16. KADENCE

KADENCE

H e drives us further out of the city, the roads become darker and somehow the chill is a bit colder. I’m not sure where we’re going but for some reason I suddenly feel like I can trust him. Maybe it’s the way he kisses me like he hadn’t just been with two other women earlier this week - a thought I quickly push from my mind - or if it’s the fact that when he rolls into a soft curve in the road, his hand finds my thigh, squeezing it gently as if holding me in place, or when the road straightens out, the same hand rests over my linked fingers over his stomach. Gentle touches that remind me what closeness feels like.

The treeline along both sides of the road becomes more dense, blinders of darkness that shroud us as we make our way further into the mountains.

I can’t help but peer over his shoulder for most of the drive; trusting him but also curious as to where he’s leading me. Soon, the chill becomes too much and I press my cheek to his shoulder, shielding myself from the frigid wind as it finally ceases to nip at my nose and cheeks.

Holden has to be freezing by this point.

After a while, he turns down a darkened dirt road. The only light around us radiates from the motorcycle and even that doesn’t give visibility to the end of the road, which looks more like a trail.

He pulls off to the side, kicking down the stand and turning the engine off. The roar in my ears is suddenly silenced, letting the complete stillness of the forest surround me.

Holden slides off of the bike, turning to me and helping me off.

“Where are we?”

“State park.” He smiles softly.

I watch as his fingers reach under my chin, undoing the strap to the helmet before gently pulling it from my head. I smooth out the flyaways and smile up at him.

“You aren’t going to murder me are you?” I breathe, a semi-nervous laugh leaving me.

Holden grins, his eyes somehow glowing brighter in the darkness. “Believe it or not, the thought hadn’t crossed my mind.” He narrows his eyes playfully, leaning in to steal a kiss before resting the helmet on the handlebar.

He glances down at my boots, raising a brow slightly. “You gonna be able to walk in those? It’s a little bit of a hike.”

I look down at the fake combat boots on my feet. They aren’t the most comfortable things I own, but they’re better than the Converse I normally wear. I run my tongue over my bottom lip, glancing back up at him through thick lashes.

“I’ll be fine, but it’s really dark, Holden.”

I peer down the trail that leads into a wall of pitch black. It isn’t the walk that scares me or even the darkness. It’s being alone with him. He throws me off like a magnet to a compass needle and whenever he’s around my mind still swirls with trying to hate him and wanting to tear into the cloth of his t-shirt if only to get a glimpse at the adonis body hiding underneath.

But here I am, proving I trust him, at least for tonight.

Holden follows my line of sight, bringing his bottom lip between his teeth as he nods. “It is, I promise it’s not far and once we get beyond the trees, the moonlight will guide us.”

His voice clouds around me. He speaks so softly I can pick out the gravel in each word and I realize that it isn’t just me giving into that trust tonight.

“Okay.”

He takes my hand without another word but beams down at me as I give in, leading me toward the wall of darkness and away from the safety of my only escape route. His motorcycle.

I focus my eyes down on the ground, watching for rogue roots and hidden holes in the mud and dirt. The last thing I need is to fall and break an ankle, though knowing my luck it’s extremely possible.

“I’ve got you,” he says, as if reading my mind. “I won’t let you fall.”

I peer up at him and see he’s staring down at me with no regard for his own safety as we walk. Blush creeps up my neck again as I glance down the trail, avoiding his eyes.

“Have you been here a lot?”

Holden chuckles, finally looking ahead of us. “You could say that.”

“Do you always speak in vague responses?” I laugh, not trying to be cruel but almost every question I’ve asked him tonight has prompted vague and cryptic responses.

“Do you?” He retorts, glancing down at me. “East Coast is pretty vague.”

I meet his gaze, not realizing he’d heard my response to Wolfe at the table. “You were listening?”

His eyes cast down to our feet, shaking his head. “You make me curious, Kade.” Holden looks up ahead of us. “I don’t know who made you want to hide yourself away from the world, but whoever it was deserves an asskicking.”

I watch as he rubs the back of his neck with his free hand. He seems nervous, treading the eggshell trail he’s following me on as we walk. However, he also hasn’t been completely truthful with me either. Both of us circle each other like sharks and our prey is honesty.

“What if…” I start, gnawing on my bottom lip as I stop walking, feeling him drop my hand as he turns towards me. “What if we start over?” I smile. “Clean slate?”

Holden’s brows knit together, his eyes meeting mine. This is my olive branch, a small hope that maybe we could go from antagonizing each other like school kids to being able to have normal conversations without trepidation.

He slowly begins to shake his head. “Not a chance darlin’.” A smile begins to play on his lips as mine falls. “I don’t want to forget how we met. You’ve got a fire burning in you that only comes out when you’re mad, really mad, and you’re the first person to call me on my shit other than Cole in a long time.”

