Page 34 of Buried

I walked over to the grill to flip the burgers and turn the hot dogs. Sam followed me. “You won’t know unless you try. Adelaide went through her own shit, and she still let me close.”

“Adelaide is different from Reina, River.”

I looked over to where the two women were laughing at something together. Adelaide placed her hand on her belly rightas I saw Jaxon move, and a small smile twitched at my lips. She had a second sense for when he was about to kick or hit her belly.

“Just give it a try, Sam,” I suggested as I closed the lid back on the grill and moved over to check on Axel, who was sleeping peacefully in his pack ‘n’ play.

“River!” a woman loudly exclaimed, making me jerk my head up. A blonde woman was making her way over to our table, her heels sinking into the soft dirt. She launched herself at me and wrapped her arms around my neck as soon as she was close enough. I narrowly avoided her trying to kiss me.

Of course, having a moment of fucking peace was impossible.

With a growl, I pried her off of me, scowling down at her. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” I snapped at my ex-wife as I crossed my arms over my chest, glaring down at her.

“I told you that I was coming back to town to make things right between us, River,” she told me with a pout. I only arched an unimpressed brow at her. I had never gotten a text or a phone call. If I had, I’d have told her to keep her ass wherever the fuck she was at. “You told me okay, so here I am.” She waved her hands around her with a beaming smile.

I shook my head at her. “You had the wrong number, Lindsey,” I informed her. I jerked my head in the direction of Adelaide, who was helping a customer, but I could tell she wasn’t really paying attention to them. Her body was tense. Clearly, she was aware of what was happening behind her, and I hated that my fucking crazy ex-wife was the reason why my woman’s mood soured. “Because even if you’d had the right number, I would have told you to keep your ass right wherever the hell you ran away to when you signed your name on those divorce papers.”

Hurt flickered across her face at my words, but I was unbothered. Lindsey and I had been a young-and-dumb mistake—nothing more.

Adelaide stepped up beside me, looking Lindsey up and down, taking in her dyed, blonde hair and make-up-caked face. Lindsey was slim, and she had obviously toned up over the years. She looked a hell of a lot different from the young, eighteen-year-old girl that I had married all those years ago.

But she didn’t compare to the woman at my side—never would be able to. Adelaide was it for me.

“Who the fuck are you?” Adelaide demanded, her beautiful, brown eyes flashing dangerously.

“River’s wife,” Lindsey smugly retorted.

I opened my mouth to correct her, but Adelaide beat me to it. “Lie one more time, and I’ll knock your teeth down your fucking throat,” Adelaide snapped at her. Lindsey’s eyes widened at her words, fear flashing in them as her face paled. I smirked, my cock gaining interest in the confrontation now. It was so fucking hot when Adelaide made people afraid of her. “Now, who the fuck are you?” Adelaide repeated.

“River’s ex-wife,” Lindsey corrected herself. I wrapped my arm around Adelaide’s waist, leaning down to press my lips to her temple. She relaxed a little.

“River doesn’t want you here, and I sure as hell don’t, so turn the fuck around and go back to wherever the fuck you came from,” Adelaide told her.

“And who the fuck are you?” Lindsey demanded, surprising me with the curse word that came out of her mouth. The old Lindseywould have never even dreamed of speaking like that, and she had always hated that I did. It was one of the biggest causes of our fights. She wanted me to change, to be a gentler kind of man, and I refused to.

The woman I fell in love with wasn’t supposed to make me change my entire personality. She might change me just enough to make me a better man, but not an entirely different person. Lindsey wanted me to be someone new, someone that wasn’t me.

Someone Adelaide wouldneverask me to be. She took me as I was.

“Adelaide is my woman, and she’s the mother of both of my kids,” I told her, thinking of how much of a mother she was to Axel, even though she wasn’t even blood-related to him.

Lindsey looked down at Adelaide’s belly, and her face went pale again. Me never wanting kids had been one of the many reasons we’d divorced. We both had so many conflicting views after we signed our marriage certificate that our marriage hadn’t lasted very long at all. She wanted kids, a happy marriage with a house surrounded by a white picket fence, and nine-to-five jobs.

I was never that kind of man, and I never would be, though Adelaide had changed my mind about never wanting kids. I wanted a house full of kidswith her, and I was already on the hunt for a house big enough for the number of kids that I wanted with her.

Another thing Lindsey could never wrap her head around was that I lived and breathed the club. I was an outlaw through and through. Adelaide understood that, and she took to her role wellas my old lady. She was a fucking natural at it all, and my club loved her, fucking worshiped the ground that she walked on.

“River…” Lindsey spoke up, her voice trembling, and I saw her blink back tears. “I—I thought?—”

“People change, Lindsey,” I informed her. “And you and I would never work out, even if I gave you everything you wanted because then, it would have just made me miserable. You could never embrace this life. You hated it way too much. You were demanding too much from me, and I couldn’t give you everything that you wanted.”

“I just wanted some of your time, River,” Lindsey choked out.

I shook my head at her. “I couldn’t give you as much as you wanted,” I reminded her. “You wanted all of it, and my life revolved around the club. Hell, it still does.”

Adelaide reached down and gently squeezed my hand before she went back to the table, where a small line was forming for food. I watched her as she smiled and laughed with the customers, her pretty face lighting up. “Her, River?” Lindsey asked, drawing my eyes back to her bitter face. “She’s nothing like the kind of women you normally settle for.”

I looked back over at Adelaide for a moment before I looked back down at Lindsey. “She’s everything I want in a woman and more, Lindsey. She’s fucking remarkable. She knows the club life, and sheembracesit. The guys love her, and they worship the ground that she walks on. She understands the role I play as the president. She’s strong, and she doesn’t crumble under the pressure that’s put on her as my old lady.” I shook my head. “You couldneverbe evenhalfof the woman that Adelaide is in my eyes.”

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