Page 18 of Grumpy Biker's Bride
Later, we escape up the mountain.
The cabin is sweet in the summer dusk. He sets the board down on the kitchen table, and then he looks at me across it.
I walk around the table, slowly. “You know, this looks like a sturdy table.”
“Built it myself,” he says, and then there's no more talking, because he's kissing me and walking me backward, my hands at his buttons, his gathering my sundress up my thighs. He lifts me onto the table edge and steps in between my knees. He peels my dress over my head, both of us laughing.
There's nothing slow about it tonight. We're laughing and then we're not, his mouth at my throat, my heels at the small of his back, his name breaking out of me as he fills me in one long stroke. He takes me right there on the table he built, deep and fierce, his hand fisted in my hair, growling my name and sweeter, filthier things, until I come around him and he follows me with a groan.
The table holds. He built it.
“Will you move up here, sunshine? June can have a room here too.”
I smile. “I’m definitely moving in. But I don’t think we’ll tear her away from Viv. She’ll appreciate being asked, though.”
Later, wrapped in the quilt on the porch, I watch the stars come out over the valley with the man I love.
EPILOGUE 2 - HAWK
Two years later
My brother finds me on the porch at dawn, clutching onto a mug and not drinking from it.
“You're up early,” Lucky says.
“I'm up at a normal time.You'relate.”
He grins and leans on the rail next to me. The fall colors are starting along the ridgeline, gold creeping into the green, and the meadow below the cabin is full of borrowed chairs, a wooden arch I built in the shed, and strings of twinkle lights running tree to tree. Viv has been up here six times this week. I lost control of my own home somewhere around Tuesday.
“You nervous?” Lucky asks.
“No.”
“You've sanded that porch rail twice since I got here.”
“It needed it.”
“Did it fuck.” He laughs. My brother is my best man, the only person at this wedding who knew me before the army gave me a bird's name. “She's the best thing that ever happened to you, bro. Try not to look like you're defusing something when she walks down that hill.”
By three o'clock the meadow is full. Our guests came up the mountain in a convoy, pickups and bikes and Marvin's olddelivery van with the pies in the back, because my bride refused a wedding cake. Cherry, peach and apple, at Taryn’s request.
The guest list is everyone who can keep a secret, which in High Vale is everyone worth knowing. The brothers wear their cuts over clean shirts. Bethany is front row and eight months along. Striker hovers behind her with a folding chair and a water bottle like a man guarding a state treasure. Prez is silver-bearded and solid, arms crossed, and Doc is already deep in conversation with the town's old-timers. Wrench sits with Lila, his arm along the back of her chair, and Lila’s little girl is at the front in a yellow dress with a basket of petals, taking her flower girl duties seriously.
Savage is wearing a clerical collar. It looks out of place with his spiderweb neck tattoo and multiple piercings.
“No,” I tell him.
“Relax. Prez’s buddy Reverend Brown's doing the ceremony.” He adjusts the collar, wounded. “I'm just the backup. Ordained online, twenty dollars. If the Rev chokes on a canapé, this wedding does not stop. You're welcome.”
“Twenty dollars?”
“I would've paid forty just to see your face.”
When the wedding begins, Taryn comes over the rise on June's arm.
My bride is in white lace, a crown of flowers in her red hair, walking through the sun-dappled afternoon toward me, and June is smiling beside her. The whole meadow stands and turns. Lila's already crying and Bethany's a lost cause. Somewhere behind me Savage makes a strange wheezing sound like a kicked accordion.
The two of them stop in front of me, and my brother squeezes my arm.
