Avery (The Phoenix Club Girl Diaries #3) - Addison Jane Page 0,93
months from clubs around the country.
And I never fucking imagined we’d have two nightclubs open with business so damn good, other clubs were sending men down to look around and see how they could do something similar in their own cities.
Our club was new, but it was fucking thriving.
And I couldn’t imagine raising my boy anywhere else.
With anyone else.
I couldn’t help but admire my old lady wearing her brand new colors—the boys not the only one I’d given new patches to today. Avery had been mine since she walked into the clubhouse, everyone fucking knew that, but the property patch meant more to me than just showing the world she was off-limits.
Asking her to wear my colors was asking her to stand beside me.
To have my back.
To help me see clearly when my vision was blurred.
It wasn’t about me just wanting her to be my girlfriend or my wife. It was about me being vulnerable enough to admit that I needed her to be by my side and that she made me stronger because she did.
I hooked my arm around Avery’s shoulders, pulling her back against my chest. She fit there perfectly like our bodies were puzzle pieces, and she was made to slot perfectly against mine. “Where’s the boy?” I murmured in her ear, and she nodded across the room where he was entertaining Kennedy and Saff, one of Empire’s bar staff with his babbling. “Perfect.”
I moved quickly, trying to usher her toward the stairs, but she just laughed, placing her hands on my chest. “We have to wait,” she argued, pushing back against me. “Adrian will be here in a few minutes to take him and put him to bed. He needs a bottle ready.”
I rolled my eyes, pressing a long hot kiss against her soft lips before pulling back. “I’ll get his bottle ready,” I told her as I walked backward. “Then, you’re mine.”
“Yes, sir.” She laughed, but the flush across her cheeks told me more, and all I fucking wanted to do was get her alone.
I gathered up Gage, much to the girls’ disappointment, and strolled through into the kitchen, surprised to see it already had one occupant. “You don’t want to eat with everyone else?” I questioned Thayleah while trying to rein in my son, who was squirming on my hip, ready for his bottle and bed.
Thayleah looked up from the burger she was mindlessly pulling to pieces, blinking a couple of times before the dazed look in her eyes finally disappeared, and I knew she was here with me. She slipped back into the past easily, the memories of the hell she went through still haunting her daily.
She’d worked through a lot of her demons over the past few months, but it still wasn’t unusual to find her staring at the wall in tears or hidden away in a quiet space with her mind still struggling to find that line between recollection and reality.
“Yeah.” She nodded, pushing the plate away and holding out her hands for the squirming child in my arms. “One day, they’ll go away, right?” she asked, not even needing to specify exactly what she was talking about. She didn’t need to. I knew. I’d heard the night terrors when she first moved in and sat with her while she tried to sleep, so she didn’t feel alone.
It was the least I could do.
I had failed to protect Emma, but like hell I’d fail her sister too.
She forced a brave smile in front of Gage, but the tears that sat precariously on her lower lashes told a different story.
I handed him over, his giggles loud and echoing off the walls of the kitchen.
The boy loved his aunt.
And she needed him.
He was something she had left of Emma that didn’t include the pain and torture she’d endured.
“Maybe,” I answered, reaching for a clean bottle and the container of formula, the process of making him his bottle becoming almost instinctive now. “But memories don’t really disappear. One day, you’ll just get stronger. You’ll find a way to cope with them. And you’ll realize they can’t hurt you anymore.”
“You think I’ll get stronger?”
“You already are.”
We sat in silence for a few minutes while I waited for Gage’s bottle to heat in a pot of hot water. I fought a smirk as I watched her pull her burger back toward her, as though the anxiousness that had turned her stomach a few minutes ago was now settling.