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RAVEN

T he house is a standing memorial to Wraith’s wife.

It’s a beautiful single-story home, stone and timber clad. Inside is that soft but luxe country vibe. Unfinished wood, crisp white paint, and black fixings.

There are shoes by the front door that aren’t Wraith’s. Sneakers and a pair of black knee-high boots. But it’s the small stack of dusty baby blankets—placed on the wooden bench that serves as a seat in the mud room—that makes my heart pound.

“Hey, Fen. Wanna watch TV in the den for a little while?” Wraith asks while I take in everything around me.

“Yes. Can I, Mom?”

“It’s Wraith’s house, so Wraith’s rules.”

“Stay here,” Wraith says to me. “Come on, Fen, I’ll get you set up.”

Photos adorn the hall table. Of bikers, of Wraith and his wife and a tiny, tufted-haired baby. A plaster imprint of a baby’s foot sits in between them. And Wraith looks…happy. Genuine, unadulterated happiness pours from him in the images.

“You have a child?” I ask when Wraith returns.

He comes to stand next to me and picks up the picture where he’s holding the baby in his arms while kissing a rosy cheek. “That’s Lottie. My wife was Hallie.” He brushes his fingertip over Lottie’s cheek, and the gesture rewrites everything I thought I knew about this man.

Everything.

What he holds important.

I was confident he didn’t understand what it took to care for a child, but he’s been there himself and understands the sacrifices a parent has to make.

“Where is she?” I ask, even though I have a strong stirring in my gut that I already know the answer.

Wraith takes in a deep breath. “Dead.”

Immediately, I put my hand on his shoulder. “Oh, God. Wraith. I’m so sorry. What happened?”

He puts the picture down. “The short version is they were murdered two years ago.”

The lines on his face aren’t from laughter and joy. They’re the scars of mourning love so violently. Grief has torn this man apart as surely as a hurricane rips through a city. The city can be rebuilt, but it will never be quite the same.

A tear escapes me, and Wraith touches my cheek gently, brushing it away with his thumb. “Don’t cry for me, Blue. Not today, when I’m trying to be a different kind of man.”

I swallow, trying to hold back the flood of feelings I currently have for him. I’m furious at Margie for trying to steal Wraith’s progress back to happiness by telling me to stay away.

“Let’s get you sat down.” He takes my hand and leads me to a stunning open-plan living area, but I find it hard to move on from the conversation in the hallway.

The floor-to-ceiling windows look out over a meadow at the foot of the mountains, taking my breath away.

It’s expansive. Vast. And so pure.

“Sit,” he says when we get to a large soft sofa that surfs the difference between a light brown and pale gray. “I’m gonna get us some drinks. I’ve only got beer or whiskey. Or water?”

“Beer would be fine.”

A stone fireplace sits at one end of the room, and two tan leather armchairs sit opposite the sofa. The thick cream rug is warm beneath my feet.

In the distance, I can hear the droning music of a cartoon TV show Fen likes.

The view helps settle my heart, and I breathe deeply as the clouds scud by. Seattle was never really my style. Too much noise and too many people.

And the constant rain.

This wide-open space does something to ease the ache I feel deep inside my bones.

“I need a rule between us,” Wraith says when he comes back into the room with two beers.

He offers me one, and I take it before he sits down next to me. “What’s that?”

“I’m not here for miscommunication shit. Anything happens to you, you come tell me first. Fucking run to me, if you have to. But we don’t withdraw or let others determine our actions. We talk shit through, even if it’s hard shit. Even if you don’t like what you heard. Even if I’m the one causing your discomfort.”

I can’t help but contrast him to my husband.

It’s none of your business.

Don’t question me.

I don’t want to hear it.

“It’s hard to admit, but what you’re asking for is something I’m unused to.”

Wraith takes a sip of his beer. “I figured. But that’s not how you and I are gonna roll.”

That’s not how you and I are gonna roll.

“That sounds…good.” I twist on the sofa, tucking a knee beneath me.

Wraith places his hand on it, and I feel the warmth of his palm soak through my jeans. “Sounds like Margie threatened you to not say anything, but I’m gonna need you to tell me what she said in your own words.”

“How did you hear about it?”

“One of the prospects overheard your conversation. He knows the score and came to me first, kinda like you should have done.” His words are soft as he squeezes my knee.

“I’m supposed to get paid tomorrow. I didn’t want to upset the apple cart and not get my salary.”

“I’m a silent partner but majority owner in the diner. Ma got into financial difficulties after her husband died, and I pitched in cash after Hallie asked me to bail her out. I’ll make sure you get paid.”

