“My mom died a few months ago.”

“Shit, angel. I’m sorry to hear that. It seems like you are surrounding by tragedy and death. Did you have a happy childhood at least to remember them by?”

“It was happy until Dad died. He and I were two peas in a pod. My first childhood memory was Dad taking me to the station and to the shooting range with his partner, Bob. Ironically enough, Mom married Bob when I turned sixteen. It never felt right that she had forsaken my dad’s memory with someone he trusted with his life. Don’t get me wrong, my step-dad was nice and all, but my life from that day forward went to hell in a hand basket until I bolted from Ohio. I ended up here and well, you know the rest. Bat shit crazy roommate goes missing, I end up homeless, and now I’m living in a clubhouse with bikers. Sounds like the basis for a reality TV show or a horrible made for TV movie. Can we stop talking about this, please?”

Shit, I didn’t expect this kind of information about her... The way she talks about her dad is completely different from how she talks about her mom. She holds her father’s memory close while she shoves her mother’s quickly aside. Something had to have happened after she remarried, but I need to stow my prying into her past until another day. If I push her too hard, she’ll throw her walls up again. I can’t risk being shut out again when I’m so close to breaking into her heart.

“Well, what do you want to talk about, Dani?” I ask, wanting to keep her talking.

“Since you decided you needed my life’s story, tell me about yours. Any kids running around I should know about? I don’t even know your real name. Your parents didn’t name you Hero, did they?

“Seriously? Do I look like the guy who’d be a good dad? Fuck no,” I reply. “My real name is Tyler Tobias. That stays between you and me. Do not even think about calling me anything but Hero at the club. In terms of family, my parents were both killed during an armed robbery at their bank just after I turned eighteen. My dad had gone in to cash out their savings account to put me through college when two guys came in and put a bullet between both of my parents’ eyes. The security footage showed my dad trying to push my mom behind him when the bastards shot him. He was just trying to protect her, and those bastards marked him as a threat.”

“Shit, Hero. I didn’t mean to pry,” she cautiously says. I know she thinks talking about this shit will break me down like it does her, but I’ve told this story so many times, it’s like reciting the “Pledge of Allegiance”.

“Ended up joining the Army a month later and landed my ass in Iraq just after 9/11. I did my duty there until a roadside bomb killed my entire unit and left me damaged.” I pull up the leg of my jeans to show her my scars. I’m sure she’s seen them before, but she’s never mentioned them. It’s easier just to get this part out of the way before she asks.

“I took shrapnel to my knee and was sent home with a medical discharge and a shiny Medal of Honor. It took six surgeries to repair the damage to my knee before I could finally walk again.”

Dani crawls over to me and wraps her arms around me. I know she thinks this is comforting to me, but it only feels like pity. No one knows how to respond to the wounded soldier part of my story.

“How many did you lose in your unit?”

“Twenty-one.” Pulling my shirt over my head, I turn to expose the tattoo on my back. A pair of metal dog tags lies on my left shoulder. Below it is a list of each of their names.

“I may never get to see my men again, but they’ll always be with me,” I tell Dani as her fingers trace the tattoo. Her touch stills me.

“What about your other tattoos? Do they mean anything?” she asks, her hands not leaving my back.

“Most are just pieces of my past, I needed a way of remembering all the fucked up memories in my head. The cross on my sternum is the cross I bear for my brotherhood and for the things I’ve seen and done in my past. Of course, you know that the one on my stomach is for the club. It was supposed to be on my back, but I refused to let Raze cover up my brothers’ names. Took me two years to convince them to ink me somewhere else.”

“I don’t understand how you ended up with these guys, Hero. You seem so normal compared to some of them. Why did you join the club? Was it just about the pussy to you or is there some deep meaning behind joining a club like Heaven’s Rejects?” She must really think I’m that shallow if she thinks that the girls were the determining factor to prospect.

“I joined the MC because I needed an outlet for my past. I was a fucking train wreck when I got home. I met Jagger in a bar one night just before I started a bar fight. He made me realize that I needed some sort of order in my life. I was angry at the cards life dealt me, and had I not met Jagger, I would have spent my life behind bars. I joined at twenty-three and never looked back. It was the best decision of my life until I decided I wanted to dance with you at Red’s that night.”

She doesn’t make a sound as I pull her into my lap. “You’ve changed me, Dani. You’re the tornado ripping apart my life and the clean-up crew that fixes everything. You’re the kind of angel that would even tempt the devil himself. You make me want to be a better man by just being in the same room with me.”

“I feel the same way, Hero. You walked into Red’s and from the moment you touched me, all I have wanted is you. The pull I feel between us scares me. I’ve never been so excited or scared of wanting something this badly in my life until you. You are a complete stranger to me yet I want to give you everything. It’s hard for me to give in to what I want when I know that you could decide tomorrow I wasn’t worth your time. I can’t handle knowing that I could be returned to the toy box when you’re done with me.”

Her admission sends my heart racing and my blood ferociously pumping through my veins. She feels the attraction and whatever the hell you could call this pull between us just as much as I do, but she’s fighting it. She needs to know that I want her to the point I’d kill for her. I can’t keep dancing around the idea that she’ll just fuck me and be gone the next morning. I need her with me or just fucking gone.

“It scares me, too, angel. You’re the first woman to break down the walls around me. You did it without even saying a word to me, which makes this thing between us even more fucking crazy. When you left last night, I realized how much of an ass I’d been to you. You didn’t deserve my anger being redirected at you from Jagger’s death because it wasn’t you that put the knife in him.”

“I shouldn’t have pushed your buttons like I did, but I wanted you so goddamn much that I didn’t know how to deal when you pushed me away and branded me a traitor. I wanted you to hurt because I was dying inside not being able to have what I desperately wanted.”

Her words seize my chest. She wants me? She’s desired me all this time, and I was the reason she acted like I was the scum of the Earth underneath her shoes. I’ve wasted so much goddamn time trying to figure out club shit and where she fell into this life that I ignored the signs. I’m the biggest fucking idiot on the entire planet.

“You want me?” I question.

“I want you like I’ve wanted no one else before. It was torture to push you away last night, but you weren’t in the right frame of mind. I didn’t want to sleep with you and live to regret it when you shoved me away the next morning. I could see the emptiness in your eyes. ”

“Shit, angel. Why didn’t you tell me? I’d have dropped everything for you. Yes, I was hurting last night, but it wasn’t just from the past creeping back over me. I was in agony when I saw the hurt in your eyes. Even when the darkness in my soul takes hold, I never want you to think that there’s no room for you. I’ve never needed someone as much as I fucking need you in my life.”