“If I have to, then yes.”
I swallow, rubbing my lips back and forth against each other while I digest all of this. What do I say? How did I not realize the wounds my leaving him before had caused?
“You do realize I could leave, even if I was pregnant? I could leave if I had three kids or even thirteen,” I tell him, ignoring everyone around us but him.
“You will not leave me again, querida. Where you go, I will always follow.”
“Skull, you need to…”
“You will not leave me again, querida,” he says, and his voice is brutal, but there’s a hint of insecurity in it. His eyes are shining like liquid. My strong biker has tears in his eyes.
“I love you, Skull,” I tell him, trying to reassure him. I stand up to go to him, my legs trembling because of how enormous this whole situation has become. It feels monumental, but I need to fight through it. I need to make him see it.
“You will not leave me. You will not jeopardize yourself again, Beth,” he repeats, and I make it to him. We’re so close, we nearly touch, but not quite. I take him in. All of him. I reach out and bring my hand to the side of his face. I cup it, running the pad of my thumb over the groove by his lips.
“I’m not leaving you again, Skull.”
“Beth…”
“I’m not leaving you again,” I repeat. “I’m staying, and it’s not because of Gabby or because we have more children, Skull. It won’t matter. I’m staying because you belong to me. You’re mine. You’ve always been mine and this time, Skull, I’m free. Completely free.”
“Beth, you can’t…”
“I’m free and I choose you, mi mundo,” I tell him, because he is. He’s exactly that… my world.
“Beth,” he whispers, pulling me into him.
“Te amo. Eres mi mundo.”
His strong body trembles against me. His forehead pushes down against mine. His hands grasp along each side of my neck, his thumbs stroking up along my chin.
“Te amo. Eres mi mundo,” he repeats. I feel the vibration of those words into the soles of my feet. They’re a promise. His hands push into my ass and pulls me up his body. I wrap my legs around his waist and hold onto him, locking my hands at the back of his neck, my eyes never leaving him. I hear the others talking as he takes me back to our room, but I have no idea what they’re saying.
I don’t even care.
“How does it keep getting better each time?” Beth asks, her voice soft, her breath still ragged.
She’s got her head on my chest, and her fingers trail over my side. If I live to be a hundred and fifty, right here is where I would want to be. At her words, I smile. Fuck, I’ve been doing that nonstop since her declaration.
I love you. You’re my world.
Mierda! How could a man not smile when his woman tells him that? I take a breath because I need to talk to Beth. I know Torch will have already told Katie about Tucker and I don’t want Beth to think I’m keeping things from her.
“We need to talk, mi cielo.”
“No,” she says, shaking her head while keeping her face buried in my neck.
“Beth?”
“No, Skull. Things are too perfect right now, and whenever anyone says ‘we need to talk’ it’s never good. And right now, what we have is too amazing. I want to keep it longer. So, no.”
“What do you know of your mother?” I ask her.
She goes still in my arms and slowly pulls away to sit up in bed. She’s staring at my stomach.
“Why are you asking about my mother?”
“Are there things I don’t know, querida?”
She sighs. “Yes, but not because I was keeping it from you. It’s not that. It’s just… I didn’t find out until Redmond took me and Katie back to France.”
“Okay.”
“And honestly, Skull, since I’ve been back… we’ve been at each other’s throats, or…”
“Fucking our brains out?”
“I was going to say going at it like rabbits, but yeah,” she says, laughing weakly and finally looking at my face.
“It’s okay, mi cielo,” I tell her, knowing she’s worried that I might think she’s keeping more things from me.
“My whole life, you have to understand, we thought that Isabel and Redmond were our parents. We may not have liked the fact, but that’s what we believed. That’s all we knew.”
“But they weren’t?”
“Well, no… not really. When we got to France, grandfather would take great pleasure in telling us what a blight we were on the family. He kept saying we were weak, that we were too much like our mother, and how blood always tells…”