Page 6 of X's and O's

I’d cheered for her when she’d finally found a new job. She’d cheered for me when my parole hearing had been set.

Then talk had turned to the outside world.

Ever since, all I could think about was how I wanted to be in hers.

Not as her prison pen pal, a dirty little secret sheprobably kept from everyone she knew. But as a man. A respectable one with a job and clean clothes and a house.

When I met her, that’s who I wanted to be.

Not the biker I’d once been. Not the prisoner I was now.

Just Levi.

Levi and Violet.

Lynx quit thrusting his hips in my direction. “Hey. What happens if she’s ugly?”

I’d dated my fair share of beautiful women, who were good for riding my cock at a biker party but not much more. Fun when you were twenty-something and just hoping for a good time.

But I wasn’t twenty-something anymore. And I didn’t care what Violet looked like.

Only how she made me feel.

She’d never made me feel like the piece of shit I knew I was. She’d written me letters like I was any other regular man, not one living his thirties out behind the bars of a prison cell.

I already knew that no matter what, I’d think her the most beautiful woman in the world.

Rowe nodded at me, something that looked like respect written all over the guard’s face. “Treat her well. And make sure I don’t see you back in here.”

I nodded, making the promise solemnly.

I was getting out tomorrow.

I was going to get a job and a house and everything else Violet would need.

There’d be no more biker gangs. No more illegal shit.

No more feeding the urge inside me that likedwatching the life drain out of a person who’d screwed my club over.

The line beneath her name became a circle, highlighting it from the rest of the words I’d scrawled across the page.

I was getting on the straight and narrow. And then I was getting my girl.

3

VIOLET

Whatever Paul knocked me out with didn’t last long enough. Because when I woke up from my drug-induced dreams, I found myself with my work uniform in tatters, hanging off my body, my hands tied, and a gag shoved in my mouth.

I wanted the darkness back. Silently begged for it to swallow me whole until he was done with whatever he was going to do.

Paul sat on the armchair across the room, watching me with those devil eyes of his.

I choked on the gag, crying tears of fear.

He smiled at them. “That’s it. Cry for me. Tears are so pretty. You’re not much to look at without them rolling down your cheeks, so keep it up. I like pretty, crying women.”

Bile rose in my throat, and I choked it down, forcing myself to breathe deeply through my nose. I focused on the pain, the stinging gouges in my skin that must have happened when he was cutting off my clothes. I couldn’ttell if they were deliberate or accidental. None were deep enough to need stitches, I didn’t think, but they hurt, nonetheless.