If You Say So
Book 6 of The KPD Motorcycle Patrol Series
By
Lani Lynn Vale
Text copyright ©2019 Lani Lynn Vale
All Rights Reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer who may quote short excerpts in a review.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Dedication
One day I’m going to get to the point where I know what to put here. I’m not there yet, though. Happy Mother’s Day.
If it’s not Mother’s Day when you’re reading this, it was here when I wrote this particular dedication, so that still counts, right?
Acknowledgments
Jake Wellon - Model
Golden Czermak - Photographer
Ellie McLove & Ink It Out Editing- My Editors
Cover Me Darling - Cover Artist
My mom - Thank you for reading this book eight million two hundred times.
Kendra, Lisa, Laura, Kathy, Mindy, Barbara & Amanda—I don’t know what I would do without y’all. Thank you, my lovely betas, for loving my books as much as I do.
Table of Contents
Blurb
Prologue
Prologue II
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Epilogue
Do you Follow me?
What’s Next?
Other titles by Lani Lynn Vale:
The Freebirds
Boomtown
Highway Don’t Care
Another One Bites the Dust
Last Day of My Life
Texas Tornado
I Don’t Dance
The Heroes of The Dixie Wardens MC
Lights To My Siren
Halligan To My Axe
Kevlar To My Vest
Keys To My Cuffs
Life To My Flight
Charge To My Line
Counter To My Intelligence
Right To My Wrong
Code 11- KPD SWAT
Center Mass
Double Tap
Bang Switch
Execution Style
Charlie Foxtrot
Kill Shot
Coup De Grace
The Uncertain Saints
Whiskey Neat
Jack & Coke
Vodka On The Rocks
Bad Apple
Dirty Mother
Rusty Nail
The Kilgore Fire Series
Shock Advised
Flash Point
Oxygen Deprived
Controlled Burn
Put Out
I Like Big Dragons Series
I Like Big Dragons and I Cannot Lie
Dragons Need Love, Too
Oh, My Dragon
The Dixie Warden Rejects
Beard Mode
Fear the Beard
Son of a Beard
I’m Only Here for the Beard
The Beard Made Me Do It
Beard Up
For the Love of Beard
Law & Beard
There’s No Crying in Baseball
Pitch Please
Quit Your Pitchin’
Listen, Pitch
The Hail Raisers
Hail No
Go to Hail
Burn in Hail
What the Hail
The Hail You Say
Hail Mary
The Simple Man Series
Kinda Don’t Care
Maybe Don’t Wanna
Get You Some
Ain’t Doin’ It
Too Bad So Sad
Bear Bottom Guardians MC
Mess Me Up
Talkin’ Trash
How About No
My Bad
One Chance, Fancy
It Happens
Castiel and Turner
Snitches Get Stitches
F-Bomb
KPD Motorcycle Patrol
Hide Your Crazy
It Wasn’t Me
I’d Rather Not
Make Me
Sinners are Winners
If You Say So
SWAT 2.0
Just Kidding (1-7-20)
Fries Before Guys (2-11-20)
Maybe Swearing Will Help (3-10-20)
Ask Me If I Care (4-14-20)
May Contain Wine (5-12-20)
Jokes on You (6-9-20)
Join the Club (7-14-20)
Any Day Now (8-11-20)
Say it Ain’t So (9-8-20)
Officially Over It (10-13-20)
Nobody Knows (11-3-20)
Depends Who’s Asking (12-8-20)
Valentine Boys (early 2020)
Herd That
Crazy Heifer
Chute Yeah
Get Bucked
Blurb
Gabriel Luca Maldonado, III and Francesca Leandra Solomon were meant to be. They were so in love that everybody prayed for what they had.
Everything was glorious. They would get married, have children and live a perfect life. She would be a doctor in the emergency room once she finished her doctorate, and he would be a badass Navy SEAL and save people for a living.
But then Luca is deployed across the world, and per military regulations, Frankie isn’t allowed to follow.
They’ve overcome a lot in their short relationship, and they can overcome this, too. Two years was a piece of cake. She’d finish her schooling and wait for him. And when he finally returned home, they would marry.
But two months into Luca’s deployment, the unthinkable happens, and Frankie is left alone and heartbroken, knowing that she’ll have to face the rest of life without Luca at her side.
