“Never been more serious about anything in my life.” His hand circled my neck. “Well, until recently,” he added.
My heart leapt at the statement, but I needed to know. “How long will it take?”
Cade paused before answering. “Don’t know, babe, been working my angle for a while now, making progress. But this shit moves slow, it’s hard to get these men to see some different way of life when this is all they know.”
“Ballpark,” I demanded.
Cade sighed. “A year, at the most. Things are already in motion.”
I contemplated this. Would Cade and I be together in a year? My heart told me yes, my head didn’t know what to think.
“Planning on you being in my life for a while, Gwen. You will be around when the club turns legit,” he said firmly. “If you decide this doesn’t change anything, I want you, like I’ve never wanted anything in my life. I want to make sure every fucker in the world knows you’re my Old Lady, that no other asshole will touch you. I don’t want this shit with the club to taint you, to jeopardize us.”
“Old Lady?” I repeated quietly, knowing the meaning behind that term, the commitment it represented. He had said it before, but we never talked about it.
Cade brushed my hair back, his eyes never leaving mine. “Yeah, Gwen.”
Wow, I thought it took a lot for biker men to commit, and Cade was slotting me in long term like it was just natural. I wanted to be in there, but I didn’t know if I could accept what the club was doing. The club was a part of him, and he wouldn’t leave it if I couldn’t deal. Could I handle this? I could hardly handle a couple of days without Cade. Could I stand living in this this town, no doubt seeing him everywhere if I couldn’t get right with this? I was probably going to regret this decision, you’d think I’d know better with my past. But I didn’t.
“Those guns you sell, they kill people, innocent people,” I whispered.
Cade’s eyes were hard on me. “Don’t pull the trigger babe, people get killed with or without guns.”
“Guns make it a heck of a lot easier when ending someone’s life only takes a second,” I argued softly.
Cade ran his hand through his hair, clearly frustrated. He roughly lifted me off him, jumping off the bed to pace the room. He turned back to me.
“Don’t think it doesn’t weigh on me, Gwen, what those guns do to people, whose hands I put them into. I think about it all the goddamn time. Fuck!” His voice ended on a yell, it was hard to watch, seeing this kind of emotion on my usually staunch man.
I didn’t say a word, conflicted emotions were stewing in the pit of my stomach.
“I may be involved in this shit now, baby, but I swear I’m going to get out. The club will never be squeaky clean, and I’m never going to put on a suit and chain myself to an office from nine to five. That’s not me. The club is in my blood, riding bikes, it’s in my blood.” His voice radiated passion, his expression fierce, eyes not leaving mine.
“The club may be in muddy waters now, but I’m going to make sure the way I earn a living, the way I provide for my family doesn’t involve me being shot at, or facing a long stay in the state penitentiary.”
I sat at the edge of the bed, taking all of this in. And shit was this a lot to take in on a Monday morning after we had just made up and I was still nursing a hangover.
Cade knelt before me, hand at my neck. “Like I said, babe, this has been brewing for a while, but the moment I saw you, hands full of bags, all class, down to your fucking shoes. I knew.”
I looked at him intently. “Knew what?”
“That I had to get out of the guns, get out of that life, get away from the bitterness that I tasted on my tongue. So I could have sweet.”
Shit. What do you say to that? My forehead pressed against Cade’s.
“A year,” I whispered, that’s what I would wait.
Cade’s eyes flared in surprise, and his whole body seemed to relax.
“I can’t be in the dark about what you do in your life Cade. I know there are Old Ladies that know nothing and like it that way. I also know it’s an all or nothing kind of gig.”
I had so many other things I want to say. What happened if he went to prison? What if he got killed? What kind of accessory did that make me? Knowing what the club did and doing nothing about it. A year was a long time to have to deal. But the way Cade was looking at me now, what I felt when he touched me, when he spoke beautiful words in his gruff tone, I had to at least try, or I would be wondering for the rest of my life.
Cade sighed. “I know baby. I won’t tell you anything that would even get you close to danger. You get the bare minimum. I don’t like the thought of one ounce of that shit tainting you. But I won’t lie to you,” he promised, and I knew he meant it.
“Okay,” I said quietly.
I was sure about my decision to stay with Cade, but scared about the life I had just agreed to. Cade pulled me into his lap, kissing me so intensely that I felt like I was being branded down to my soul.
“Babe, what you know, what I feel for you, you’re in deep. You’re mine, no one touches you, no one puts you in any kind of danger now.” He kept a firm grip on the back of my neck before repeating. “Mine.”
Even in this somewhat intense moment, the feminist in me felt kind of pissed the way he kept referring to me as ‘his’ like some kind of kid who had a new toy. I opened my mouth to tell him to tone down the macho man bullshit, but another angry female bet me to it.