Page 46 of Serendipity

I heard her contented sigh, and knew I made the right decision. She needed to be treated like a fucking Queen. I needed her to stay. This was just step one.

I turned around and she was surrounded in bubbles, the bath so deep the water touched her chin.

“Oh Sol, this feels so good.” She bent her knees and dipped her head beneath the water, her hair fanning around her head like a mermaid. When she came back up, bubbles dripped from her chin. “I think I’m going to live in this bath,” she said, leaning back and resting her head on the edge of the tub.

I smiled softly, sitting beside the tub near her head. “Hopefully there's room for two, because I love it too.” I rested my head back against the tub, the tips of my hair getting wet.

She reached out damp, warm fingers and stroked them through my hair. “Always room for you,”

she said softly. “Want to tell me about her?”

No. I didn’t really. I wanted the past to remain the past. But I would tell her, because I wanted Serendipity to be a part of my future. I sucked in a deep breath.

“Her name was Laura. She’d been my best friend since I was six when she moved next door to my mother’s house. We lived in a shitty part of town, filled with drug deals and fucking drive-bys, but she was this little ray of sunshine. I even remember the first time I saw her in her front yard. She wore this bright orange dress, and had a doll that looked like it came out of a dumpster. But she had the biggest smile, and it was the first time I ever thought that a girl was anything but a cootie factory.” I huffed out a laugh at the memory. Seeing her had been a revelation. “I’d decided then and there that we should be friends, so I went around to her house and told her parents we were going to be friends.

I was this dirty, underfed kid, and I think they felt sorry for me, because they sent us out the back to

play. That was it for me. I loved her.”

Laura had been everything to me from that point on. “Eventually, we went through elementary and high school together. It was like the plot line of a cheesy teen movie. I pined for her from afar, but fucked anything that walked. She’d tease the shit out of me, and kiss all the jocks. The guys who were the opposite of me. I had a bad attitude and a fucking chip on my shoulder the size of the continental US. Laura got caught up in my bullshit all the damn time, but it didn’t stop me. We’d sneak into bars, clubs, we’d party all night. But we always went home together. I always made sure she was safe.” I clenched my jaw. Yeah. Safe. Except when it fucking counted.

“Anyway, one day I decided we would party at a local biker bar. No bouncers in a fucking biker bar. I thought it would be fine. I would protect her against any fights that broke out. I thought I was fucking king shit, but I was just a dumb kid. Fuck, I wish so bad we’d never gone to that damn bar.

Because a fight didn’t break out. What happened was even worse. She met Judas, and there was more chemistry between those two than a science lab explosion. Judas was the son of the MC’s Vice President. He had this big fucking friend, Goliath, and before I knew it, Judas had whisked Laura off her feet. They started dating, and we started going to that bar more and more.”

I shook my head. “We went so often I’d eventually become a Prospect, just so I could hang around. They dated for years. We graduated, but neither of us went off to college. Laura because she’d fallen in love with Judas, and me because I refused to leave the one woman I loved above all else buried in an old school MC where women were more property than people.”

As I spoke, Dippy’s fingers traced up and down my forehead, down over my cheeks, as if she was memorizing my face. “Eventually, I wanted to patch in so I could keep an eye on her. Besides, I’d gotten kind of fond of Judas and Goliath. The other Prospect that year was this fucking young ass punk tattooist who thought he was king shit too, and built like a fucking brick house. Cain. Same year we patched in, Judas proposed.”

A small smile curled my lips when I remembered that moment. “Laura said no. I don’t know who was more shocked at that moment. Me or Judas. Goliath was beginning to watch her like she was the fucking sun, and Cain doted on her like she was his. Anyway, Laura said she loved Judas, but a part of her heart belonged to me. I’m pretty sure my heart stopped beating when she said those words. But then she added that she had feelings for Goliath and Cain too. It was a fucking mess.”

Those few months were fucking nuts. I’d already patched into the Club, my loyalty was supposed to be to them first and foremost. But everyone knew that my loyalty was to only one person. To Laura.

“But Judas, he loved her more than himself. More than the Club. More than his Old Man, who threatened to disown him if he chased ‘the whore’. His dad was a piece of shit.”

Fuck, I’d hated that old bastard. When he’d died not long after Laura had turned Judas’ marriage proposal down, it had seemed like fate. I rested my arm along the edge of the tub, and tilted my head back until I was almost hanging upside down. Almost all my hair was wet now.

“Anyway, Judas took the Presidency. He’d been groomed for it, and it only took a few beatdowns to get the job. Once he was Pres, he made Goliath his enforcer. Back then he was mean, but he wasn’t a monster yet. Judas and Goliath beat the shit out of me and Cain, then Judas told us that he was going back to propose to Laura, and that if she wanted to love us too, then he’d allow it.”

Fuck, that was funny as hell now, but it hurt like a bitch at the time. Goliath threatened to gut us if we so much as made her cry once. I’d believed him too.

“She’d said yes, and we’d all moved into one big house, and lived a moderately happily ever after for a few years. There were fights sure, more than a few slammed doors and black eyes, but eventually we were so fucking happy. Then she got pregnant, and had Max and I thought I was going

to burst with how perfect my life was.”

I swallowed hard. God, even though it was so long ago now, sometimes I missed Laura like an ache in my soul. I wasn’t trying to replace Laura with Serendipity; how I felt about them was completely different but the end result was the same.

“Then it all went bad. Laura died. So did the baby. And we were no longer the men we were. We became the men you know now. Her death, their death, it broke us.” My voice was shaky, and that huge dead lump in my chest ached at the memory of that pain.

I tensed, waiting for the inevitable question, and Dippy didn’t leave me waiting for long. “How did they die?”

I shook my head then, shifting until I was kneeling so she could see my eyes. “That’s not my story to tell. Needless to say it was tragic and violent and it was the death of everything good in the world for so, so long. But not anymore.”

I leaned forward and kissed her because I needed to kiss her more than I needed to breathe. She kissed me back, her hands fisting the front of my shirt as she pulled me closer. I kissed her like her lips could chase away the painful memories. She pulled me closer, until I slid into the bath with her, the denim of my jeans instantly clinging tightly to my legs. I didn’t care.

I moaned as I thrust my tongue into her mouth, settling my body between her thighs and holding myself up on the edges of the bath. Her back arched so she could kiss me back with just as much heat.

Fuck, so much heat it was a wonder the water wasn’t boiling us both. Her hands gripped the back of my rapidly dampening shirt, her nails digging into my shoulders and one of her ankles hooking around my thigh to pull me harder into the sweet spot between her legs.

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