Domino and I watch them pull out and drive off. Then it’s just us.
I bite my lip, not sure if I should keep packing or not. Should I even be moving?
“I get it. I do,” he says.
“Get what?”
He shrugs and pulls his hands out of his pockets, gesturing to my space and then me. “You don’t need a man. You don’t need anyone. You don’t need me.” He says the last bit softer than the rest.
I… don’t know what to say to that. After a moment, I go with “You’re right.” He looks at me, and I continue. “I don’t. I don’t need you. I don’t need anyone.” I look around and see everything I’ve accomplished on my own. I’ve done so much, I really have. I made the choices to get to where I am today. My family’s around, but once I started high school, we just didn’t need one another anymore. I did me, and they let me. It wasn’t neglect; we just never had a need to be in one another’s lives. Some might have an opinion on that, but it worked for us, and I’m okay with how things worked out. We still see one another, but it’s nothing more than a hi or hello and a dinner for the holidays.
Summer and Mack are my closest friends, and they support me, but again, I’ve never needed them to help withanything. I might have talked to them about a few things, but it was more as a sounding board, not asking for advice.
I take a deep breath and look back at Domino. Things started changing that first day we met. I didn’t know it at the time, but I see it now. I see what changes he’s made in my life, and he needs to know that.
“But I do,” he tells me, and my heart stops along with my breath for a second before both pick back up at double speed. “I need you. I need you in the morning, the afternoon, and the night. I need to wake up with you in my arms and fall asleep with you in them. I need to know that when I’m working, you’re safe and working just a few feet away. I need to know that when you fight, you’re going to win because I watched you train, and I stood by and saw each jab and dip you did in the ring. I need to know your metal business is thriving and that the ideas are flowing. I need to know that when you have a bad day, I can make it better. I need to know all of that. I need you. Some guys don’t need the girl, but I’m not like that.”
His words hang in the air between us, the tension thick. I can barely swallow the emotions in my throat, but I manage to before I lick my dry lips to talk.
“You’re right. I don’t need you,” I say again as I walk closer to him. “I can live my life and be fine. Having you in it doesn’t make or break me.”
He sighs heavily, and his head hangs low as I get closer.
“But it will break my heart.” I lift my hand and push his hair back, lifting his head to see his eyes as I tell him the truth. “And I don’t want that. You give me something I can’t find in my shop or in the ring. Those I can do on my own. But what you give me is the want, the heart, to do them. To be the reason I do it. The reasonI get up and the reason I come to bed. Before you, I didn’t even think about it. I was just living. Living in the repeat of life. I thought I was happy. And I cursed you in my mind when I realized it was because of being without you for a small moment that I realized I was just living. It wasn’t happiness, just simply living. Existing. I don’t want that anymore. I’ve tasted what true happiness can be, and I want that. And I’ll fight you every goddamn day to keep it. So if you’re staying here, or going to Kansas, or somewhere else, then I’m coming too. And so help me, if I have to beat your ass and then every member of your club till you all figure it out, I will.”
He grabs my face and pulls me in for a kiss quicker than I can take my next breath and tell him I love him. To tell him everything my heart is urging me to say. But why speak when your lips and hands can do the talking?
I give myself to him and just let him take me as his. When I woke up this morning, I knew I wanted things to change. But only one change. That Domino would be in my life. If that means I have to pack up and move, then I’m doing it. I wasn’t even going to give him the choice. A night filled with thoughts of him not in it was enough to scare me more than anything Henry ever did.
Domino was the backup I never knew I needed or wanted, but I’m happy to have. I won’t give that up for anything. I’ll go down swinging to keep it if I have to. Thankfully, I won’t, if the way he grabs my ass, lifts me, and sits me on the closest table is any indication.
He pulls away and walks to my bay doors, closing each as he speaks. “The boys told you right, though. I am going to Kansas. But only for a few weeks. I told Casper, the motherchapter’s president, that I want the position, officially. I want to run a club, but not just any club. This one.”
“You aren’t dismantling it?” Yeah, the guys weren’t exactly quiet around me after I got rescued and Domino went off to do something at the hospital. Still not sure what it was, but he’ll tell me if he wants to. But while he was gone, the rest of the club was a gossiping wildfire. Everyone was talking at once, and things just started piecing together. They either didn’t see me standing close enough to listen, thought I already knew, or just didn’t care because the club was being disbanded. Either way, I got more information than I probably should have.
He shakes his head. “No. The boys proved me wrong and themselves right all in one night. The night you went missing. Each one had my back to get me my old lady.” He comes back and circles my waist with his arms, pulling me to the edge.
“Who’s your old lady?”
He kisses me again, just a quick peck, and smiles. “I guess we’ve got a lot to talk about.”
“Don’t tell Summer that. She’ll never let us live it down.”
He laughs and I smile, because it sounds so good to hear him be so carefree.
“She cares about you,” he says as he leans in to rub his cheek against my own, and I shudder at the contact. It’s so intimate and yet not all at once.
“Yeah, but she needs to get her own man and stop worrying about what me and mine do.”
“And that’s why you’re my old lady. You call me yours, and I get to call you mine.” He nibbles on my earlobe.
“Don’t care what you call me, as long as I’m the only one getting your dick every night,” I pant as I grind slowly against his growing erection.
“Oh, you really are going to be a menace, aren’t you?” He groans but hip checks me, and we both moan at the contact of his jeans-clad dick trying to push a hole into my own jeans.
“You know you wouldn’t have it any other way,” I say on half a breath before I turn my head and find his lips.
He kisses me back with everything he has, bending me down till I’m lying on the table and my legs are hanging off. He’s tall enough that he doesn’t strain himself at all.
