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Back Rituals Save as PDF
Chapters (65)
  1. Cover
  2. Other Titles
  3. Title Page
  4. Copyright
  5. Dedication
  6. CHAPTER ONE
  7. CHAPTER TWO
  8. CHAPTER THREE
  9. CHAPTER FOUR
  10. CHAPTER FIVE
  11. CHAPTER SIX
  12. CAPRICIOUS
  13. CHAPTER SEVEN
  14. CHAPTER EIGHT
  15. CHAPTER NINE
  16. CHAPTER TEN
  17. CHAPTER ELEVEN
  18. CHAPTER TWELVE
  19. IN THE CARDS
  20. CHAPTER THIRTEEN
  21. CHAPTER FOURTEEN
  22. CHAPTER FIFTEEN
  23. CHAPTER SIXTEEN
  24. CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
  25. CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
  26. CHAPTER NINETEEN
  27. CHAPTER TWENTY
  28. LOVE
  29. CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
  30. CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
  31. CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
  32. CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
  33. CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
  34. CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
  35. CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
  36. CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
  37. CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
  38. PHONE ISSUES
  39. CHAPTER THIRTY
  40. BONDING
  41. CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
  42. CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
  43. CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
  44. CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
  45. CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
  46. CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
  47. CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
  48. CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
  49. SACRILEGE
  50. CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
  51. CHAPTER FORTY
  52. CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
  53. CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
  54. CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
  55. CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
  56. CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
  57. DEATH BY HELL-BIRD
  58. THE DARKNESS
  59. CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
  60. FINALLY
  61. THE PACT
  62. CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
  63. CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
  64. CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
  65. About the Author

“Better stay there,” Ricky said to the hound. “I’ll be back. I promise.”

She grunted and returned to Gabriel.

As we walked down the drive, Ricky looked at his bike. “Could we…? Just outside town.”

I was about to say that was fine. Then I had a flash of the night Matilda died, of her running to Arawn, Gwynn left behind as Matilda rode off with Arawn.

I glanced back.

Gabriel stood in the doorway. He nodded toward the bike. “Go on. Just not far, please.”

“Twenty minutes tops,” Ricky called. “And we’ll be just outside the town limits, with our phones on.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

We turned down the first country road and rode only until Ricky could pull over. Then we walked into the forest. We didn’t go out of sight of the road. Just found a fallen tree and sat on it.

“I’m not going to say that was easy,” he said after a moment. “Looking through that doorway. Seeing…”

“I’d completely forgotten that was—”

“I know. And I knew it was coming. I’ve always known it was coming, no matter how much you doubted it. But I wasn’t ever going to be ready. I see that now.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t, Liv. Please. You have nothing to apologize for, and it only makes me feel bad, knowing you feel the need to say it. You don’t. So I’m just going to talk for a few minutes, okay?”

I nodded.

“You and I…” He shifted on the log. “I don’t know where we were going. Nowhere, if I’m being honest. If I look ten years down the road, where would we have been? Me as leader of the Saints, and you as the wife of a motorcycle gang leader, with the stigma of that, the danger of that?” He shook his head. “It isn’t the life for you, and you’d be miserable. So what’s the alternative? I quit the club? You’d never let me do that because then I’d be miserable. Where we were? It was fucking fantastic. But it didn’t have a future.”

He looked at me. “What we have now is just as good, and it has a future. I’m gonna miss what we had. I do miss it, every damn day. But I’d miss not having you in my life a hell of a lot more.”

“Ditto.”

He smiled. “Good.” A quiet moment. Then he glanced over. “Do you regret it? Us being together?”

“Never. We had to try. We had to know.”