Rina let out a loud whoop and started gyrating faster from her place on top of the table a group of Iron Riders had camped out at a couple hours earlier. She hadn’t arrived with them, and from the looks on a lot of their faces—including the hottie from a few months back—they weren’t too happy that she’d crashed their party. She held her arms up in the air as she slithered down, dropping it low like she was dancing for singles in a strip club. The problem was, this wasn’t a strip club, and her skirt was obscenely short so everyone in the vicinity got a nice little crotch shot for their troubles. Let’s just hope she was wearing underwear. “Maybe after this they’ll actually listen to me.”
Just then the doors opened, bringing in a gust of fall wind that lifted the hair of the blonde who’d walked in. She stood just inside, scanning the crowd for less than a second before her gaze landed on Rina, then her eyes narrowed into unhappy slits.
I was struck by a pang of familiarity at the sight of the blonde, but I couldn’t place where I knew her from. Then she stormed over to the table Rina was dancing on, pushing her way through the big, burly bikers, and grabbed Rina by the wrist. That was when it hit me. “Oh shit,” I said below my breath on a gasp. All of a sudden the atmosphere around us shifted. Apparently I wasn’t the only one who’d figured out who the beautiful mystery blonde was because when I looked down the table, Clay’s eyes were pinned to her as a thick wall of something not at all pleasant radiated off of him and slammed into us.
Before anyone could say a word, he shoved his chair back, stood up, and exited the bar without a backward glance.
“Um, someone wanna fill me in on what just happened?” Jensen asked, looking around the table. I saw confused eyes and eyes of people like me who were in the know. Clay had been ahead of me in school, but there wasn’t a single person who’d lived in Redemption at the time it all went down that didn’t know about the failed love story of Clay and Lark.
“That’s Clay’s ex,” I answered. “She also happens to be Rina’s cousin.”
His eyes went wide as he looked back at her. “No shit?”
“No shit, bunny. And it’s not a pretty story. Believe me.”
“Hmm.” He looked out into the bar with a thoughtful expression on his face. “Maybe. But some of the best ones have a good bit of ugly in them.”
“Look at you,” I said on a giggle. “You fall in love and get all philosophical. My man’s rich and wise.”
His arm around me grew tighter and his fingers on my hip pressed deeper. “Just speaking from experience. We had more than our fair share of ugly and look how we turned out.”
Who was I to argue with such sound logic?
Leaning in, I gently brushed my lips against his and said, “You know, just when I think you can’t get any better, you go and prove me wrong.”
A low rumble slid up his throat. “Do you have any idea how much I love you?”
“I do. Because you’ve showed me every day since I was sixteen years old and you caught me standing in the middle of your bedroom. I might not have always known you were showing your love, but I eventually got with the program.”
“And thank God for that.”
As my man lapsed back into conversation with our friends, I took the time to think about everything that had happened over the past several months. It had been bittersweet when Jensen returned, that was for sure. But now that I had my happily ever after, the bitter was long gone.
Leaving behind nothing but sweet.
The End.
Read a BONUS EPILOGUE
of Bittersweet HERE
and keep a lookout for the next book in the Redemption series, coming early 2021
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