Page 77 of The Biker and the Loner
“I didn’t…” I glance around, searching for my phone, spotting it a few seconds later on the area rug. It must have fallen off the couch when I fell asleep. I pick it up and check the screen.
Scratch:ON MY WAY HOME. HOPING YOU’RE THERE.
Scratch:REALLY MISS YOU, YAMS.
Hope blooms in my chest. He misses me.He misses me! And I don’t even care that he used that hideous nickname he gave me the night he stalked me at the bar. It feels so special to me now.
“Ley.”
“Hmm?” I look up from the phone, the apprehension slowly leaving me.There’s hope. He misses me.
Draining what’s left of his beer, he drops the empty bottle on top of his travel bag, then fixes his stare on me. “You’re my woman?”
My heart skips a beat. I never thought I’d say this, but I missed that damned question. “Do you still want me to be?”
He looks at me as if I have marble for a brain. “Ley?”
“Yes?”
“Are you my woman?”
I sweep my hair back with my fingers before answering, “Always.”
“Then why, pray tell,” he begins, “are you still over there? Why aren’t you in my arms? Why isn’t your tongue in my mouth? Your legs wrapped around me?”
“Oh…” Those are indeed some legit questions. We’ve been apart for almost five months; I should be all over him. “I didn’t know if you still wanted—”
My words are knocked back down my throat when he crosses the room and cleaves me off the couch, throwing me over his shoulder.
“You didn’t know if I still wanted what? You?” he asks as he strides through the house with me thrown over him like a sack of potatoes. “Is that what you were gonna say?”
“Well, yeah.”
He makes a disgruntled noise in his throat as he starts up the stairs. “Woman, you got any idea what you are to me?”
“No,” I say honestly. “I don’t.”
“Myreason,” he replies with vehemence. “That’s what, Ley. You’re my second chance and my first choice. You’re my reason for change and my reason for more. You’re my strength to survive and my will to live on. You’re my laughter and my pleasure. That’s what you’ve been since that night you gave me the greatest gift I've ever received—you.”
He kicks open our bedroom door. “I guarantee you, if that night didn't happen, I wouldn’t be here right now, I’d be six feet under. ‘Cause up until then, I didn’t have a reason.” He dumps me on the bed and stares down at me with such fierce intensity it makes my heart quake. “You are my reason, Ley. You’ve dug yourself deep inside my heart and now you’re trapped, ‘cause fuck if I’m letting you out.”
Wow. I didn’t know that. Any of that. He’s never told me. Then again, Scratch is a man of action, not of words. And should I zoom in on all his actions since he came back, I’d find more than enough evidence to prove he’s changed. One hundred percent. The fact that he’s traded in his Den of Heathen’s cut is statement enough. He’s done with the old Scratch and ready to start fresh...with me.He’s Landon Michaelson now.
“I love you,” I blurt out. No tact, no preamble, no fancy words like his, and I immediately want to take it back.Yikes!
He chuckles as he hauls off his shirt. “Tell me something I don’t know.”
I glare up at him. “I take it back.”
He scoffs and sits at the side of the bed to unlace his boots. “You can’t take the truth back. That’s not how it works.”
“But it’s not a truth,” I lie. “I was just…”
“Just what?”
“Being nice.”
“Uh-huh.” Done with his boots, he kicks them off, straightens, and proceeds to undo his belt. “Seven years ago, at Ranger’s bottle party, one of the Club Cats fed you absinthe and Grunt asked me to take you home. You told me you were feeling for burgers and fries, so we stopped at Benny’s Late-Night Diner on the way. You stuffed your face and talked my ears off about some stupid werewolf TV show, keeping me away from the two women who were waiting for me back at the party.”
