Page 8 of Carver (Satan’s Angels MC #8)

She stands just outside the doorway, behind Dravin.

He takes one look at my face and steps aside.

Her eyes glisten with unshed tears as she watches me, asking for permission.

I don’t know what my face is doing, but it must grant it because she steps past Dravin, into my space, and reaches out. Her fingers brush up against mine.

A chain of explosions detonates, blasting through my nerves and tissues, reminding me just how much feeling I still have left despite the constant search for numbness.

The relief of having Bronte here is so immense that I nearly gag.

I swallow down the nausea and nerves and nearly humiliate myself all over again as my eyes start swimming.

Dravin coughs and Bronte’s hand falls back to her side.

“She came to the club a week ago, like you said. I convinced her to wait a week, until you were out of the clinic. I felt better about breaking my word and telling her where you were today.” A guilty flush still spreads up his neck.

“I know you can’t live without two things in this life.

Brotherhood, and love. I needed that, even when I didn’t want to admit it. It saved my life.”

I can’t shoot him an accusatory or betrayed glare.

Not when my heart is slamming and the nerves are squirming in my belly.

Not when he’s already done so much for me.

The truth is, he could have just left me there alone in the solitude I thought I wanted.

But he saw me. He knew me without knowing me at all. And we’re here now.

“I’m going to make some lunch. You want a smoothie?”

I’m still on basically a liquid diet. “Sure. Thanks.”

“Can I get you anything?” he asks Bronte.

She shakes her head, refusing to tear her eyes from my face.

Dravin leaves us alone, but the door remains open, like a lifeline if I need it and an apology of sorts.

I suck in a breath when I finally get brave enough to tilt my eyes back to Bronte’s face.

She almost never wears makeup. Her beauty is all natural, from her freckles to her soft lips.

She’s tanned from hours spent outdoors, but her skin isn’t dark enough to hide the soft pink flush that steals into her cheeks.

Her smile is almost shy, but it’s still deep enough to bring out the dimples in both cheeks.

I don’t know what to do or say. It’s the truth that tears out of me, freeing itself from the prison I’ve made. “I thought you were done with me, Bronte. I thought that you’d finally had enough. That I’d succeeded in making you hate me.”

She blinks, stung, pain flashing across her face.

“I didn’t want to stay away. I came. I waited for hours.

I begged. I was irrational and rational, and finally Dravin agreed to let me see you.

I’ve told you time and again that nothing you can do or say will make me hate you and it’s not going to keep me away or change my vow, and not because I’m clingy or pathetic. ”

I wince. It pulls at the sore side of my face.

For once, I don’t angle away. I don’t try to hide myself from her.

I used those words in the past. Not because I wanted to or because I meant them, but because they were the only thing I could think to say that would be effective, but they weren’t.

They just made Bronte laugh and tell me I’d have to do better if I wanted to chase her away.

She lifts a trembling hand and sets it on my chin, right below where the bruising starts. She slowly tilts my face into the light coming in from the window by the bed so that she can see all of it.

The damage. The repairs. The death and life, hope and futility.

“You weren’t the pathetic one,” I rasp, needing to atone for my sins.

I’ve wronged her so, so many times. “It was me. All of it. My body. My fucking head. My past. My scars. You’ve looked after me for years.

You’ve loved me without asking anything in return.

I just never wanted to saddle you with my burdens.

First my family, then- then me. You don’t deserve that, you deserve so much more. I’m never going to be enough for you.”

I want Bronte. I want a life with her. I want her to stay. No matter what I’ve told myself and told her, or how many times I’ve tried to tear myself open to rip myself away from her, I know the truth.

It would kill me if she left, but trying to keep her and watching her light grow darker and darker until it fades out completely—how could I do that?

I encouraged her to leave once. To go to college in Seattle. She’s so smart she’d be wasted in a small town.

Bronte went, but she called me every single day.

She drove home to see her family whenever she could, and she included me in that.

I spent holidays over there with them. Summers were ours alone before she went back to Seattle.

Four years later, she was back with a business degree, vowing she’d never leave again.

I caved. We talked about marriage.

