after years apart. Once again united the way we were always meant to be.

But the elemental meaning of Chinese gwaan hai is building personal relationships where both parties are willing to do whatever it takes to help each other. It implies a sense of moral obligation between the two. It’s used in business a lot, and people talk about how it can lead to corruption, this idea of scratching each other’s backs. But I believe any relationship worth having should be based on gwaan hai. If I love someone, I’m more than willing to do what needs to be done to bring them happiness, success, and joy. And the way I love you? That isn’t an obligation, it’s an honour. So please, honour me by trusting that I want to give you everything and anything you need. Not just because of what’s happened to you. Not just because I promised Kate I’d look after you. But because I love you in a way that I need you to take what I have to offer, so really, you’d still be the one giving to me in the end.”

“We’ve been through a lot.” Her gaze narrowed. “Yes, I know. But that was eight years ago. She’s different now, and I’m worried she called you here because trauma makes people want to move backward instead of forward. She hasn’t needed you in the eight years you’ve been gone, and I don’t think she really needs you now.”