Page 78 of Crow

“Attracted to shiny things.” Her laughter, though it’s small and shaky, is still glorious music. “I didn’t take the name Crow for the birds. I took it because I love black.”

“Yeah I get that. But that first night I saw you, I wasn’t just attracted to you. I thought you were hot, obviously, but I wasn’t drawn to you because you’re gorgeous. I wanted to be free as well, but I had no idea how to do that. I was trapped, and you made it so easy to leave. I never could have done that if you hadn’t stolen me from my cage so that I could fly with you.”

“Speaking of flying.” I nod at the bike. She always has an extra helmet in her car, in case we go for a ride after her shift. “I’ll get your brain bucket, and we’ll ride together, both of us soaring in the wind, wild and free.”

“Not wild. We belong to each other.”

She’s right. We’ll still have many demons to slay, but a whole horde lies behind us.

I find her keys in her bag and get her helmet, locking the car back up after. I fit it over her hair, doing up the chin strap for her. She waits for me to get on my bike and kick it into a roaring thunder. She trembles as all that power rolls through the pavement at her feet, and again when I help her onto the back, and she locks her arms around me.

“You know how we weren’t sure what getting married meant?”

I stroke her ring finger, the gold band smooth and warm, her heartline pulsing right beneath the metal. I fold my hand over hers, ring to ring, heartline to heartline.

“I think I might like to just keep on being your wife. I mean, I’m always going to beyours, Crow and Raven’s, but I like the way wife sounds. I like the way it feels. I like the promise of it.”

“Ours. Wife. Promise. Together. Those are good words.”

“Yeah?” She rests her chin on my shoulder, hands splayed on my bare abs.

“Yeah.”

“You’re going to ride like that? A shirtless god of all my dreams, rumbling off into infinity on this gorgeous leather and chrome Harley?”

“I am.” I grasp her leg, squeezing her thigh lightly. “But you forgot one thing.”

“What’s that?” She speaks loudly over the bike’s rumble. It’s summer, so both our brain buckets are old school open.

“You. You’reourride or die.”

I make sure she’s holding on tight before I wheel the bike out of Patti’s parking lot, leaving the diner and the golden glow of its lights behind. Patti’s is the last stop on the highway, the stretch of road that leads to Seattle. There’s a whole lot of nothing for a while, the night dark and peaceful, wrapping around us like a velvet, star studded blanket.

Tarynn’s yells scare the shit out of me at first, until she presses her palm right over my heart. She’s screaming out her pain, her sorrow, her joy, her hopes, her dreams. She’s yelling because it feels damn good to be alive out here, the wind whipping away at us, the air stinging our faces.

She’s yelling because she’s free.

I tilt my throat to the sky and let my voice join hers.

Epilogue

Tarynn

Eighteen Months Later

“What do you think?”

I study the photos that Crow just took of my back with his phone. It has a great camera, and he took them in front of a huge window so there was plenty of natural light.

“I…” I don’t have words, is what I think.

We’ve been working on this backpiece all year. Most people wouldn’t just go for broke like that and do their back first, but most people don’t have a talented, incredible husband who can tattoo them at any given hour. We made our own schedule for this, sometimes tattooing in the middle of the night, other times, early in the morning. There were a few weekend sessions, on Sundays, when I didn’t have class.

Crow mostly does traditional tattoos, though sometimes people can twist his arm and get him to do other styles. I knew that I wanted something nautical, but the ship with the lighthouse in the background, mermaids at the bottom, and rope surrounding it, defied all my expectations. As far as tattoos go, Crow thought it was too token, and it sounds like it is, but the detail he put into the work is breathtaking. Like him, I wanted it in black and gray. I love the way Crow and Raven’s tattoos look against their skin. I’m so pale that Crow told me color would come out vibrant and probably stay that way for a long time, but in the end, I opted to go without, and I’m glad I did.

I wish I could tell him what a masterpiece it is, but instead, all I can get past my thick throat is, “I love it.”

“Yeah? Let’s go bandage you up and then I have a surprise for you.”

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