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El que con lobos anda, a aullar se enseña. He who runs with wolves learns to howl. You are the company you keep. I had been born to liars, raised by liars.
Zeus saw me, and I mean fuckin’ saw me. He saw somethin’ in me that didn’t have a voice or a name until he dragged me inside the dark bar and sat me at a table with his men.
Somethin’ that yearned for brotherhood and chaos and freedom. Somethin’ The Fallen men had in spades.
“Welcome to the club, Casanova.” And just like that, a kid who had never been lost in his whole fuckin’ life felt like he’d finally been found.
I scuffed my bare foot against the asphalt, took a deep breath, and said the truest thing I’d ever had to say, “I dreamed I’d be a Booth.”
“You are the fiercest, bravest, and kindest girl in the whole world. If someone chooses not to love you, they aren’t worthy of you. It’s really as simple as that.”
“Jeez, I’m really gonna have to take you under my wing and teach you our ways, aren’t I?” I shrugged. “Ways of what?” Her grin was almost evil as it split her pretty face in two. “Ways of being a biker babe. Don’t worry, we’re still kids, so we got lots of time.”
Because no matter how long Dane was gone for, no matter where he went, Jonathon was showing me that he’d always be my family. And more, that whatever he had in spades was inherently mine too.
Nova: Too bad. Can’t sleep, I need you to entertain me. Lila: It’s 2am, I’m a teenager, and I need my sleep. Nova: I’m living proof that beauty rest is a lie. I sleep for shit and still look fuckin’ stunnin’. Lila: Women like humble men, you know. Nova: Not in my extensive experience.
“Hey, Flower Child,” he said softly, and I realized he was speaking in Spanish. “Come back to us, okay? We’re here for you.” All I could think was when had Nova gotten so good at Spanish?
They bracketed us all, their entire family tucked away in the bed around the girl they’d made their own.
Because I knew that where Dane was now, this was what he had given me before he left. A family that would never leave me. A family that would protect me and love me as hard as they could for the rest of forever.
“It’s perfectly you.” He sighed behind me, a happy, almost relieved sound. “Needed to hear you say that more than I thought.”
But it happened, and you. Are. Here. You wanna cherish Dane and respect his memory? You live for both of you. You live the life of freedom and joy you deserved but never got. You do it for the both of you ’cause you guys were always a package deal, and you still are. You can still love him and live for him just like you did before. Don’t give up, Li. Don’t die with him. Don’t take both of you away from mum and Dad, Milo, Oliver, Hudson, and me. Not when we fought so hard to get you both, and we’ve lost Dane too.”
“A lotus,” I breathed, leaning forward unconsciously to reach out for the design, my fingers hovering over it. “A symbol of overcoming obstacles, of rebirth.” “Of something beautiful created from something ugly,” Nova agreed. “Dane was born in a stinkin’ fuckin’ mire just like you in that place with Ignacio, but he was the purest, best man I’ll ever know.”
And that was it, the moment when I found the words for what that man was to me and what he would always mean to me. I loved him. Unintentionally, but irrevocably.
+ LM surrounded in a barbed wire heart. Barbed because it would protect us. Because I would protect us, our friendship, until it could bloom like the lotus into something so much more.
I didn’t want to lose what made me me just because someone had chosen not love those things.
I needed just one person to get me. To get how it felt to have this garden thriving and blooming in my chest just waiting for that one man to walk through it, yet knowing that he never would.
Loving someone shouldn’t be contingent on them returning that affection. Loving someone existed apart from reciprocation.
“I won’t have you fillin’ your head with some fairy-tale nonsense. I’m no knight in shinin’ anythin’, you get me? I’m a man with a bike, with blood on his hands, and some serious as fuck demons in my heart. I don’t got any flowers or romance for you, and bein’ honest, I never fuckin’ will. Get that through your head, yeah? I don’t need another pathetic girl trailin’ after me lookin’ for scraps.”
I got one whenever it was too much. The not loving him. Whenever I felt missing him would tear me in two.
This was living. This was what Nova did. What I did. What we’d once loved doing together. And in that moment, I knew I’d do it. I’d fall on the sword Nova held out to me, just because he was selfish enough, horrible enough to want to prove what he’d known now for years. That I was his to do with as he pleased.
“You want her,” Jake said, each word a whip lashed at Nova. “And now you can’t have her. You should have loved her while you had the chance.”
After that night in the bar, Lila pressed to my front, her mouth bloomin’ under mine like one’a her favourite flowers, I knew what it hungered after. Her.
I smiled at her, but it felt misshapen, like plastic held too close to a flame. “You think I don’t know that I have nothin’ to offer someone? You think that doesn’t factor into the fact I don’t have an Old Lady and don’t have a plan to ever?”
’Cause after that kiss? I didn’t think there was any way I could go back to pretendin’ Lila wasn’t fuckin’ vital to me. ’Cause the feel of her lips on mine was like fresh oxygen after two years of livin’ with half a lung. And now I was addicted to the thought of breathin’ free.