Confusion washes over my features as his hands come to rest on my arms.

“I don’t want to wipe away the hate you felt for me last weekend and this week. I want you to use that against me when I step over the lines I’m bound to cross because something tells me…” He pauses, dipping his head so that he is at eye level with me. “You’re not used to standing up for yourself, and not because you didn’t want to but because you couldn’t.”

I stare at him, the blue in his eyes turns soft as if he tries to piece together the jigsaw puzzle I call life without the picture on my box. He isn’t wrong and that's what scares me. He’s catching on quickly to the pain I still feel inside and the years of abuse Jeremy put me through, not to mention the shit my mother pulled after my father passed. Holden wants to know me, but he isn’t interested in vague answers and I’m not ready to give him the real ones.

Truth be told, I don’t want to start over either. The embers he sparked inside of me this week were the first time I truly felt safe enough to stand up for myself. To take charge and not get pushed around by men.

This seems to be the difference between Jeremy and the men of the Hounds. Jeremy hides his fear with anger, lashing out at me whenever he gets the chance. But these men speak their truths and know when enough is enough.

I let out the breath I don't realize I’m holding in. “I’ve never heard of someone not wanting a clean slate.” A quiet laugh escapes my lips and I realize he’s taken a step towards me, pulling me just a little closer.

“Darlin’, I gave up on clean slates a long time ago.”

“That’s a little ominous.” I laugh as my hands find his chest, my fingers gripping the edges of his cut. “You hiding some big, dark secret I don’t know about?” Like I am ?

Holden grins, leaning down to brush his nose along my cheekbone before nudging my own, sending chills up my spine and causing my eyes to slide close. “Guess you’ll have to follow me to find out.”

Suddenly, the heat I feel from his body disappears. My eyes fly open to see him further down the dark trail, walking backward with a sly grin plastered on his lips.

I can’t help the blush creeping up my neck as I make my way to him, taking the hand he holds out for me. Butterflies explode in my chest as the warmth I’m quickly becoming accustomed to spreads from the hand he’s holding to my chest.

Holden continues to lead me down the path before cutting through a patch of trees. It’s not until the moonlight begins to peek through the trees that I can see the clearing ahead of us. He pulls a branch back for me, letting me walk through first as the sound of rushing water surrounds me.

I feel his hand rest on my lower back as we push our way through the greenery. My gaze lifts upwards to a train bridge, large dark steel trusses are covered in moss and overgrown ivy. Below sits a river, rushing and beating against the rocks and logs.

“Holden…” I whisper. “This is beautiful.”

I turn to him, noticing how his eyes glisten against the water and moonlight cascading around us. He almost looks…remorseful.

“Come on,” he says softly, taking my hand again and leading me further onto the bridge until we get to a spot where the wood isn’t as worn and doesn’t creak as much under our footfalls.

Holden sits down on the edge, letting his legs hang over the side. I follow him, sitting next to him. The beams shift above us, whining with the soft autumn wind.

“When Cole and I were kids,” he starts, “we used to ride our bikes out here to swim during the summertime. Jump off the ledge over there.” Holden points to the edge where the middle of the bridge opens up slightly. “We would spend hours here until it got dark and we’d have to ride back, cold and wet.”

He chuckles to himself, a smile tugging at the corner of his lips at the memory but as soon as it was there, his smile fades.

“After a few summers, my sis–” he pauses and I watch his Adam's apple bob in his throat, “my sister started taggin’ along with us.” A laugh bubbles from his throat as his face falls. “We spent every day here, just looking for some excuse to not be at home.”

I glance down at the water rushing below us. My feet kick softly with the wind that ripples between us. When my father got sick, I prayed for siblings almost every day, just someone who would not make me feel so alone while my mother acted like he was already gone.

My stomach flips at the remembrance of the text messages sitting on my phone like ticking time bombs. I’d have to tell Cole and Holden soon enough. Cole warned me that if anything were to threaten the club, he would do anything to protect it and I knew Jeremy could easily rip away what they have.

I feel Holden shift next to me, my gaze moving from the glittering water to him. Had he been talking?

“Where is she now?” I ask, my voice almost a whisper.

He shakes his head, his fingers running along the wood between us.

“She passed away about a month ago.”

The words come out like they’re shattered glass and his eyes drop to where his fingers were tracing. I glance down, seeing etchings in the planks.

BN

HN

CO

“I’m sorry–”

Holden shakes his head again. “Becca would have hated people feeling sorry for me,” he chokes out in between a laugh. “She also would have kicked my ass for acting the way I did the other night.”

Finally, crystal blue eyes land on me. He’s being genuine, not looking for forgiveness, but I can see the guilt riddled on his features.

