Page 104 of Knox Unleashed
“You think what?” he asks.
“That I’m not just falling in love with you. I think I’m falling in love with me a little bit too.”
“Maren.” The single word is said roughly, as if he could fit everything he’s feeling into five letters. He releases my face and reaches for my hands.
“I don’t think I’ve ever let myself feel like that before. I felt free, like I was allowed to want things, and, perhaps, just take them if I want them.”
Knox’s hands tighten around mine. “I understand. I understand because I saw her beneath the boathouse. But, also, because it’s how I’ve chosen to live my life. People don’t understand bikers. Ninety percent of the time, people fear us. But the truth is, we scare them because we’re doing what theycan’t. We broke the mold. We don’t let anyone else dictate what that looks like.”
My heart feels like it’s about to burst wide open. “I think that side of you is rubbing off on me.”
Knox huffs. “I don’t know, sweetheart. I’ll take the compliment, but honestly, I think this side of you has always existed and you’ve curtailed her to suit your father. And I’ll take you anyway I can get you, but, man, if I got to wake up to this version of you every day, I’d be the fucking luckiest man on earth.”
Tears sting my eyes. “You would?”
“Yeah. Be my old lady, Maren. Forever.”
Despite not fully understanding what that means, I throw my arms around him. “Yes.”
“You understand what that means to me, right? What it means to you?” Knox asks, pulling back just enough so he can look at me.
I open my mouth, but the truth is, I don’t have a neat answer. It all feels too big to pin down in words. “It means being with you, in your world, in your club.”
He cups the back of my neck and squeezes as he kisses me. “It means, you’re mine, Maren. In every conceivable way, beyond what the laws of this country can offer. It means, you’re the one I want to come home to at the end of the day. You’re the one I want to protect. You’re the one I want to build a life around and with. You’ll be my property in the sense that you’ll be someone I care for always and try to be the best version of myself for, so you’re happy and willing to be called that. I’ll have your back. Every day. No matter what comes our way. And it means, that there won’t be a single minute in the rest of your life that you have to face alone.”
Something inside me gives way completely at his words. Any remaining walls around my heart are demolished. The beliefsmy father instilled, that I wasn’t worth anything to anyone, disappear.
Because I’m precious to Knox.
“I want that, Knox,” I say, and his thumbs drag beneath my eyes, catching tears I hadn’t even realized were falling. “I want all of that with you.”
And this time, when he kisses me, there’s nothing uncertain left, at all.
34
KNOX
The following evening, I barely make it three steps into the clubhouse before the ribbing begins.
“Well, look who finally remembered he’s the president of a motorcycle club,” Havoc calls from the bar, lifting his beer glass in my direction in a mock toast. “Thought we’d lost you to domestic bliss.”
I should have known.
But I was up most of the night. Maren and I ate. Then, we sat on the back porch and talked.
Like, really talked.
About life and goals and art.
It seems something else cracked open when I chased her and fucked her. Something so deeply rooted inside her, it was painful to dig out.
She wishes she’d studied art.
And she thinks that because she didn’t, because she never went to college where some stuck-up asshole with college degrees of his own could tell her whether she was good enough, she believes she isn’t.
And I don’t know exactly how I’m going to fix that, but I am.
Some plans I thought of and dismissed, like stealing a few to take them to a gallery in Miami to see what people thought. Some I thought of and might just do. Like, the store side of the bait shop is so big, it could be refitted to create a small gallery space.
