He drove us to the Lincoln Park lily pool. One of my favorite spots. I’d mentioned that to him once. In passing.

The park had just opened for the day, and there was no one else around. Ricky still led me to an out-of-the-way corner, where we could enjoy a view of the pond and the ducks without much danger of interruption.

We were settling in on the rocks when I noticed scrapes and bruises on his knuckles. I caught his hand as he reached into the bag of food.

“Trouble last night?” I asked.

“Mmm, yeah. Minor resistance.”

He busied himself pulling out breakfast sandwiches and a cardboard carton of coffee.

“Did it go okay?” I asked. “You seem quiet.”

“It went fine.” He paused, holding the coffee carton in one hand, the cardboard cups in the other. “Well, the negotiations did. After that . . . I kinda quit the club.”

“What?” My gaze shot to his leather jacket, set on a rock beside us.

“It was temporary. I stormed off, cooled down, went back, and talked to my father. We worked it out. No big deal.”

“Um, yeah.” I took the coffee from him and set it aside. “You quit the club. Even if it didn’t last an hour, that’s an hour too much. I know what the Saints mean to you and what your dad means to you.”

I rubbed my fingers over his shoulder, where he had the Saints patch tattooed on the back.

“Some people will bluff and bluster to get their way,” I said. “Threaten to end a relationship. To quit a job. To drop out of a group. That’s not you.”

He dipped his chin, gaze sliding away from me. I snagged it back. “I’m wrong, right? You were bluffing. Showing Don how angry you were.”

Ricky exhaled. Then he shook his head. “I wanted to show him I was serious, but I wasn’t bluffing. I wouldn’t do that. I was ready to walk away.”

“Wh-what?”

“Shit.” Ricky grabbed my hands and tugged me onto his lap. “This isn’t what I wanted to talk about. Hell, I wasn’t even going to tell you. I planned to come out here and talk about what happened yesterday. To you.”

I twisted to look at him. “If you were seriously ready to quit the club because of our relationship, then we have a problem.”

“The situation just kept escalating, Liv. It’s like putting out tiny fires and, somehow, you’re fanning the flames instead. By not resisting my dad’s interference, I was proving that you weren’t important to me. When I did resist, he gave me an ultimatum. Choosing you was the only way I could say, ‘I’m serious,’ and if that cost me my patch . . .” He went quiet. “I just really hoped it wouldn’t.”

I turned in his lap, arms going around his neck, my kiss telling him everything I couldn’t put into words—how much that near-miss worried me, how badly I didn’t want to come between him and the club, or him and his father, but how badly I didn’t want to lose him, either.

I said all that in the kiss, and when it deepened, urgency and hunger and fear igniting as he pulled me down onto the rocks, I showed him exactly how much he meant to me, and how glad I was to have him.

—

I lay under Ricky as he caught his breath, his eyes threatening to close. When I made a move to slide from under him, he put one hand between my shoulder blades, the other on my rear, and flipped onto his back with me atop him. Then he pulled me down in a slow kiss. When it broke, I tried to back away again. His arms tightened.

“Eager to escape this morning, aren’t you?”

“No. Just thinking I should probably pour us some coffee before we drift off to sleep, half naked, in a public park.”

A languid grin. “Anyone spots us, they’ll steer clear.”

He pulled me back down into a kiss, and I started thinking maybe he had a point. The sun was bright and warm, and it felt so quiet and peaceful. Right up until we heard the distant sound of voices. Kids’ voices. He rolled me over onto my back, saying, “I’ll get that coffee.”

“No,” I said. “I’ll get it . . . along with my jeans.”

While I pulled on my clothes, he propped himself up to watch. I had my own view to enjoy. As fine as Ricky Gallagher looks in clothes, he’s even better without them. He had his jeans still on, pulled up now but unbuttoned, his shirt off as he reclined on his elbows, his sweaty chest glistening in the sunlight.

He smiled. “You keep staring at me like that and I’ll put you on the bike and spirit you off to the cabin early.”

“Spirit away,” I said, bringing back two cups of coffee. “I have the day off.”

He buttoned his jeans. “Seriously?”

“Seriously. A gift from Gabriel, though I suspect he wants me out of his hair so he can get some actual work done. If you have things to do, you can drop me at the office and Lydia will play bodyguard until—”

“My day’s plan was killing time until you’re free.”

“So you want to head up early?”

“Hell, yeah.”

“Anytime you’re ready, then.”

“Not so fast.” He caught my arm as I began to get up. “I want to hear about last night first.”

He sat, and I leaned against his shoulder.

“When I first went to visit Pamela, I prepared myself to see a killer. Someone who’d done terrible things . . . and who’d given birth to me and raised me and was a part of my life while she did those terrible things. I knew that would be difficult to reconcile, but I think my greater fear was that I’d walk into that room and be unable to see a killer. That I’d remember my mother and I’d think, ‘No, she didn’t do it.’”