Scars of Yesterday (Sons of Templar MC 8)

“We’re getting married tomorrow,” I replied. “You’re never letting me go.”

“Promise,” he murmured.

He kept that promise.

Until he couldn’t.Chapter 4One week into prospecting, Cody became Ranger. One of the crazy rites of passage that went with being patched in to the Sons of Templar MC was that you either had to have a seriously badass name—like Cade who was such a badass he was born with it—or someone decided to give you one.

Of course, Cody didn’t tell me he’d gotten one of his own, I heard it at one of the first MC barbeques I attended. It was nerve wracking. I knew the Sons of Templar and everyone connected to them my whole life, but this was different. I was attending as an Old Lady of a prospect. I knew that meant something. Especially since there were very few prospects, or patched members for that matter, with Old Ladies.

There were plenty of beautiful, scantily clad women around, making it so most of the brothers didn’t feel the need to have a relationship. Why would they want that complication when there were loose women ready to suck their cocks at a moment’s notice?

I’d handled it well, I thought.

Evie hadn’t done anything like rip my face off. She’d just sat down beside me, chain smoking and chatting.

Though, her version of chatter was every curse word known to man and letting me know what I was in for.

“He’s going to come home late,” she said, inhaling. “Or he’s not gonna come home at all. He’ll have to leave in the middle of the night, not tell you where he’s going. You’re gonna have to deal with that, if you want him.”

She nodded to one of the women leaning just a little too fucking close to my husband for my liking. “You’re going to have to deal with them too. Now, you can show them what’s yours. And you can show him what happens if he decides he wants to indulge in that shit. A lot of the time it might feel like you don’t have power or control over this shit. That you have to embody a role that feels like a time in the past where you don’t have a vote.” She sucked on her smoke. “But you don’t. Not in there, at least,” she nodded toward the clubhouse. “Which can piss you off until you figure out the ways to get what you want. Not the same ways as women who have men who don’t wear that cut, but the same process. Every woman learns the tricks to get her way. Ours is just a little different.” She glanced to me. “And you’ve got a family behind you now. Hold you over during the tough times. There’s gonna be some of those, I can feel it. You love him?”

I nodded. “More than anything.”

“Well, buckle in, honey. It’s gonna get rough.”

And it did.

Get rough.

Everything Evie said came to pass. The late nights. Unreturned phone calls. The not coming home at all. Blood stains on his shirts. Something changing about him, in his eyes, his mannerisms. The way he touched me. Fucked me.

That’s what it was. Fucking. Not making love. Not gentle. No, it was desperate, furious, like he was trying to lose himself inside of me. Like it was the last time he was going to touch me.

I changed too.

There was no choice. I was an Old Lady. I’d made that choice, so I leaned into it. I learned how to deal with the uncertainty, the fear, the long nights alone. The club girls.

Evie was my lifeline. An unconventional one, to be sure, but she held me steady, poured me drinks. Invited me over to her place for dinner when the men were out doing... whatever they were doing.

Rosie, Lucy and Ashley were always around too. They were only a little younger than me and definitely bat shit crazy, Rosie the self-proclaimed leader of the trio. I liked being around them, even if they scared me just the littlest bit. Cade tried his best to rein his sister Rosie in, but that was like trying to use an umbrella in a hurricane.

Fucking useless.

There were many nights at Rosie’s place with cocktails and all sorts of plans made, butI always crept home before those plans were executed.

Laurie was there too. Of course she was. She was my best friend. But it was different with her because she was different now. We were in this together, of course, because we’d been friends all our lives..

It didn’t touch her. Zane—he was Bull now, to everyone except Laurie—didn’t let it touch her. His duty was to the club, like the rest of the members, but Laurie was always his first priority. Protecting her was what he was put on this earth for.

I liked that for my friend. Loved it. But I was also jealous. Cody would protect me from anything in this world, except the Sons of Templar. He couldn’t protect me from the MC or their lifestyle.