Scars of Yesterday (Sons of Templar MC Book Book 8) Read online

  None of that.

  He had been my anchor, so without him, I was floating around this place. Of course, all of the women in attendance made it their mission to make sure I was never left alone, not for a second. You would’ve thought they’d coordinated it. They probably had.

  But the kids were happy.

  More than happy. They were ecstatic at the welcome they got, at seeing all of their friends in one place. A place bursting with memories of their father. I had been worried and watchful at first, thinking being there might trigger them, that going might somehow be a huge step back. But it was easy to forget just how resilient kids were. They were so fragile in so many ways, yet they healed quicker than us. They played. Ate. Played some more.

  They were currently cuddled up on the huge sofa in the common room of the clubhouse watching Moana with all the kids. And Lucky who was also in there because it was his favorite movie.

  Me on the other hand?

  Yeah, I did not handle the night well.

  Better than I thought I would, though.

  But not well.

  “You look like you need this.”

  I glanced up from where I’d been staring into space. Somehow, I’d managed to go off on my own, staying for an extended amount of time without some worried friend coming to make sure I wasn’t too deep in the well of grief after being back at the club for the first time since my husband died.

  Until now.

  The owner of the voice was wearing a cut and was extending a muscled arm to me with a beer in hand.

  I took the beer because I did really need it. Vodka would’ve been more welcome, but I was thinking I’d probably find myself in the middle of an intervention if I started drinking that. Everyone here was totally on board with drinking to solve problems, to celebrate, and to drown sorrows. But straight from the bottle might be construed as a cry for help, even with this crowd.

  “Thanks,” I said, not smiling or letting my tone sound friendly or inviting.

  Not something that I’d usually done, prior to Ranger’s death, at least. I used to be the welcoming committee for the Sons of Templar. Evie was the one who did all the intimidating, she was great at it, using her practiced eye to measure each new patch or new girlfriend entering through the gates. If you passed Evie’s inspection, you’d have her loyalty for life. And it could be pretty damn daunting going through all of that, and being one of the few women who had been with the club for as long as I had, I knew that for sure. Rosie had been with the club since birth, so she could also speak to how intimidating Evie could be. And Rosie, she wasn’t exactly the welcoming committee either. She was the party girl usually looking to cause more trouble than all of the members combined. Which she usually succeeded in doing.

  So yeah, there was me. I wasn’t intimidating nor was I the party girl looking to cause trouble. No, I was just the girl who fell in love with a guy who ended up patching into one of the most notorious clubs in the country. And most of the guys were just... guys at the end of the day. Guys who more than likely had killed people, who broke the law on an almost daily basis and had no problem talking with their fists.

  Those guys had also been my family for a long, long time. But now my family was broken. Severed. Like someone had taken a hacksaw to an arm, the cuts jagged, messy and ones that would never heal. It was still bleeding, and I didn’t yet know how to function without that missing part of me. I didn’t know who I was to the club now that my Old Man was buried and rotting.

  So I didn’t smile at the unfamiliar face who was offering me a beer and smiling.

  He had a nice smile too. Genuine. Something that only came with youth. And he was young for sure. Maybe five, even ten years younger than me. As hard as these guys lived, their age never really showed on their faces. The assholes. Then again, it didn’t really show on us women either, thanks to all sorts of expensive face creams, Botox and a lot of orgasms.

  The man in question did not take my not so subtle hint that I didn’t want company and sat down across from me.

  I pursed my lips in annoyance and lifted my beer, purposefully taking a long sip so he didn’t try to talk to me.

  Apparently, this did not dissuade him as he casually sipped his own beer, watching me in a way that didn’t feel uncomfortable.

  He was hot.

  That was a given.

  It seemed the Sons of Templar liked to patch in badasses who could also make a mint in male modeling. Though none of them would do such a thing for any kind of money. Except maybe Lucky. He wouldn’t do it for the money, though. He’d do it for the attention.

