Instead, I kiss her. Slow at first, reverent. Then deeper. She opens for me, fingers threading through my hair, pulling me closer. Every soft sound she makes cuts through the armor I’ve built.
My mouth trails down her throat. Over her collarbone. Across the curve of her breast. She arches into me, thighs parting instinctively. Her hands roam over my shoulders, my back, like she’s memorizing me in case I disappear.
“I’m here,” she whispers, lips brushing my jaw. “I’ve got you, Isaiah.”
And she does. We don’t rush. We take our time. Moving like we’ve got forever, even if deep down we know we don’t. I lose myself in the rhythm of her body, in the heat of her breath, in the way her eyes lock onto mine when she falls apart beneath me.
Later, when we’re tangled in the sheets and her head rests on my chest, she traces the ink over my heart. “I’ll stay as long as you let me,” she says quietly.
I kiss the crown of her head. “You’re already part of me.”
And she is. Maybe that’s why it’s going to destroy me when she’s gone.
We don’t talk about labels. We don’t talk about the future.
One night, under the buzz of the common room fluorescents, I catch her watching me. She’s barefoot, wrapped in one of my hoodies, fingers tucked in the sleeves.
“What?” I ask, not looking up from my case file.
“I used to imagine you in court,” she says. “Shiny suit. Polished speech. Climbing to the top.”
“And now?”
“I see you here. With grease on your collar and heat in your spine. Fighting with paper instead of bullets. Still climbing. Just... sideways.”
I close the folder. “Do you think I made the wrong choice?”
“No,” she shakes her head, her long, dark hair cascading down her back. “I think you became exactly who you were meant to be. That’s what scares me.”
I walk to her. Tuck a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “I don’t know how this ends, Aria.”
She leans into me, breath warm against my throat. “Then don’t let it.”
The legal work comes faster than I expected. On paper, the Saints Outlaws look cleaner than a politician’s bank account. That’s my job now, bury the blood in bureaucratic mud.
Somebody’s gotta keep the Saints clean enough to ride. Might as well be me.
I’m good at it. Better than I should be, honestly. I grew up watching my father fight the system with a gun. I fight it with a printer and a pen. Leases, zoning, contracts, and defense prep. Half the time, I’m still wearing lecture hall ink on my palms, hunched over a table with three patched brothers breathing down my neck, asking if “eminent domain” means the city can take our lot. Sometimes I think I’ve spent more time in city offices than any lawyer in town. And the city knows me. Knows I don’t blink.
Rock eyes me across the table one afternoon while I talk down a city inspector trying to red-tag the garage. I keep my tone level. Facts only.
When the guy finally folds and leaves, Rock whistles low and mutters, “You don’t flinch, do you? Like you’re made of something harder.”
I shrug. But something about the way he says it lingers.
I’m midway through rewriting a bullshit tow-yard permit when Rock stumbles into the meeting room.
Blood’s crusted on his knuckles, his lip’s split open, and there’s a fresh tear in the sleeve of his hoodie. He looks like he walked through hell and didn’t bother to wipe his boots before coming in.
“Jesus Christ,” I mutter, tossing him the cleanest towel I can find. “Did a truck hit you or did you piss off the wrong saint?”
Rock catches the towel and dabs his lip like he’s done it a hundred times. “Kid at the bike shop was getting’ jumped,” he says, voice flat. “I handled it.”
“By yourself?”
He shrugs like it's no big deal. “They swung first.”
I blink. “How many?”
