Scars of Yesterday (Sons of Templar MC #8) - Anne Malcom Page 0,16

to touch me.

I changed too.

There was no choice. I was an Old Lady. I’d made that choice, so I leaned into it. I learned how to deal with the uncertainty, the fear, the long nights alone. The club girls.

Evie was my lifeline. An unconventional one, to be sure, but she held me steady, poured me drinks. Invited me over to her place for dinner when the men were out doing... whatever they were doing.

Rosie, Lucy and Ashley were always around too. They were only a little younger than me and definitely bat shit crazy, Rosie the self-proclaimed leader of the trio. I liked being around them, even if they scared me just the littlest bit. Cade tried his best to rein his sister Rosie in, but that was like trying to use an umbrella in a hurricane.

Fucking useless.

There were many nights at Rosie’s place with cocktails and all sorts of plans made, butI always crept home before those plans were executed.

Laurie was there too. Of course she was. She was my best friend. But it was different with her because she was different now. We were in this together, of course, because we’d been friends all our lives..

It didn’t touch her. Zane—he was Bull now, to everyone except Laurie—didn’t let it touch her. His duty was to the club, like the rest of the members, but Laurie was always his first priority. Protecting her was what he was put on this earth for.

I liked that for my friend. Loved it. But I was also jealous. Cody would protect me from anything in this world, except the Sons of Templar. He couldn’t protect me from the MC or their lifestyle.

The first year of Cody prospecting was hard. On me. On him. On us. I’d thought I knew what I was getting into. The club had been a presence in Amber since before I could remember. My mother respected them, but she didn’t approve. She’d raised me bedtime stories about the big, bad bikers and what would happen to me if I found myself embroiled in their world.

Which was exactly where I was.

Despite the fear, the danger, the loneliness, I liked our lifestyle. Loved the family we had. Loved that Cody seemed to have found his peace.

But to find that peace, Cody had left himself behind. He was no longer Cody. He was Ranger. First to the club, then to himself, then to me.

Five Years Later

I stared at the two lines on the stick in my shaking hand.

Were my hands shaking out of happiness or fear?

We’d agreed that we didn’t want kids until Ranger had patched in, been in the club for a good amount of time. We were going to wait for the chaos to settle down, until things weren’t so dark for the club. Until we could save enough money to afford a baby. Ranger had enough money to buy us a small bungalow with a view of the beach, near Cade’s newly purchased house. Cade and Brock were already members when Ranger got back from… wherever he’d been. Five years married and he still hadn’t told me where he’d been or how he’d come across Gage.

Gage was broken in ways that Ranger wasn’t. There was a violence to him that should’ve scared me, but instead, I wanted to protect him. I made him come over to the house for dinner at least twice a week and didn’t force him to speak if he didn’t want to. I didn’t want him to be alone.

I didn’t ask him about his past, just like I didn’t ask Ranger where he’d been or how he had the money to buy us the beachfront bungalow. I wanted to know, but I wanted him to have peace more. As much as I wanted him to share all of his darkness with me, I trusted him to tell me if he needed to, and I wouldn’t push it if it meant that whatever had brought him back to me would go away.

It was naïve maybe, but I was just happy to have him back. To sleep beside me every night. To whisper to him in the darkness, telling me things about himself that made tears stream down my face. He was still healing from wounds I would never be about to stitch up, erase, but I tended to them best I could. Loved him exactly as he was.

I even loved the Sons of Templar. It was hard at times, but mostly it was a life that