Out of the Ashes (Sons of Templar MC 3)

“Zane?”

Bull jerked up, moved his eyes from his guitar. The one that Laurie had bought him. The one he played in bed to her, after she would beg him to play stupid girly songs. He would. Back then, he’d do anything to put a smile on her face. Didn’t take much to put a smile on his either.

His eyes landed on Lexie. She had already thrown herself at him earlier that night when she first saw him. Beamed at him, gave him another shaft of light. She’d teared up a little, then commenced in an epic fuckin’ chatter, filling him in on everything he had missed in the last two months. Her face wasn’t light and easy like it had been then. It was tortured, full of anguish, something that didn’t belong on such a face.

Mia had told her. He wasn’t surprised. There were no secrets between those two.

He braced. He didn’t know what to expect from Lexie.

“Yeah, Lex,” he answered softly, carefully.

She walked up to him, moved to stand in front of him, and paused.

“Can I play you a song?” she asked finally, her voice quiet.

Bull gazed at her, then nodded.

She gave him a small, sad smile, then sat on the chair in front of him.

She started to play ‘Unclouded Day,’ by Audra Mae.

Bull had no fuckin’ clue how she knew to play that song. How she knew her soft voice, playing those fuckin’ soul wrenching words would fix him. Shake him to his core. Somehow bring him peace. Bring Laurie peace. He didn’t know how she knew to play that song, but he loved her for doing it. Every part of him. That moment, as she trailed off, finished the song, he knew he’d never see a glimpse of darkness again.

Little did he know, shit would happen to prove him fucking wrong.

One Month Later

I was happy. It wasn’t an excuse but it was one of the reasons. I was deliriously happy. Never in my wildest dreams would I have conjured up a man like Zane. Big. Tattooed. Scary. Silent. Silence was not something I knew well. Not something my daughter knew well. But it seemed to fit us. Seemed to counteract our constant chatter. Gave us balance. He didn’t need words to communicate how he felt with us. But he was using them more often, speaking to us. I commented on it, one night in bed. I was curled up in his side. I didn’t know what I had expected his answer to be, but I definitely didn’t expect my heart to almost explode with love.

He pulled me to lie on top of him, like he did when he wanted to command my complete attention.

“I don’t speak because up until recently, I haven’t had anything to say,” he began gruffly. “My attention, my life, was dedicated to the club and my thirst for revenge. That thirst coursed through my veins in a white hot intensity that dwarfed everything else.” His eyes were far away; even though he had his arms around me, his mind was somewhere else. “When I got that revenge, thirst was gone. Fury was left. And the battle—” He paused for a moment, eyes moving back to focus on me as if he had to make conscious effort to drag himself out of his head. He stroked my cheek. “The battle that I fought every day against the demons that threatened to destroy me. To speak, to joke, is to do more than exist, and, baby, that wasn’t what I was doing. I was surviving. I was doing that in silence, or as close as I could get. My life was a dark, lonely place.” He paused again, wiping a tear that had trickled down my face at his words. At the glimpse beneath the hard façade. He did his half smile thing before continuing.

“People came into my life, shed some light. It wasn’t much, like the last glimpses of a sun before the night takes over, but it was something. It was a fraction more than existing, but nowhere near living. I was living life in fuckin’ limbo.” His face changed completely, tender replacing the hard, battle worn look he wore as he spoke. He looked at me. Not at me. But into me. “Then you,” he half whispered. “Then you and Lexie let the light in and goddamn blinded me with it. That’s why I was angry with you. Furious. My battle in the dark had been brought into the light. I didn’t want to live in silence. You and Lexie, you don’t fuckin’ shut up. You don’t stop talkin’ ‘cause you don’t stop livin. You made me want to talk. Have something to say. You gave me life, baby,” he said with passion.

I stared at him for a long moment, letting all of his beautiful words sink in, letting them warm my soul. “I love you,” I blurted. “I’m usually the one who can’t shut up, got words for everything,” I told him in a slightly choked voice. “But I got none. Apart from those three.”

Zane tightened his hand around the back of my neck and yanked me down so our mouths brushed. “Those are all the words I need, Wildcat.”

Then there were none.

Besides being deliriously happy, I was also living with the shadow of guilt. Zane had bared it all to me, everything. His broken soul, his heartbreaking past, everything. I was the one still holding onto secrets, onto my own damaged past. It hurt me, keeping secrets from him, but I was doing it for him. Telling him, opening that can of worms, would do nothing but bring back that fury, that thirst for revenge he had only just sated. And because those three weeks of us, of Zane, Lexie and me was so full of happiness, I didn’t want to pollute it with the poison of the past.

So that was the reason why. Why I slacked. Let down my guard. Failed to notice until it was too late. Lexie and I had just arrived home. Killian was due to pick her up any moment so she was anxious to get in the house, drop off her mountain of books and head off into the sunset yet again. She was chattering away and I felt a warm glow at her unbridled happiness, the fact she was healing so well after her loss. So I didn’t notice the car parked slightly up from our house. Something that would have sent alarm bells normally. I was also anxious to get home, knowing Zane would be back in a matter of hours. I had house prep to do, lady maintenance to do. So I was distracted and didn’t notice the door was unlocked. The door I always locked no matter how small, how friendly the town was.