***
Fast forward two years and Frankie is exactly where her fiancé’s father left her, in a pit of despair that she has no hope of ever finding her way out of.
She lives life one second at a time, depressed and alone, hoping tomorrow won’t hurt like today.
She finds a job, moves, and hopes that the nightmares won’t swallow her whole.
But just as she thinks that she’s getting better, one of her nightmares walks through the doors of her ER, and that nightmare has a name.
Gabriel Luca Maldonado, III. In the flesh.
Also healthy and whole, and definitely no longer missing.
Sadly, it only takes her a half a second to realize that the man that left her isn’t the same man that returned.
The old one wanted her. The new one? Well, he’s definitely not interested anymore.
Prologue
I let a short dude cuddle me once. It felt like I had a backpack on.
-Coffee Cup
Frankie
Two years ago
“I’ll take care of him,” Malachi promised.
I smiled at Malachi, knowing that he would.
Then Malachi was gone, leaving me with Luca, who was staring at me like he’d just killed my puppy.
“Luca, it’s okay,” I promised. “I’ll be okay.”
He walked to me, pressing his forehead against mine as he cupped the sides of my face, and exhaled softly.
“You’re okay. But I’m not.”
I closed my eyes at those words.
I wouldn’t cry. I wouldn’t cry.
I was in an online support group for military wives and girlfriends.
My post last week had gone something like this: My fiancé is leaving for two years. He’s going to be gone while I finish my schooling. The announcement of his impending departure came as a rather large surprise, and we didn’t have a chance to marry. Now, he’s leaving in three days, and I’m being left behind. What do I do?
The responses had varied, but all of them had an underlying tone of ‘don’t cry and make him feel bad for leaving. It’s not his fault. Be strong. Fall apart when he’s gone.’
So that was what I was going to do.
I was going to be strong now.
I was going to be strong, and I was going to hold it all together.
And once he was gone, then I would fall apart.
“I love you, Luca,” I whispered. “And no, I’m not okay. But it’ll be okay.”
He used his thumbs to tip my chin up. Then his mouth was on mine, and everything really was okay with the world.
For a few seconds, everything was perfect.
Then his lips left mine when the announcement of his departure was only thirty minutes away.
“Love you,” he rasped.
The moment his hands left my face, my heart started to pound.
“Love you, too,” I repeated.
He took a step back, and I took him in one more time, in all his uniformed glory.
“Come back to me,” I told him. “Exactly like this. Whole and healthy. When you get back, we’re getting married. And then we’ll have babies.”
His grin was nothing short of magnificent.
“Lots and lots of babies.”
Then he was gone.
His friend, Malachi, who’d waited for him since they were leaving together, waved and then they both rounded the corner of the building, rendering me unable to see them any longer.
And the worst, most god awful feeling washed over me.
Panic set in, and my hands started shaking.
“Keep it together, girl,” my dad, Coke Solomon, warned.
I swallowed hard.
“The worst sense of foreboding just rocketed through me,” I rasped. “As if that’s the last time I’ll ever see them together.”
My dad’s arm went around my neck, and he pulled me into his hard chest.
“It’ll be okay,” he promised. “You just gotta have faith.”
Faith. Right.
I’d be faithful as fuck.
“I’m scared,” I whispered, feeling the tears start to well.
I was just about to turn around and leave when Luca came barreling around the corner.
My breath hitched, and my dad let me go.
Before I could even ask him what was up, he once again had me in his arms.
“One last hug,” he said breathlessly.
I laughed, wrapped my arms around his neck, and kissed his temple, slightly dislodging his hat.
Then, just as quickly, he set me down.
“Now, I really have to go. Fuck, I’m late.”
Then, for good this time, he was gone.
I just had no idea how gone he really was.
***
One and a half years ago
I smiled, so happy to see my fiancé’s parents on the doorstep that I ran to them and wrapped them in a hug without first taking in the look on both of their faces.
“I can’t believe y’all are here!” I cried out. “What are y’all doing here?”
I’d started my first year of residency just yesterday, and I was a mess.
After eight years of school crammed into five years—sometimes it really paid to be a genius—one would think that residency training would be a piece of cake.
Let me tell you something. It wasn’t.
It was hard. The hours were long and grueling, and everybody looked at and treated me like a child.
Then again, compared to most of them, I was.
I’d graduated high school early. Then college early. Starting medical school an entire three years earlier than even the youngest of normal students.