I bought her a ring.

And then, everything changed.

“No.” Her eyes burn and her thumb digs into my chin. “You’re listening to the shit in your head. I’ve always been honest with you. You know that’s true.”

“Yes,” I admit, that one word harder than anything else I’ve had to say.

“I like being out here.” Here will always be Avandale.

“My family is here. I’d rather have my parents and my siblings, and all our memories, than any amount of money or grandeur in the entire fucking world.

” Her hand trails over the left side of my face and spans my undamaged cheek and jaw.

She holds me fast, forcing me to be here with her, to see her, and hear her.

“You think I’m sweet and pure and unselfish, but I’m not.

Not when it comes to you. I want all your moments, Dominic.

Your good ones and your worst ones. You’ve always tried to protect me, but I’m tough. I’m strong. I love you .”

Is love enough?

I’ve asked myself that so many times now that I’ve lost count. Is it enough to combat the world I was raised in? Is it enough to pull me out of myself now? Is it strong enough to defeat the black hatred I feel for myself?

“You should give all that you are, because all that you are is everything , Bronte. Give it to someone worthy.”

I’ve been begging her to do that, verbally or not, since the day we met. As she always has, she digs in harder. “I won’t.”

That makes me so fucking sad that I wish we’d never met. At the same time, it stirs elation in me. It makes me feel like I could do anything. Be anything. I used to think that way, but after the accident, I had to stamp it out. Anything was no longer a possibility.

“Stop changing our history,” she pleads.

Her begging doesn’t make her weak. Not at all.

“Stop shaping it to serve whatever purpose you’re trying to find right now.

Just let me in . Make space for me. Just a fraction.

I know I own your heart. Mine belongs to you.

But your head is different. You’ve pushed me out. Let me live there again.”

She might as well ask me for the universe, but fuck if I don’t want to rip down the very stars and hand them to her.

I’ll never take her for granted. I know that someone from the outside looking in would say that’s exactly what I’ve done.

That I’ve abused her trust and been an asshole.

The latter would be correct. I was an asshole, but I’ve never lied to her.

I told her straight right after I got back home from the hospital after my accident.

I didn’t see a future. I knew she deserved better, and life had just shoved irrevocable proof in my face.

That’s honestly how I felt. It’s how I thought. It’s how I saw everything. It was black and white.

Bronte’s like a river, though.

She’s worn me down with her steadily flowing waters, worn away at my doubts, my protests, even my self-hatred.

Her hand slips to the back of my neck and clasps tight around my nape. “We could go anywhere. You don’t have to live with all those ghosts.” You could come live with us. We could build a house on my parents’ land. Buy some of it for ourselves.”

“Sell my ancestor’s land?” I choke, the mere idea sacrilegious.

It doesn’t matter that I hate living there.

It’s not about the fallow fields or the junk lying around in piles or scattered like broken thoughts.

It doesn’t matter what kind of memories remain there to haunt it.

Ghosts. Yeah, it’s filled with those. “It’s a part of me. It’s who I am, even if I hate it.”

“Then we’ll live there, and I’ll spend every single day fighting your demons for you.” There’s no doubt that Bronte, with her constancy, her spirit, her resoluteness and single minded devotion, would do just that.

The problem has always been, how can I ask her to?

That’s what I can’t just get over.

It’s been eating at me since I was fourteen.

I stopped asking why me? When Bronte could have picked anyone.

I just accepted that she wanted me, but it was me I couldn’t give acceptance to.

It was myself who I couldn’t love the way she did.

Bronte is so special. My greatest fear is that I’ll drag her down.

I’ll diminish her light. I’ll take the vital parts of her and won’t be able to love her enough and she’ll disappear right in front of me.

I’m damaged goods, I was always damaged goods, but the accident brought it home that pretending to be otherwise was pointless.

“Until you wear yourself out, and tear yourself apart? Until you regret wasting the best years of your life on me and a place where nothing happy or good can last?” My throat is all thorns.

I push the words past, scrape them over my tongue, and bleed them out anyway. “That’s like planting flowers in shit.”

“Plants grow well in shit, dumbass,” she fires back.