  My beer fairy was no different. He was tall, although not as tall as someone like Bull, but you’d have to be a basketball player to have that honor. Muscular in a bulky way, everything sculpted, including his biceps straining the fabric of his tee.

  One of his arms was covered in tattoos travelling all the way up to his neck, the other completely bare. His hair was a light blond, mussed at the top of his head in that artful way that surely took longer than it had for me to do mine. Granted, I’d just thrown mine up into a messy bun because with two kids, you get the choice of doing your hair or makeup, never both. Unless you were superheroes like Gwen and Amy. Or weren’t a single mother like me.

  Which was what I was. A widowed single mother. The title burned on my chest like a scarlet letter.

  This man with the artfully mussed hair, tattoos, muscles, piercing blue eyes and a slightly crooked nose hadn’t noticed this label, somehow.

  He had an open face. I didn’t know how to explain it other than that. Sure, he had all the ingredients to a biker badass, but something about his face—wrinkle free and young—was open and friendly.

  I narrowed my eyes. “Why are you sitting here?” I asked, a bite to my tone.

  Now, many of these men were well practiced in menacing glares, in deadly threats and general airs of danger. But us women were also well versed at ways in which to make even them go back on a motorcycle boot.

  Not this guy, though. No. In the face of my scathing tone he just grinned.

  Grinned.

  Showing straight, white teeth, showing me that he was definitely a man who smiled often.

  “Why wouldn’t I sit here?” he quirked a brow. “You look like you need company. I’m new here, haven’t seen you around. Wanted to introduce myself.”

  “I don’t want company,” I shot back, taking another sip of my beer. Even though I had the whole dead husband pass, a part of me recoiled at being so rude to a perfectly nice and perfectly attractive stranger.

  “Because you lost your husband a while back, and this is your first time back at the club, so you wanted to escape all the well-meaning women and men currently watching us both like hawks?” he asked conversationally.

  I blinked at him. The man with the eyes, the open face and easy smile. I was used to people tiptoeing around me. That’s what you did with widows. You treated them with care, even though there was no point because there was no way to care for broken things. All I craved was for people to treat me like my husband wasn’t dead so maybe I could pretend he wasn’t for a hot minute.

  But here was this guy, coming and saying all this shit within a minute of meeting me.

  “Yeah, because of all that,” I murmured.

  My eyes flickered to the large group of partygoers, and like the man had said, more than a few eyes were pointed in my direction.

  “So you know all of that, and you still decided to come over here?” I continued.

  “I did.”

  I waited for more. There was nothing more. Just him sipping his beer and sitting in what looked like content silence.

  That annoyed me. For whatever reason.

  “You can leave now,” I grumbled.

  “I haven’t even introduced myself,” he replied, not reacting to the ice in my tone.

  I frowned. Wasn’t it the duty of all the men who had welcomed me in their alpha male way earlier tonight to seize any—seemingly unatt
ached—member of the opposite sex communicating with me and tell him that I was off limits?

  Or at least for one of my friends to come and try to protect me. Although their eyes kept flickering, no one moved toward us.

  “Yes, well you do seem to have me at a disadvantage since you know not just my name but all of my tragedies,” I said, suddenly curious about the young, attractive, far too friendly young man who had decided to chat with me despite his chances of getting a shiner—at best—for even talking to me.

  “You’re right,” he nodded, taking a pull of his beer. “It’s only fair I share some tragedies with you.”

  He put his beer on a table then turned his body, giving me his full attention. It was oddly unnerving. “My dad left the second my mom got pregnant with me. He wasn’t into commitment. Or fatherhood. Or a life that wasn’t lived completely on his terms.”