“Here’s hopin’ you get your pretty boy head outta your ass ’fore you ruin things for good. ’Cause Lila, she might be your shot at the kinda happy I got with Lou. The kinda happy I carry ’round in my chest like a second heart that beats just for her.”
“You don’t get to tell me I don’t got love in my heart,” he whispered, his voice low and as smooth as a purring wildcat. “You think I got some heart of stone? You think I was un-fuckin’-moved when I held little girl you in my arms as your mum died? Think I didn’t about crack in two when Dane, the first brother by choice I ever made, was ripped away from us? You think I wouldn’t about die if somethin’ happened to you? To the girl I swore to Dane I’d always protect? To the girl who I used to think knew the heart of me more than anyone else?”
She had thick, caramel thighs I wanted to wrap around my head so that all I could taste, all I could breathe and eat to sustain me, was her.
“You wanna do somethin’ stupid, I’m guessin’ I can’t stop you short of monitorin’ every single step you take, and, Li, love ya, but I gotta fuckin’ life to live, and I’m not doin’ it chained to your side. So, if you think about it, you asked for this.” He opened his tatted hands and shrugged.
“You gotta shit ton of plants, but I found a way to fit them around the apartment. Your girly ass sofa had to stay, and that ugly as fuck coffee table, but we got the rest of your stuff sorted. Molly packed your lingerie,” he added with a wicked grin. “Had to clear out a whole drawer for it in my dresser. Whole lotta lace and garters in there, babe, gotta say I’m surprised.”
“There’s no gettin’ outta this, Lila,” he said softly, silk over steel. “If I gotta tackle you and drag you outta here like a fuckin’ caveman, you are comin’ with me. I’ll lock up your greenhouse, slash your fuckin’ tires so you rely completely on me. ’Cause you don’t seem to get somethin’ I’ve been tryin’ to teach you all your life. You’re my fuckin’ family. You wanna put yourself in danger ’cause you’re too damn brave and too damn stupid and completely, in-fuckin’-sanely loyal, then you do you. But I’ll be there to protect you from yourself and the pit of vipers you’ve put yourself in bed
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He planted flowers all over my body, inside the cage of my ribs, in the fertile soil of my heart, yet he never noticed how they bloomed just for him.
“You cast aside this space you’ve put between us. Hurt you two years ago, and not gonna apologize for doin’ it ’cause, Li, I got my reasons. There’s no part of me worth even an inch of you, and you gotta get that, know it, and forgive me for pointin’ it out to you, yeah? You gotta believe I’ve always got you at my heart, on my mind, thinkin’ about what’s right for you. And me? I’m not it. But fuck me, that doesn’t mean I don’t care about you. It’ll never mean that.”
I was obsessed with bein’ in the apartment if she was gonna be there, eschewin’ the clubhouse and Eugene’s with the brothers every night to climb the steps from my shop to an apartment that suddenly felt like home after fifteen years of livin’ in it.
I felt pussy whipped without even havin’ access to the pussy.
Nova: Waitin’ on you outside. Lila: You’re early. Nova: Was in the mood for you. Lila: I’m busy. Nova: I’m always in the mood for you, if I’m bein’ fuckin’ honest.
She was the epitome of everythin’ I loved in this world. And it was gettin’ hard to remind myself why I shouldn’t make her mine.
She was as free as the wild flowers she loved so much.
‘Cause gettin’ involved with me? The devil in a pair of motorcycle boots? It would only lead to pain for the both of us.
You wanna play, Li? We’ll play, but I’m the kinda man that sets the rules and expects them to be followed through. I play rough. I play dirty. And I play hard. You think you can handle all that, be my guest and fuckin’ prove it to me,”
“Be a good girl and come for me on your fingers,” I said. “And we’ll see.” And fuck me, but I learned she could take orders well.
’Cause I understood more in that moment watchin’ Lila writhe for me than I ever had before that one’a my skills was her. Knowin’ her, readin’ her, fuckin’ lovin’ her even if I’d never done it before like this.
She made a man feel like a fuckin’ god, and I wasn’t goin’ to let her worship be for nothin’.
And it felt somehow right that Lila should be prone at my knees, her eyes closed as she leaned into my pettin’ touch like a cat, a low purr workin’ through her throat.
He sighed like there was no place on earth so safe and warm as the meeting of our two bodies in this bed.
It was natural, an extension of feeling he didn’t have the wherewithal in sleep to stifle. It said in ways I might never hear aloud that he loved me. Not as much, never as much, as I loved him. But in that moment, it was enough.
Nova: Bad play, Li. I find out you’re avoidin’ me, your ass isn’t in my chair at Street Ink at noon on the fuckin’ nose, I’ll tan your ass. You get me?
“Big whoop?” Bea shook her head. “He rocked your world, huh?” I sighed. “I think I came so hard I blacked out, and he didn’t even actually lay a finger on me.”
