Inked in Lies (The Fallen Men 5)

I couldn’t stand myself because I was a stranger in my own mind and body. Who was I without Dane?

I barely responded to questions, and even then it was mostly one-word answers. Harleigh Rose stayed over most nights, and the ones she didn’t, Hudson slept in my bed, or Molly, or Milo and Oliver.

I was loved. I was so loved, and somehow that made me hurt worse.

Because it highlighted the way I would never be loved again by Dane who had always loved me best.

I didn’t understand how I could possibly get over losing him. It consumed me, possessed me. I was turning into someone I didn’t know and didn’t like.

Then one day, Nova was there in the kitchen, taking my hands out of the bowl of flour and water I was churning into dough to accompany Diogo’s cod fish stew. He didn’t say a word as Molly questioned what he was doing, and no one tried to stop him when he wrapped a hand around one of mine and drew me out the door.

I stalled, looking at the gleaming chrome and black motorbike that rested on the curb.

“No,” I asserted. “No way.”

Nova stared at me as he picked up his helmet and the spare for me. Then he shrugged, ran a hand through his hair, and swung onto the bike in a smooth move that said this was not the first time he’d ridden a motorcycle.

“What’s the worst that could happen?” he asked in a cold, cruel voice. “You could die? You don’t seem to mind that idea much anymore.”

I blinked at the design on the back of his leather jacket. The same ragged wings and skull design we’d once graffitied on the side of The Fallen MC clubhouse.

“You got patched in,” I said dully.

“I did,” he nodded. “The day Dane went missin’.”

I nodded, cracking my knuckles as I stared at the bike.

It annoyed me that people kept saying Dane had ‘gone missing.’ When someone couldn’t be accounted for when they were at war overseas they called it ‘missing in action’ as if we all didn’t know they were most probably dead in a ditch somewhere blown up by an IED.

We couldn’t have a funeral because it wasn’t official.

I’d read in my research that sometimes it never was.

Someone just disappeared, and that was that.

“C’mon, Lila,” Nova coaxed, handing me the black helmet. “Get on, and go for a ride with me.”

I stared at the helmet, struggling with the onset of emotions that had broken through the careful barricade I had constructed around my mind. For some reason, tears pooled in the backs of my eyes.

“Lila,” Nova called, drawing my gaze to his face to find him staring at me with his mouth so soft and his eyes so filled with love. “C’mon, gorgeous girl, get on the bike.”

I sucked in a deep breath through my teeth and snatched the helmet, plunking it on my head before I swung a leg over the bike. It was surprisingly comfortable to press my groin against his ass, my chest to his back, my arms a natural latch around his narrow waist. He smelled of leather, smoke, and spice, and I pressed my nose to the leather to breathe it deeper.

“Hold on tight,” he ordered before shoving down the kickstand and revving the deep, growling engine of the Harley.

When we took off down the street, I squeaked as the hair tie flew off the end of my braid, and my hair unraveled into the wind. He went fast but not dangerously so, laughing as we took low, curving corners, hollering as he gunned it down a straight stretch of road before he hit Main street.

I liked it.

The rush, the freedom, the wind’s demanding fingers tugging at my hair like the kinda lover I imagined one day having for my own.

It reminded me of a part of myself that had nearly died with Dane.

I loved the wind and the earth and the rain.

I loved freedom and a smidge of chaos. I loved taking off on an adventure without any clue where I was going.

Dane hadn’t liked that much, the spontaneity. He was steadfast and calm, I was reckless and wild.

We weren’t the same.

I hadn’t lost that part of me just because I’d lost him.

It hurt me to realize that, aching in my chest like a reviving withered organ, but by the time we pulled in front of the abandoned stationary store below Nova’s apartment on Main Street I was smiling.

It was small. Lips pressed tight, mouth barely curved.

But it was there.

For the first time in two weeks.

And Nova saw it as he waited for me to swing off the bike. He grinned back at me, roguish as hell with the wind whipping through his wavy hair, his sunglasses pushed back into it, face tanned and made even more handsome by the smile printed on his bright mouth.