Battles of the Broken (Sons of Templar MC 6)

My grandmother once said, “I’d rather be impaled on a white picket fence than live behind one.”

I’d gotten my sensible and ordered traits from my father.

But I had a wildness in me that I knew I’d inherited from my grandmother. She knew it too, which was one of the reasons we got on so well. She was always trying to coax it out of me, urge me to do something ‘fun,’ and doing something fun with my grandmother more often than not meant doing something illegal.

I was more inclined to let her lead me astray before me clinging to my sensible roots was for survival instead of habit.

And for the past ten years, it was for survival.

She understood that. Let me be. As much as someone like her could, at least. Because she was hurting too. Bleeding. Not like me, but she was wounded deeply. Though she didn’t let those cuts fester, bleed, continue to drain the life from her like I had. She’d only thrown herself into life more, with fewer reservations—if she’d ever had any in the first place.

But she didn’t abandon me, despite the fact that my coping mechanism was the polar opposite of hers. She never called, never planned visits—since she never usually planned, because “that’s not how fabulous things happen.” She would just turn up on my doorstep, like right now.

And usually my lack of a life meant that was never a problem. She was never interrupting plans because I never had them, though not for the same reason as her.

“So,” she jerked me into the present. “Why are you guarding the door like some Brit outside Buckingham Palace?” she demanded. “Well, not exactly like one of those pompous pricks, because you’re moving and talking and wearing a lot less.” She waggled her eyebrows.

“Oh my gosh,” she exclaimed, her eyes going wide in realization and peering up the stairs. “You’ve got someone up there. And not a dead body. A live one. A man one.” Her eyes went over me, electrified with a youth that not many had when they were young, let alone eighty. “You finally got laid!” She clapped in glee.

Heat crept up my neck. “Not finally,” I snapped. “I’m not a virgin.” She knew that because she was the one I’d told about the fumbling encounter that was my very first time. I hadn’t gone into details, because I didn’t do sharing of such personal things, but I told her enough to let her know the experience was not one I was keen to repeat.

“This is a different kind of virginity,” she said, waving in dismissal. “There’s the first time and then there’s the last time. You know, the time that changes everything and you’ll never be the same again?” She nodded, not to me but to herself. “You’ve had it.”

I groaned, palming my forehead. “Can we please not talk about this?”

“If you can’t talk about life-changing sex with your grandmother, then who can you talk to?”

I raised my brow. “Um, anyone else on the entire planet? Or no one?”

She winked.

“And you’re the one not letting me in and causing me to come to such realizations on the street, so you’ve really only got yourself to blame,” she continued, her sly grin still in place. “You’ve got to learn how to lie better, my darling.” She patted my hand, and then, with a strength that surprised me, she pushed past me and damn near skipped up the stairs. “Now let’s see this hunk of man. And find out if his grandfather is single. And still alive,” she sang while ascending.

“Shit,” I muttered, closing the door and resting my head against the wood. It wasn’t that I was embarrassed of Gage. It was the exact opposite. I knew my grandmother would approve, wholeheartedly, especially given the fact that he was in a motorcycle club that may or may not break the law on a daily basis.

She’d never been impressed by my previous boyfriends. Not that she said as much, but she did go to great pains to call them all ‘Chip’ and ask them about their 401(k) the way a parent might ask an ex-con how long they were in prison for. To her, their sensible investment portfolios and five-year business plans were worse than a rap sheet a mile long.

So yes, I had the strong inkling that my grandmother would be delighted at a muscled, dangerous, and savagely beautiful biker here to shake up my life. But that wasn’t the problem. I didn’t know how long my life was going to have him in it for. I was on borrowed time as it was, before he realized exactly what I was—boringly sane, completely and utterly wrong for him.

Dealing with that heartbreak would be bad enough in my private sorrow.

Having to tell my grandmother would be worse.