I take a sip of the icy cold beer before repeating everything for him. At this point, I have nothing to lose. I’m not going back to work for her. So, I lay it all out for him.

When I’m done, Wraith holds out his hand. “Phone.”

I grab it from my pocket but pause before giving it to him. “Why?”

“I want to put my number in there.”

“Oh.” I hand it over and watch as he puts it in.

“What name do you want to put in for me?”

I smile. “Shouldn’t you decide that?”

He grins, types for a moment, then closes it before handing it back to me.

Then he grabs his own phone, keys something in, and my phone rings. Two words pop up on the display.

My Man.

And given I’m very much coming around to the idea he might be, the gesture makes me smile, even in the midst of everything going on around us.

“You can change it if you want,” he says.

“I’m still married,” I blurt, terrified it’s going to change the way he sees me.

“You intend to change that?”

“I’ve already started the process.”

Wraith takes my hand and kisses the back of it. “Good.”

“Good? That’s it?”

“You deserve a man who’ll take care of you. If you were my wife, there’d be no way you’d be living in a shitty one room above a hardware store with two towels on rotation.”

“Maybe if I hadn’t married a con man, I wouldn’t have had to run.”

Wraith smiles, then kisses me. “Tell me about him.”

“Can you tell me about Hallie and Lottie first?”

He leans back against the sofa, then looks up at the ceiling. “Hallie was the first person I met in this town. My plan was to drive through, but I stopped at the diner for lunch, and there she was.”

He smiles softly at the memory, and I have a flinch of jealousy. We met in the diner too. Did Wraith compare the two meetings?

But I stop myself from spiraling. Hallie is dead. How can I be envious of a ghost, just because she loved him, and he loved her first?

“She was sweet. Pretty. So, I found myself hanging around the town. One day. Two days. Then a week. Before I knew it, I got myself a job, just so I could stick around. Then I asked her on a date. We got married eighteen months later. Nine months after that, we had Lottie.”

His fingers on the back of the sofa play with my hair as he speaks, spinning locks of it around his finger before releasing it.

“You must have been a happy family.”

He looks at a photograph on the side table. Hallie is grinning at Wraith, who is holding Lottie to his chest. “Yeah. We were. And Lottie. Fuck…she was my everything. Thought I wanted a boy until that little girl was sitting in my arms, looking up at me with eyes just like mine. She was a disaster the first six weeks, always crying. But Hallie had so much patience with her. Watching her with Lottie made me love my wife even more.”

I swallow hard. But I agreed to tough conversations. “Those times are overwhelming and challenging and joyous and terrifying.”

Wraith sighs. “They were. I mean, we weren’t perfect either. I was prospecting, and Hallie didn’t love that I was out all the time. Between work and the club, I had little time left over. But she also understood because her family was Iron Outlaws through and through.”

“What happened?”

“A rival club, the Midtown Rebels MC, tried to come and take our turf. They failed, but not before causing us problems. We took strong action against them. Tanner called Hallie and Lottie ‘collateral.’ It’s part of the reason I can’t stand the fucker. He reduced my family to some disposable asset because we’re a motorcycle club.”

“Oh, God.”

Wraith swallows deeply and looks away for a moment. “I found ‘em. Not telling you all the details because you’ll never get them out of your head.”

Tears sting my eyes. I think of Fen. “I’m so very sorry that happened to you, Wraith.”

He takes a deep breath and another gulp of his beer. “That’s why I freaked out after we spent the night together. It was such a good fucking night. Felt good to come back to my room and find you there. Even better to know you’d tried to stay awake because you cared. Never kissed anyone since Hallie. You were the first.”

“That’s a long time to be celibate.”

Wraith shakes his head. “Never said I was celibate, Blue. Just that I never kissed anyone I hooked up with. And before you start wondering who else I slept with, it doesn’t matter, because they didn’t matter. They filled a need is all. You’re the first I’ve kissed.”

My heart flutters in my chest as my brain tries to tell me that’s a low-bar compliment.

“I woke up that morning feeling so good about fucking everything, just ‘cause I’d slept with you. Like you charged the life back into me. And then I remembered Hallie and felt so fucking disloyal to her. Got myself in a tailspin overthinking shit. Seemed like the easiest thing to do was distance myself from you while I screwed my head back on. It was weakness. Won’t happen again.”

I put my hand on his cheek and hope I come up with the right words to convey what I’m thinking.

But I’m not sure anything I say will be right.