Page 88 of Rook

She told me the next visiting day, then we said our goodbyes.

I was in such a rush to get home to tell Rook the good news that I’d gotten myself pulled over for speeding.

I honestly didn’t even give the ticket a second thought.

Not until, a few weeks later, it would come back to bite me in the ass.

But at the moment, all I felt was joy as I ran into the clubhouse and threw myself into Rook’s arms, my words tripping over themselves to tumble out.

Rook’s head fell onto my shoulder to hide the glassiness in his eyes as I told him what I—and the nurse—thought.

That his mother was coming back.

That, eventually, he would have her again.

Finished, I turned to Detroit.

“How is your fettuccine alfredo?” I asked.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Rook

From the moment Tessa flew into my arms after going to see my mom for the first time, it was like something finally, I don’t know, clicked with us.

Or, perhaps more accurately, like the walls Tessa put up between us crumbled. And, for once, she didn’t stoop to try to build from the rubble.

When we went back to the apartment after dinner—celebrating with cake we bought from the diner that was nowhere near as good as the one Detroit and Everleigh had made—and sat close on the couch that no one could call it anything other than ‘cuddling.’

We talked more about my mom, about needing to make another collage for her, and bring her more snacks.

Eventually, though, there was no talking.

Because her head angled up to look at me. And I couldn’t stop myself from leaning down and stealing a kiss.

It was just a soft, sweet one. More gratitude and shared happiness than anything heated.

It wasn’t long, though, before our bodies were remembering how much we liked being close, how well we moved together.

It didn’t take long before she was starting to straddle me. Before my hands were reaching to pull her clothes off.

Then all there was in the world was touching, tasting, riding, getting completely lost in each other.

And afterward, bed. Together.

When she woke up in the morning with me behind her, my cock already hard against her, she rocked back into me, let me finger her until she couldn’t take it for another moment, then begged me to slide into her.

We didn’t talk about it as the next few days basically went the same way—sex, meals, work, more sex, and sleep—because I somehow got the feeling that if I tried to make her discuss it, to talk about how much feelings were starting to grow, about how I didn’t really want this marriage to be only on paper anymore, she would panic.

And as close as we were getting, as much like a real couple as we were being, Tessa was still pretty tight-lipped about her past.

Sure, she mentioned her mom. Especially as we talked more about my own because she was visiting her. But Tessa seemed to choose her words very carefully, never mentioning biker clubs except as they pertained to her mother’s addiction. Hell, she never actually told me her mother’s name.

So as horrific as her mother was—and her stories made me want to track the woman down and give her a damn earful—I could only conclude that whatever her past involving the actual clubs and the men in it, was where the most significant amount of her trauma came from.

I wouldn’t pretend to say I knew a lot about how other clubs operated. This was my first one. But Riff and Raff always came back to Shady Valley with stories about the clubs they came across while driving from California to Florida and back again.

And, yeah, some of those places sounded like real hellholes full of true scumbags.

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