Midnight Sommelier - Anne Malcom Page 0,71

mine, on David’s sink.

Our guest room now had a few of Luna’s clothes, shoes, and accessories in it, most of which I’d bought for her on our weekly shopping trips. She’d tried to protest at first, but it was pretty easy to convince a teenage girl in love with fashion to let you buy her things.

Things with Emmett were heating up now and she regularly came over to our place for outfit advice and to get away from her father’s scowl. Zeke had met Emmett, who was incredibly respectful—though I wasn’t surprised, given his mother—and also incredibly handsome—also not surprising considering his mom was a stone-cold fox—and he made sure to do all the things that a teenage boy should do with an overprotective alpha-male father.

But Zeke had reason enough to worry and wasn’t about to do something as crazy as like the boy his daughter was in love with.

Marley, on the other hand, was completely and utterly thrilled with the partnership. She adored Luna, and also liked that her son was the happiest she’d seen him since they moved here.

She was one of the few people who knew about the relationship between Zeke and me, which was also another thing she was utterly thrilled with. She had been the first one at the house after the police left and the news broke.

Unlike when my husband died, people did not turn up with casseroles when you killed a man in self-defense.

Maybe there wasn’t the right kind of casserole for that.

Or more likely it was because said rapist was well known and rich in the town and though I was well known and arguably rich too, I was not exactly well-liked among the elite. Which was fine by me. But they didn’t come with pitchforks or anything, thanks to my mother-in-law unexpectedly having my back.

She’d turned up with martinis—yes, she brought her own—and didn’t have a word to say about me, or ‘the incident.’ We sat in silence and drank on the porch, watching the sunset. It was her version of comforting me or trying to mend fences between us. It didn’t exactly work, but it made me less inclined to make a voodoo doll of her.

Since my mother-in-law had made it known I was under her protection, things weren’t as bad as they might’ve been. But I still got looks. The whispers. I was sure that Ryder was getting some crap at school, but of course he wouldn’t tell me—he was still hell bent on protecting me.

“I’m not nervous,” I replied. We were coming out as a couple, but I wasn’t lying. “It’s crazy and just a little incestuous that Black Mountain is essentially what brought us together,” I said, looking up at the building I’d been indifferent to at best, and hated at worst. For all its judgement, snobbery, and for the fact David walked those halls when I didn’t know him. “It’s the only reason we stayed, to give the boys an education that David was proud of. To give them a history. I paused. “I didn’t know it would give me a future.”

There it was, the thing I’d been marinating on all these months. The thing I’d known about deep inside but never vocalized because it was too soon, too intense, too scary.

But at this point, there were only two choices: break things off and break my own heart and the kids’ at the same time—they’d taken to this slightly dysfunctional family dynamic like fish to water—or dive in headfirst.

So this was me diving in headfirst. Kind of. My way of saying that I considered Zeke my future. And Luna.

His entire body stiffened, face blank. I tried my best not to take that as instant rejection, it was just his way. Zeke was getting a lot better at the whole ‘portraying emotions’ thing, but it was always his first instinct to shut down. Good things, bad things, everything in-between.

I got it. He’d been involved in a deadly motorcycle gang for years, that blank face was what he’d needed to survive.

The grip on my hips tightened and he yanked me around so I was now facing him. His body pressed into mine and I responded. There was something in his eyes. Fire.

Zeke’s hands went to either side of my face. “I have no future without you, Bridget.”

And then he kissed me.

And then he fucked me on the bathroom counter.

We were late to Ryder and Luna’s high school graduation, and my hair looked like shit but it was totally