Page 12 of Living Without

Moving my gaze to the side window, I couldn’t help but think if Nary knew everything, I’d fuck us up in the end anyway.

As if reading my thoughts, Stoke said, “She won’t care. One day we’ll get all the details, and when we do, I know my girl. She’ll stick by you no matter.”

A change of subject was needed, so I asked, “Where we goin’ anyway?”

A smirk touched his lips for a second before a frown came back. “We’re gonna visit the Venom MC.”

“They aren’t gonna say shit we haven’t already asked.”

His smirk was deadly. “They will when we bring force.”

“We goin’ in hard and fast?”

“Fuck yeah. Someone in there has answers, and we’re gonna get them even if we hav’ta take the whole lot out. Fang and Parker are gettin’ us nothin’. So it’s time to bring it up a step.”

“We’d better find somethin’,” I muttered.

“Yeah, brother. We’d better. But, if we don’t, I still need you with your head screwed on. You can let loose when we get her back. Let loose on those who have touched her.”

As we closed in on the Venom compound, I sent Stoke a chin lift. I wasn’t sure if Stoke knew what sort of payback I could deliver. Though, he had seen my work on Malcolm, the dick who’d thought Nary was his. After his attempt to kidnap her, we’d taken him to a holding cell at the Hawks compound in Ballarat. There I proceeded to take my fury out on breaking five of his fingers and givin’ him a split lip after punching the hell outta him. I was sure I even broke a couple’a ribs, along with fracturing his skull.

Even back then, when Nary was only sixteen and I was just about eighteen, I’d had my eyes on her. Who wouldn’t? She was a beauty. My cock hardened every time she stepped into the same room as me. But Christ, I couldn’t go there. She was everything I wasn’t… Though, I had to set everything aside. Shit had to stop happenin’ to her. She didn’t deserve it, and I couldn’t stay back and watch from afar any longer, not when she’d made it perfectly clear she’d wanted me.

Hell.Shewanted me.

Had since she was sixteen.

I wasn’t anything special. Sure, I took care of her, but I treated her like shit. Shaking my head, I ran a hand over my face because thinking of the way I was with her, it chiselled a piece of me away. It fuckin’ hurt like hell when her eyes would dim, when her smile would fade, and yet… she still wanted me.

I’d planned for her never to know what she meant to me. How much I loved her, and had loved her since she fell on me, takin’meto the ground to “protect” me from Malcolm. Hell, to be honest with myself, I’d fallen for her even before then. When I’d first laid my eyes on her.

Never would she know… until now. Until the day I got her back.

I had a lot to make up for, and if she was willing to accept me, flaws and all, I’d start cherishing the ground she walked on. Though, it wasn’t like I didn’t already; she just didn’t know it.

Christ.I was a fool. A fuckin’ idiot to her. So many times.

“Saxon?”

I turn to find Nary, my angel, standing before me and yet even when I want to smile back at her hesitant one, I don’t. My eyes narrow into a glare, and my upper lip rises in a snarl. “What?” I clip out.

We’d been at Dodge’s party at the compound when she’d approached me. I’d clamped my hands into a tight fist whenever I was around her. To Nary, it would look like anger, but it was so I didn’t reach out to claim her, to touch her. So I didn’t drag her close and kiss her sweet lips. She’d moved to Caroline Springs not that long ago and enrolled in uni. Why she’d moved, I had no clue. But I couldn’t think it was because I’d moved there. I wouldn’t let myself contemplate it since I was still doing everything I could to keep her at arm’s length.

“I just wanted to see how you’ve been doing in a new town.”

Smirking, I stupidly reply with, “Good, all new pussy to screw. Been a man’s dream.”

Her shoulders sag, only she quickly stands tall and juts her chin out, glaring at me with her own. “You don’t have to be a dick. I was hoping since we’re in the same town, we could be civilised with each other. I guess I was wrong.”

“You’d be right.”

She let out a sigh and then in a whiplash voice, she says, “Why are you mean to me, Saxon?”

“Name’s Vicious. Use it.” Ignoring her question, I walk around her and quickly out of the room.

She didn’t understand I had to be mean. I had to keep her away because I was poison. A man had to be, if he was the one to kill his own mum.

“You ready?” Stoke asked, bringing me from my thoughts.

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