It’s then realized that his actions are far more complicated than him being a general asshole. I knew I recognized the sadness behind his anger, but now I know where it stems from.

“I was angry at Cole because it felt like he was replacing Becs with you,” he admits. “I wasn’t angry with you, I just…” Holden shrugs.

“Wasn’t ready to let her go yet?” I finish for him.

His jaw ticks for a moment. “Yeah,” he breathes finally.

I smile for a second, my chest feeling tight, and want to give him something. Be honest with him about some tidbits of my life, but I know it’s going to be more difficult to tell him the longer I wait.

I turn back to the water, watching as it fights against the rocks and logs, unsure of how deep it is or how cold it is, yet there’s something exciting and mysterious about what lurks beneath the darkness.

His fingers find mine, intertwining them. I didn’t realize how much I missed the softness that touches can have. That not all of them can be harsh and laced with a cruelness that I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemies. I’m slowly getting used to it again and the fact that when he touches me, my body doesn’t flinch or cower out of habit only makes me that much more willing to let his hands roam.

My phone buzzes again in my pocket and my stomach drops. Whether it’s another threat from Jeremy, a passive-aggressive text from my mother, or Maria checking in, I don’t want to deal with it. I should have turned off my phone and it’s taking everything in me not to chuck it in the river below us.

“The text I got earlier was from my mother,” I blurt through the silence, my stare fixed on the waters below.

I can feel Holden’s eyes on me, his gaze lighting a fire against my skin. “She and I don’t get along very well and I wasn’t expecting her to message me.”

It’s not a total lie; I wasn’t expecting any texts from my mother and I really wasn’t expecting the text I got.

“Is everything okay?” He asks. “Back home I mean.”

I huff a laugh, glancing down at our tangled fingers. “I don’t have a home, especially not with her.”

Tears sting the corners of my eyes at the realization. My mother has never been a safe place for me to fall. Not even when my father was alive. It took a long time for me to figure out that my mother’s supposed love was littered with ultimatums and fueled with gaslighting.

Holden turns to me again, his hands finding my cheeks as he tilts my chin to look at him. “You don’t have to talk about this,” he whispers, his thumb wiping away a tear that falls as I blink up at him.

I sigh, shaking my head. I’m not ready. I already feel broken and alone; if I tell him everything I know he’d look at me like a kicked puppy and that’s the last thing I want.

His eyes search mine as his thumb trails along my cheekbone. I feel it drag down to my bottom lip, running across my cool skin. A soft gasp falls from my lips as he tugs it gently down, letting the pad of his thumb flick over it.

My head begins to spin from the heat swirling in my stomach, trying to push away the anger and hurt I’m still feeling that had bubbled up. Holden’s eyes soften and he stares back at me, every once in a while flitting down to my lips and back up.

“This is probably horrible timing,” he gravels, “but I’m dying to kiss you again.” He leans in, his nose nudging tenderly against mine causing me to suck in a breath. “Can I kiss you again?”

I feel his lips brush against mine, my body practically melting into his. I slowly nod my head, watching him lean towards me and to tease him I pull back slightly tugging my bottom lip between my teeth.

Holden lets out a low growl, smirking as his hand wrapped around the back of my neck to pull me to him. I let out a laugh that’s soon swallowed by his mouth. Plush pink lips slot over mine carefully but with a fire that turns from embers to full flames the longer we’re connected.

I cup my hands around his face, feeling him hiss against me at the coldness of my skin as I relish in the way his stubble prickles at my palm.

A moan floats between the two of us and I’m not sure which one of us it comes from. Right now I can’t get enough of the way he tastes, the whiskey still lingers on his tongue and as it dances with mine I clench my thighs together hoping to soothe the aching between my legs.

I feel him pull away for a moment, tugging at my bottom lip with his teeth before soothing his bite with a soft kiss. I rest my forehead against his own, the heat from his body sending a chill down my spine.

“Tell me the truth,” I breathe, my hands resting against the collar of his vest. “Was this the famous Holden Nash kissing spot?” I grin, still breathless as I lean to trail gentle kisses along his jawline.

He chuckles. “No, that was a boulder we passed on our way here.”

I pull back, scoffing as he laughs again. I shove his chest playfully, pushing him back slightly as his hands wrap around my waist taking him with me. Holden pulls me into his lap, my thighs straddling him. My body tenses for a moment, realizing that his legs are still dangling over the edge of the bridge and just the slightest lean back could mean me falling into the water.

Holden’s hands wrap around my waist, pulling me further into him as his nose runs along my jaw and behind my ear. “I’ve got you, Sunflower. I won’t let you fall.”

I look back at him, the nickname hitting me straight in my core, and tug the baseball cap off his head as I lean into him again. I drag my tongue along my bottom lip, my fingers tangling into his hair before pressing my lips against his again with a sigh. “You’d better not.”