“I promise I won’t shut you out. Not now. Not ever. Not gonna lose you again.” He tipped my chin up so he could look me in the eyes when he said, “You’re mine.”

“And you’re mine,” I said. Bear closed his eyes like I’d just hit him with something hard and when he opened them again, they were the color of the clear sky overhead.

“I think what I was just trying to tell you is that it’s okay now, you know. You’ve protected me. You’ve already fulfilled a promise that you never meant to keep. I don’t want to hold you back. You’ve got your club. You’ve got your brothers. I’m safe. It’s okay. No matter what you want to do,” I said, needing him to know that his obligation to me was over. If he wanted to let me go it would hurt. It would be something I’d never recover from.

But I’d live.

Because if I’d learned anything in the last year it was that I was a survivor.

I AM a survivor.

“Hold me back?” he asked, pressing his thumb and forefinger against his eyebrows like he had head pains. “You’re not holding me back. What do I need to do to make you get it? I’ve already asked you to marry me for Christ’s sake. Don’t you see it?”

“See what?”

“I can’t believe you don’t fucking get it,” he said, the fire returning to his eyes. “You’re not holding me back because you’re the one moving me forward.”

My heart leapt at hearing the words I needed to hear. I was now completely ready to start this new life. With Bear. “I was afraid you were bringing me here because you were taking me home for good,” I admitted.

“Home?” he asked, pounding on his chest with his fist. “This,” he said. “This is your home.” He lifted my hands by my wrists and pressed my open palms to his chest. “This is your home.”

I felt a tear spill out of the corner of my eye and roll down my cheek before I could stop it.

“I’m your home baby, just like you’re mine, and if you want brutal honesty like you say you do, then I’ll tell you right now that even if you wanted to leave, I wouldn’t let you. You’re mine now, so unfortunately for you, it’s not an option,” Bear growled.

I sniffled, because I’m a stupid girl and my beautiful man was telling me beautiful things and I couldn’t help myself. “I don’t want the option,” I admitted.

“You said you’d marry me and since you have made me a man of my word and all, we need to get you a ring,” Bear said, running his fingers around the empty space of my ring finger on my left hand.

“No,” I argued.

“No?” Bear asked, looking worried. “Why the hell not?”

I tugged on the chain around my neck. “Because,” I said, pulling his skull ring from my shirt, dangling it in front of him. “I already have one.”

Bear smiled and reached out, grabbing the ring and using it to tug me closer. “I’m so glad I found you,” he whispered.

“I’m so glad you found me too.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

Thia

WE BARELY UNDRESSED, just moved clothes away from the important parts. Bear shoved my shorts and panties to the side, undid his belt and fly without pushing them down. He sat on his bike and pulled me down onto him, fucking up into me like he was solidifying everything he’d just told me.

“Wait, what’s this?” I asked breathlessly, running my fingers over the new ink right above his right ear that his hair had been covering.

“That? That’s just my old lady’s name,” Bear said grinding me down on top of his lap, causing me to cry out. He stood and carried me with him, only severing our connection long enough to turn me around. “Hands on the seat,” he ordered, slamming into me.

I was his forever.

He was mine.

He was never going to let me leave.

He loved me.

“Watch,” he growled into my ear, pulling back on my hair so I had no choice but to watch the house I hated burn to the ground as Bear fucked me from behind. By the time the roof collapsed, I was coming, calling out Bear’s name in a guttural scream until he followed me over, practically roaring as he pumped his release deep inside of me.

We made our way back to Logan’s Beach, leaving behind the wreckage of my childhood in a plume of smoke and ashes.

I’d never felt more free.

More alive.

Bear turned up the intensity on the ride home, weaving in and out of traffic at speeds that called for arrests, not tickets. I found myself loving every second of the freedom, of the rumbling machine underneath of us, and of the biker between my thighs.

“You like that, baby?” Bear called back, turning his head slightly.

“Hell yeah!” I shouted, holding him tighter. I tilted my head back and took a deep breath.

The first deep breath I’d taken in what seemed like forever.

Maybe the first one in my life.

We’re not given forever. We’re given just a finite amount of time on this earth. It’s up to us to decide how we are going to spend that time, and who we are going to spend it with.

I decided on the back of Bear’s bike that my time would be spent having more moments like this.

More moments with Bear, feeling like the world is at our mercy, instead of the other way around.

Bear was right. Home wasn’t a place. It wasn’t Jessep and it wasn’t Logan’s Beach. Home is where you feel the most like yourself. Home is the thing that makes you happiest during this very short life.

The person who makes you happiest.

I’d never known what a real home was, and now that I’d found it, I was never letting it go.

Home for me would always and forever, be Bear.

We started as a broken promise, one never meant to be kept.

We ended on the promise of forever.

THE END

EPILOGUE

Bear

IT HAD BEEN two days since I’d taken Ti out for a ride and burnt down the fucking shit house that had brought her so much grief.

For the first time ever, with no impending deaths or distractions on the horizon, I felt content.

Peaceful even.

Not just because my old lady seemed like the weight of the world had been lifted off of her shoulders, and I helped alleviate some of that weight, but because things were getting back to business as usual.

Well, not usual. Better than usual.