Page 88 of The Fates We Tame

Foam spills out of the side of Theo’s mouth as he chuckles, then spits. “Fair. Brush and then finish your thoughts.”

Theo rinses his own mouth, then rubs circles on the bottom of my back while I brush mine.

It’s intimate.

Reassuring.

As soon as I’m done, he kisses me. “Toothpaste never tasted better,” he says. “I’ll give you another minute.”

I appreciate the privacy to finish up, and then I go join him in bed. “So, this is our bed.”

He flops back against the pillows. “Feels like I picked a good mattress.”

“Better for sleeping with all those topless women?”

Theo tugs me to him and chuckles. “Jealousy looks good on you. Wait, switchblade—we’re jumping all over the place with this conversation. You said you were thinking about what your brother said. About how you never ran and always fought. Tell me more about that.”

I place my head on his chest, and his fingers drag lazily up and down my spine. “Just that. From the pictures I saw, I enjoyed the life. And from what my brother said, I was a willing participant in it. And there was something utterly familiar about holding the switchblade. So, if all those things were true and assuming I’m the old me who knew what I was doing, who was okay being married to this man, why on earth did I run so recklessly that it almost killed me?”

“I don’t know, Sparrow. But I’ll tell you this: You were interesting before. But you are even more interesting now.”

I look up at Theo, and he wiggles down the bed so we are face-to-face.

“Yeah. Watching you flip my blade around gave me the fixings of a boner.”

I laugh. “You’re weird.”

His lips find mine. They aren’t especially gentle, and my entire body clenches in excitement. I slip my knee up over his thigh. “Nope, just happen to be falling for my wife a little more each day. I don’t think that’s a bad thing.”

He’s falling for me.

My heart skips a beat, and a band of excitement squeezes my chest.

My husband is falling for me.

But there is another feeling I must confess before I admit it to him.

“But what if I’m a bad person, Theo?” I say, voicing the fear I’ve been feeling since I spoke with my brother.

“What?” Theo cups my cheeks. “How are you a bad person?”

“I don’t know. I feel like I had a morality reset. I came to in a hospital. I’ve watched movies and had therapy for over a hundred days straight to get here. Nature versus nurture. I became what I was because I grew up in a Cosa Nostra family. I may have done things that are hard to reconcile right now. What if I’m a bad person? What if my memory comes back and I’ve killed people and been involved in horrible things and?—”

Theo’s lips crush mine. His hands pull my body tight to his. I feel his cock swell between us, and even with the fears rattling through my body, his presence cuts through it all.

“I’m the medic for an outlaw motorcycle club. I’m a one-percenter. You don’t get that patch for shits and giggles. It’s a life I was born into because my father was an Outlaw before me. But it’s a life I chose because I patched in when I didn’t need to. And you were born into a life too. And I don’t know whether you enjoyed it or had to make the best of it. But I’m never going to judge you for what you did then, Soph. This life requiresa backbone. It requires making decisions the rest of the world won’t make because of who we are and what we do. If anything, it reassures me that our lives will mesh together well.”

“When you put it like that…”

“Plus, I’m starting to think it’s all fated. How we met. Why we were both there at the same time. We both have brothers, both belong to an outside-the-law family. Heck, my road name is Switch, and today we found out you’re handy with a switchblade. There’re too many coincidences for it to be anything other than fate.”

“Aren’t you worried fate has us on a path of no return?”

Theo shakes his head. “If that’s fate’s plan, then we’re going to have to tame it because I can’t help but believe this leads to anything other than something real fucking good.”

23

SWITCH