Needless to say, I was a child in their eyes.
It felt good to see Gabe and Ember, though.
I hadn’t realized how much I’d needed a hug until they were squeezing me like their life depended on it.
“I had a really bad day yesterday,” I said, throat closing as I remembered. “And now you’re here, and whew, it was like that bad day is just erased.”
I slowly let them go and stepped back, a large, jovial smile on my face.
That smile fell right off when I saw that Ember was crying, and Gabe was looking at me like I’d just slapped him.
“What?” I whispered.
The door behind my fiancé’s parents opened, and my father walked in.
His face was a mask of stillness.
Not a single emotion was in his expression.
“Daddy?”
Ember had my hand in hers moments later.
“Baby, hush,” he whispered. “Listen.”
So I listened.
And I never realized what it would feel like—losing your soul.
But I imagine it would feel something like how I was feeling now.
Lost. Empty. Alone. Scared. Sad. Sick to my stomach.
Luca is missing.
***
One year ago
“He’s still missing,” Daddy said.
***
Six months ago
“There’s still nothing, honey,” Gabe’s deep, saddened voice said.
***
Three months ago
“Malachi was found,” Gabe said. But before I could get my hopes up, he dashed them right back down. “Malachi is in bad shape. Very, very bad shape. And the location where he was found? Everyone was dead. Everyone.”
Meaning, the hope that I’d had over the last year was for naught.
Malachi was found. But Luca was forever lost.
Prologue II
I got a dig bick.
-You read that wrong
Malachi
The dog tags were clutched in my hand.
Just as they’d been, apparently, when they found me.
“These are your personal effects,” the man that’d just handed me my discharge papers said. “Normally they would’ve been sent to your parents, but they’ve been unable to be reached.”
Unable to be reached.
“So they’ve been in a lockbox,” he continued. “Any questions?”
Did I have any questions? Thousands of them.
Did I have any questions for him? No.
And just like that, I was left with my only personal effects to my name, and not one single spark of memory returned.
Not. One.
I had a wallet full of cash. Credit cards that were likely shut off due to my time missing, and a pair of boots that no longer fit me.
“I’m glad to walk you out to the exit, then,” the nurse said.
I stood up, feeling things hurt on me that should never hurt a man of my age.
The first two steps were always the worst.
My scarred legs d
idn’t want to cooperate.
It’d been six months since I’d been found in that hellhole.
Six months of pain.
Pain that, still to this day, was just as debilitating as the first day.
Your scarring is intense. Best guess, you survived some kind of explosion.
The doctor’s first words to me when I woke up explaining what had happened were burned in my memory.
Your scarring is intense.
No fuckin’ joke.
Though my face was badly scarred, it, at least, was one of the only parts of my body that didn’t hurt.
My shoulders, however? Those fucking hurt.
There was a clump of scarring from shoulder blade to shoulder blade, and at times, it hurt to even squeeze my hand, let alone move my arm.
Then there was my left leg.
You’re lucky that you didn’t lose that. It could’ve been a lot worse.
Yep, lucky.
I was lucky to have a fuckin’ leg that hurt so bad to walk at times that I nearly cried with my first two steps.
But, the scarring was just that, scarring.
It was proof that I did survive.
Malachi Stokes was a survivor. Even if the name Malachi Stokes meant nothing to me.
“One last piece of advice,” the doctor said as he saw me walking past.
I looked at him.
“Don’t stop moving,” he said. “The more you move, the freer and less stiff the scarring will be.”
I nodded once, feeling the scars pull tight on my face right around my eyes.
You’re lucky you didn’t lose your eyes.
Funny. But I didn’t feel the least bit fucking lucky.
***
Gabe stood next to me as we both stared at the contents of what I’d left behind.
“Your parents apparently paid for this for two years,” Gabe rumbled, sounding tired. “You’re lucky…they would’ve confiscated it all next month if you hadn’t come back.”
Lucky.
Right.
I should feel lucky, shouldn’t I?
I mean, I did return home when his son didn’t.
But I didn’t feel lucky.
Far from it.
“There’s a job at the police station if you want it,” Gabe continued.
Did I? Want it?
No.
But should I take it?
Probably.
“Thank you,” I said. “That’d be good.”
Lies.
All fucking lies.
It wouldn’t be good.