Page 86 of Malice

Trixie

The scent of gardenias hangs heavy in the air, sweet and cloying, wrapping around me like the lace of my mother’s vintage veil. I stand behind the heavy oak doors of the old chapel, my father beside me, and my heart hammers against my ribs so hard I’m certain the organist can hear it over the swell of Pachelbel’s Canon.

“Trixie.” My father’s voice is rough, rougher than usual, the way it gets when he’s trying to hold something together that’s determined to fall apart. “You sure about this?”

I look up at him, at Jackson Reyes, former Devil Souls enforcer, the man who once killed with his bare hands, now standing beside me in a rented tuxedo that sits awkwardly across his broad shoulders, his weathered face scrubbed pink and angry from a shave that must have hurt like hell. His eyes are red-rimmed, the deep brown irises swimming in something that makes my own throat tighten.

“Dad.” I reach for his hand, my fingers steady now, no bandages, no bruises, just the faint silvery scars that tell the story of a night I’ll never forget. “I’ve never been surer of anything.”

He nods, and I watch his throat work, that thick, corded neck that’s weathered decades of violence and bad decisions and somehow, miraculously, still houses a heart soft enough to break.

“You were just…” He stops, clears his throat with a sound like gravel crunching. His jaw clenches, that particular tension that means he’s holding back a flood. “You were just a little thing. With those curls and that smile that could melt stone.” His hand, the one that’s killed men, the one that’s wrapped around the handlebars of a Harley for thirty years, trembles against mine. “And now you’re…”

He can’t finish. The words crumble, and I watch, stunned, as my father, my stoic, unbreakable, never-shows-emotion father presses his lips together so hard they go white, his chin dimpling in that way it does when he’s fighting tears. His eyes glisten, glassy in the dim light of the vestibule, and I see a single tear escape, tracking down the deep crease beside his nose, catching in the day-old stubble he couldn’t quite get with the razor.

“Oh, Dad.” My own voice cracks, and I squeeze his hand, feeling the calluses, the scars, the history written in his skin. “I’m still your little girl. That’s never going to change.”

He nods again, quick and sharp, swiping at his face with his free hand. His knuckles are still scarred from the night he helped Carter end Caldwell. From the night he became something other than just my father, something that understood the darkness and chose to stand in it so I wouldn’t have to.

“You look…” He tries again, and his voice is barely a whisper now, raw and broken in a way I’ve never heard from him. Not when Matthew shipped out. Not when the club went to war with the Savage Oath. “You look like an angel, baby girl. Like something that’s too good for this world.”

The organ comes over the speakers, music swelling into the cue that means its time. My bridesmaids, Tiana in midnight blue and my mother in soft lavender, watch this exchange with matching expressions of tender devastation as they adjust my train and fluff the lace at my shoulders. But I can’t look away from my father. From the way he’s shaking, this man who’s faced down loaded guns and prison sentences and the particular hell of a life lived on the wrong side of the law, now falling apart at the sight of his daughter in a wedding dress.

“Dad.” I step closer, pressing my forehead against his chest the way I did when I was small and scared of thunderstorms. His arms come around me, tentative at first, then tight, crushing, like he’s trying to hold me here, keep me from walking through those doors and into the arms of the man who’ll take his place as my primary protector. “I love you. You know that, right? None of this changes that. You’re still my hero.”

He makes a sound, half laugh, half sob, and presses his lips to the top of my head, careful of the veil, careful of the curls my mother spent an hour pinning into place. I feel the wetness of his tears against my scalp, feel the shudder that runs through his massive frame, feel the moment he pulls himself together through sheer force of will.

“I know, sweetheart.” His voice is steadier now, though still rough as sandpaper. He pulls back, holds me at arm’s length, and looks at me with eyes that are red and puffy and so full of love it makes my chest ache. He reaches into his pocket, pulls out a handkerchief my mother must have slipped in there, knowing him, knowing this moment would come, and wipes his face with the brusque efficiency of a man unused to public emotion. “I’m okay. I’m good. Let’s do this.”

The doors open.

The chapel blooms before me, all white roses and candlelight and the faces of people who’ve fought to keep me alive turning toward me with expressions of collective awe. My mother is already crying, dabbing at her eyes with a tissue. Matthew stands tall in his Navy dress uniform, his jaw working the same way Dad’s did. Greyson nods from the third row, his arm around Livie, something like approval in his blue eyes.

But I don’t see any of them. Not really.

Because at the end of the aisle, standing beside Kane in a charcoal suit that fits him like it was born on his body, is Carter. Carter, whose hands are steady now, whose eyes are clear, whose face breaks into an expression of such raw, unguarded devotion that the air leaves my lungs in a rush.

Our eyes lock, and the rest of the world falls away. The music, the flowers, the weight of everything we’ve survived to get here, it all dissolves into the space between us, into the particular gravity that’s always existed between his body and mine.

“Ready?” my father whispers beside me, and his voice is steadier now, anchored by the ritual of what comes next. His arm is offered, solid and sure, and I slip my hand through the crook of his elbow, feeling the muscles beneath the wool, the strength that’s kept me safe my entire life.

“Ready,” I breathe.

We take the first step together. Then the second. The aisle stretches before us, carpeted in white, lined with faces I love, leading to the man who taught me that love doesn’t have to be gentle to be real. My father walks with measured steps, his posture perfect, his composure reclaimed, but I can feel the tremor in his arm, the subtle shake of a man holding himself together through the sheer force of a promise he made the day I was born: to walk me to the beginning of my future, even if it breaks his heart.

Halfway down the aisle, he leans close, his lips barely moving. “He’s a good man,” he says, and I hear the weight of approval in those four words, the particular gift of a father who’s watched the man at the altar tear the world apart to keep his daughter safe and has decided, with the full authority of his love, that it is enough.

“He is,” I whisper back.

We reach the end. The music swells to its conclusion. Carter stands before me, and his eyes, those intense, gold-flecked eyes that have seen so much darkness and chosen to find the light anyway, are bright with unshed tears. His jaw is clenched in that particular way that means he’s fighting emotion, and I watch his throat work as he swallows hard, trying to find the composure to say his vows without his voice breaking.

My father lifts my veil. His hands are shaking again, the fine tremor of a man at his absolute limit, and he tucks the lace back with a tenderness that makes my vision blur. Then he takes my hand in both of his, calloused and warm and scarred, and places it in Carter’s.

The moment his fingers release mine, I feel the transfer. Not just of my hand, but of everything it represents: the protection, the watchfulness, the particular burden of loving someone enough to kill for them. My father’s hand lingers for a beat longer than necessary, his fingers brushing against Carter’s knuckles, and something passes between them: a look, an understanding, the particular language of men who’ve both held my heart and would die to keep it beating.

Then he steps back.

I hear the sound he makes, a quiet, hitching breath that’s almost a sob, and I glance over my shoulder. My father is retreating to his seat beside my mother, his broad back straight, his shoulders square, his composure held together by nothing but pride and the knowledge that he’s done his job. He did it well. He raised a daughter who survived, who loved, who chose a man worthy of the gift he’s been given.