  He shrugged. “Or at least that’s what I remember my mom telling me. She died when I was six, so I don’t have a bunch of memories. She didn’t have extended family that wanted to take on a six-year-old, so I went into the system. Just missed being attractive enough for a rich, barren couple looking to adopt. So I bounced around foster homes for the next ten years. I’d say I ran away, but running makes it sound like someone was chasing me. No one cared enough to chase me. Fell into the crowds that got me fast money and the prospect of prison time. But I didn’t get caught. I was lucky. More than that, I found a talent in the underworld. Many talents. Got enough of a reputation that I ran in the same circles as the Sons of Templar MC. Liked the idea. I was eighteen years old. Riding bikes, livin’ free. Yeah. Liked the idea. Liked the life. The brotherhood. Family.” He paused, rubbing a hand down his handsome face. “Went fine for a long time. Better than fine. I was a kid who didn’t know shit about brotherhood, certainly not freedom. Not to mention the money that we made. More than I’d ever seen.”

  He glanced back at the clubhouse. “Didn’t bother me at first. The illegal shit. I wasn’t scared of prison. Sure as fuck wasn’t scared of death. And I liked breaking the rules. The law. Sticking it to the man. See, I’d spent my whole life taking orders. Got no say in where I went, who I lived with. So yeah, had enough anger at the world to feel like I was doing some good.

  Probably wouldn’t have even left the charter if Gunner, my best friend, hadn’t died. His Old Lady too. Drugs. Bad shit.” He ran his hand through his hair. “Woke me up. Made me question shit. Look at the future. I’d like an Old Lady. Kids. Never want to let go of the patch, the club is my life. I was already considering requesting a transfer someplace new when I heard what this chapter was doin’. . But Washington charter had been my family for over a decade. Didn’t have it in me to just leave. Then the war happened, the one that took your Old Man. Saw it as my opportunity to help rebuild. And here I am.”

  “Here you are,” I agreed, slightly dumfounded by all the information he’d dumped on me.

  All of the men in the club had pasts, some uglier than others, but all dark enough to push them toward this life. If you’d been here as long as I had, you might know about some of it, maybe even most of it. But never all of it. That was reserved for each man’s Old Lady. And it took a lot to get them into the sharing kind of mood.

  Yet here was this guy, laying out his past honestly to a complete stranger.

  “Kace,” he said.

  I blinked.

  “My name. Kace. Figured I should’ve said that first, but then again, I’m not exactly a man who’s known to do what he should.” He winked, got up and walked away.

  Just like that.

  Okay. That just happened.

  He just came over and spilled his entire life story, unfiltered and completely honestly. Purely because he thought that him knowing my history—only the facts, definitely not with any of the personal details he’d told me—and he thought it was unfair for us to be on uneven ground.

  Who the actual fuck was this guy?

  I didn’t have time to think about that, because I was already watching the women leave their respective Old Men to converge on me and demand to know why I was talking to a man. A single, hot, younger man at that.

  Not that it was like that. But it didn’t matter. I couldn’t have that conversation. That attention. I was emotionally tapped out.

  So I did what any sensible, adult woman would do in my situation. I ran away. I walked quickly, avoiding all their meaningful looks and ‘come here’ gestures. The kids were still glued to the movie, Lucky included. I kissed Lily’s head on the way past and winked at Jack, doing my best to look like I was holding it together.

  I wasn’t even sure where I was going. The bathroom was out. There was at least a ninety percent chance that one of the women, if not more, would follow me in there, thinking I was either having some kind of breakdown or needed to talk about the interaction with... Kace.

  The hallway was empty, thankfully, most of the doors to the rooms closed. Ranger had never had one of those rooms, not with us being back together when he patched in. He never lived that bachelor life that so many of the men had, the life a few were still living.

  But there were plenty of nights when we’d utilized an empty room.

  Which was what I was looking for. An empty room where I could get my bearings. Could take a breath and decompress.

  “Oh shit, sorry!” I squeaked, opening a door and not finding an empty room.

  Nope.

  I found Ashley, pressed up against the wall, half dressed. Wire, who had been pressing her up against the wall, was also half dressed.

