Lacey disappears up the stairs to tend to Sunshine, leaving me with the florist and the baker that had arrived with the cake. All we were missing here was the fucking candlestick maker. Pipe and Wolf took to my sides, the nomads too. Except for Linc, who walked around the bar and pulled a few clean glasses out and filled them with the whiskey I was hogging.
“Think this day deserves a toast.” Pipe begins. “Never thought you’d take an Old Lady, much less marry one,” he says, handing me a glass.
“Fucking threw me for a loop too,” Wolf admits, raising his glass.
“And she’s hot,” Linc adds, earning a glare from me.
“The woman can cook too,” Wolf chimes in. “Not just a pretty face and smoking piece of ass.”
“Wolf,” I growl.
“Calm your tits, Parrish. Can’t help a man for appreciating beauty.” He lets out a huge belly laugh.
“To Jack and Reina,” Pipe cheers. “Here’s to health, wealth, and the little biker that’s going to be running around this place.”
raise my glass, tipping my chin to my brother in appreciation.
“To Reina,” I add. “And all the sunshine she brings to this place.”
“To Sunshine,” everyone cheers.
The Bill Wither’s song, Ain’t No Sunshine, always reminded me of Reina, especially after Jimmy Gold kidnapped her.
She was young, a bit shy, a whole lot sheltered until I came storming into her life.
I should’ve let her be.
But she had me from the very first time I set foot inside Dee’s Diner.
Now, I’d never let her go.
Because…
Ain’t no sunshine when she’s gone.
Only darkness every day.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Standing in front of the mirror, I tie a knot in my white silk robe, my stomach twisting in knots. My anxiety spiking to levels I have never experienced. Today is my wedding day, a day I wasn’t so sure I’d ever see. I was going to marry the love of my life, promise to share all of me with all of him. I was going to be Jack Parrish’s wife.
It was everything I ever wanted and nothing I knew I needed. The crass biker who strode into the diner, night after night, for five weeks. The man I barely looked at, hardly spoke to. The man I never wanted to give a second glance was the man who rescued me from my own hell, my own torment and breathed life back into my soul. He healed me and in the process I healed him too. We were broken, lost, two fractured souls who found one another in a sea of grief and despair.
Piece by piece, brick by brick, we built one another up and then he asked me to marry him. Of course I said yes, I wanted to marry Jack Parrish more than I wanted to breathe. But as much as I wanted him, I was frightened to have him.
It all goes back to having everything and having everything to lose.
I’ve been there before.
My relationship with Danny may have been a farce. I still don’t know if he truly loved me. How could I? There were so many lies between us it was impossible to decipher the truth. At the time of the fire and his death I didn’t know about all the lies. After the fire I found myself in a hospital, covered in burns, listed as a Jane Doe, grieving for a man I knew nothing about. I grieved for the woman lost in that fire, the man I thought was my forever and the deceit our forever was built upon. I lost everything I thought I wanted.
Now I have everything I want but everything I need too. I have a real forever. True love. I have Jack Parrish and I am so afraid of losing him. My fear is consuming me, turning the happiest day of my life into a nightmare full of anxiety. I can’t shake the feeling lurking in the pit of my stomach. The strange sense that something terrible is about to happen. Call me crazy, but it’s not like doom doesn’t fall on the Satan’s Knights doorstep frequently. In fact, it’s more common than not.
I was too wrapped up in my head to hear the door open but I heard Lacey call for me as she walked around Jack’s room.
“In here,” I rasp, lifting my hand to my throat, swallowing down the fear and forcing a smile on my face, one that didn’t reach my eyes.
“Happy wedding day,” Jack’s daughter cheered. Standing in the doorway of the bathroom, her smile falters when she takes in my reflection in the mirror. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” I lie, spinning around to face her.
Her eyes widened, and she takes a step closer, placing her hands on my shoulders.
“Reina, everyone is arriving, you need to get dressed,” she whispers, lifting a hand to my hair which still tied back in a ponytail.
“I just lost track of time,” I insist, drawing in a deep breath as I reach for her hands and give them a reassuring squeeze. “I’ll hurry up.”
Her dark eyes skeptically stared back at me, assessing me, probably trying to figure out why I looked so fucking scared on my wedding day.
“Okay,” she says finally. “Is there anything I can do to help?”
“Can you go downstairs and tell everyone I need a little more time?” I ask, turning around to face the mirror. Grabbing my make-up bag off the counter, I rummage through it, busying myself so I didn’t have to look at Lacey and have her discover how nervous I was. I didn’t want her to think the worst, that I didn’t want to marry her father.