Page 127 of Beautifully Reckless

This isn’t just about protecting her. This isn’t just about friendship. Hell, it’s not even about lust.

Abbey is quickly becoming the very air I breathe.

“No need to apologise, Angel. I just need to learn your triggers so I don’t fuck up again.”

“I’m sorry,” she whimpers this time, squeezing my neck tighter. “I don’t want to be like this.”

Gritting my teeth, my rage bubbles just beneath the surface. I need to find those motherfuckers. Hunt them down and kill them, so I can bring my Angel some fucking peace.

“Hey.There’s nothing wrong with you. You hear me?” I rasp, my voice laced with fire. “You’re so fucking strong for surviving what you have. And look how hard you’ve been fighting to protect your baby. As far as I’m concerned, you’re a fucking warrior.”

Slowly, her death grip around my neck eases, and she shifts back just enough to look into my eyes.

“I don’t feel like a warrior.”

Reaching up, I stroke some of her pink-tinged hair off her face.

“I wish you could see yourself through my eyes,” I tell her, my voice rough with truth. “You’d never doubt it again.”

“I wish I could too,” she whispers, “I’d like to feel as strong as you say I am.”

My chest fucking aches at the disbelief in her tone. She really doesn’t see it. Doesn’t see the power she carries with every breath.

But I do. And I’ll keep reminding her, every chance I get.

Deciding I want to talk to her properly, I walk us over to a large boulder by the water and sit my arse down, adjusting her on my lap so she’s facing me.

“Let me ask you this,” I ask, soaking in her caramel orbs and the uncertainty I see in them. “What was it that changed in your life that made you start fighting back?”

She frowns, slowly shaking her head. “I didn’t fight back.”

My brows hitch.

“You don’t think what I walked into that night in your bedroom, covered in your own blood, and holding a fucking lethal shard of glass fully prepared to attack, wasn’t fighting back?”

Her frown deepens, her gaze dropping to my chest as she thinks over this.

“Something changed, Angel. Because for months, you endured what your family did. You endured that fuckwit. You endured what his dead-men-walking mates did to you.”

“Well… I couldn’t let them near my baby,” she deadpans, and I nod.

“Exactly. You stayed all that time. Took the pain. Lived in it. But the moment the pain of knowing you couldn’t let them near your baby was greater than what you’d already endured, you started fighting back.”

She blinks a few times, her frown returning. “I couldn’t even do that right. I still needed help, I—”

“Needing help doesn’t make you weak, Abs.” I cut her off, not wanting her to fall into that spiral. “And look at how far you’ve come. You don’t need to swing fists or wield a weapon to be strong. You just need to keep fighting. Just like a fucking warrior.”

For a long moment, she just stares at me, like she’s trying to see past my eyes and into the soul behind them.

“Did I marry a poet?”

Her words catch me off guard, and a laugh escapes me, the rumble of it enticing her lips to kick up too.

“No one’s ever called me a fucking poet before, Angel.”

She casually shrugs a single shoulder.

“I’m starting to think all you biker men are secret poets, if those wedding vows are anything to go by.”

---