  They both detached as soon as I opened the door. Although I felt bad for interrupting, I couldn’t control the smile that spread across my face.

  Ashley was the only one in our group who had not been claimed by an alpha male biker. Many had tried. They’d be mad not to. She was beautiful, in an original, unique way. Ashley favored the sixties, always dressing like she’d just stepped out of that decade. Hair always perfect, makeup... perfection. I’d never seen her look anything less than perfect.

  Until now.

  She’d told us all that she was not interested in being with a biker. Not interested in a relationship.

  But she was most definitely interested in being with particular a biker.

  “I’ll just... leave you to it,” I chuckled, realizing I was still standing there, and neither of them had said anything. “As you were.” I nodded my head, backing out.

  The door closed quietly behind me, then I returned the way I came. No way was I going to risk opening any other doors. At least my head had cleared some from that shock.

  Wire had been with the club for years now, but he was different than most of the other patches. Sure, he was just as badass as everyone else, could handle himself in any situation, but his battleground was mostly in the virtual world. He’d emerged at parties every now and then, shared a beer and a burger, maybe even engaged in a conversation or two, but mostly he was working on computers, doing what, half the time the club didn’t know.

  He’d been the topic of many cocktail nights, each of us wondering when he’d find a woman. If he’d ever find one. Everyone had agreed he wasn’t gay, since we’d heard he entertained club girls on a somewhat regular basis.

  Ashley had been present for many of those discussions, and I realized now, she had stayed rather quiet.

  “Lizzie!”

  I turned toward the familiar voice. Ashley was rushing down the hallway, buttoning up her dress. She always looked impeccable, pressed and perfect. Right now, however, her lipstick was smudged, she was rumpled, disheveled and definitely had make out hair going on.

  I liked that for her.

  I stopped just short of the corner that would lead us back to the common room.

  “Hey, you didn’t have to get dressed on my account,” I grinned. It was fake, but I wanted it to be real.

  She did not return the grin. Her pretty face was painted with worry.

  “Do you think you could keep that,” she nodded
her head backward, “between us?” There was a twinge of panic to her voice.

  I tilted my head, curious as to why she was so desperate to keep this under wraps. But it wasn’t my business. She wanted it kept quiet for a reason. And in a group that knew everyone’s business, I could understand her wanting... whatever that was with Wire without having to label it.

  “Of course, sweetie,” I replied.

  Her shoulders sagged in relief. “Thank you,” she murmured.

  “For what it’s worth, you two are super cute together.”

  Her eyes flared. “We aren’t together,” she snapped.

  Oh, yes they were. She obviously wasn’t ready to admit that. but this totally had the makings of a Sons of Templar courtship. Their story was going to come out sooner rather than later.

  I held up my hands in surrender. “Okay, I won’t say anything else. You can trust me.”

  She smiled weakly. “Thanks. I definitely can’t trust myself.”

  “Oh sure you can, babe. You’re just a little scared of what your instincts have to say. I get it.” I leaned in to kiss her cheek before walking back to the common room. It was time to take my babies home.

  Chapter 6

  One Week Later

  I was exhausted, frustrated and covered in sweat. So, of course, that’s when a Harley pulled into my driveway.

  Not just any Harley.

  One with Kace on the back.

  No, it couldn’t have been one of my very married, very committed to their wives, friendly neighborhood bikers. It had to be the young man who’d made somewhat of an impression on me.

  It wasn’t like I’d spent the whole week thinking about him or that we’d had some kind of spark. That’s probably how it would’ve gone in a romance novel—that’s what I was writing in my ‘not’ book, at least. But in this life, all I could think about every moment of the day was how much I missed my husband. Trying to figure out how I could act like I wasn’t in total and utter agony. How I could hide that I was absolutely terrified that I hadn’t healed, not one bit. So I hadn’t been thinking about any kind of spark or connection between Kace and I. We didn’t have one.