“Come here,” I urged, but I was already making my way to him.
The moment he was within reach, I pulled him into me, wrapping my arms around his waist to keep him close.
“I like this,” he said, gazing up at me. “How was… work?”
I nearly snorted.
“It was good. I got Wrangler’s chopper all done.”
“That’s awesome. Is he one of your… friends?”
“Babe, you’ve already seen my cut—”
“Cut! That’s what it’s called!”
“And you know I belong to a club. Now do we need to talk about it?”
“Maybe…”
“Fine,” I said, pecking his lips before releasing him. I wanted him to know I was taking this seriously. I was gonna be an open book for him, even if it was the hardest thing I’d ever done. There was shit I couldn’t get into about the club, but I’d cross that bridge when we got there.
If we ever got there. If he stuck around long enough to get to that point.
Shit! Why was this so hard? Why was it eatin’ me up like this? Why could I say I was going to be an open book about club shit, but the thought of tellin’ him how much I wanted him feltimpossible. There was that whole fear of rejection… yeah, that wasn’t helping.
“My brother and I ran into a few of them one weekend. We’d gone a few towns over to… well, get laid.” I rolled my eyes at Danny’s adorable, bright expression. “Anyway, we started talking. Met the Prez. Liked the vibe. And, eventually, my brother decided he wanted to get in with them. I didn’t want to let him do it alone. We found ourselves on a year-long trial, prospecting.”
“So, I take it you got in?”
“Yeah,” I said with a slow dip of my head. “We got invited into the club. We moved up there, took the three youngest kids who were still in school. Stayed there in Gray Fort until the youngest graduated from high school and saved up enough money to get herself a place.”
“Then what? I’m going to assume you aren’t as… active?”
“I’m still a part of the club, but I’m not an active member of the Gray Fort chapter. Usually, I’ll help out if they need somethin’. I ride through the other chapters, too. But I don’t usually stay. They know they can call if they ever need anything.”
“And I’m going to guess that fixing up their motorcycles during your winter getaway is part of helping them out?” he asked.
“Mostly I do it because they gave me a lot and I want to give back. They took us in when shit was hard. When I still had kids depending on me and a dad who had totally fucked off at that point. They worked with me while I prospected. I gave them my trust, and in return, they gave me theirs. I do it because… well…”
“Because that’s the kind of thing family does?”
I felt my brows pinch as I took in his words. Yeah, it had the idea of family. Now that I thought about it, I feel like I hadn’t fully let it in before. The club had been there for us at every turn. They’d helped us keep a roof over our heads even beforethey deemed us worthy of being part of them. Even now, when my anti-social ass only came around a handful of times during the year, they still treated me like I was one of them. They still picked up the phone when I needed something.
“Yeah. I suppose so,” I finally said.
“So, the motorcycle is done,” he stated, like he was pulling the conversation back around. He seemed chill with it all. I shouldn’t have expected anything less. The more I was around him, the more I understood that he was curious for two reasons. One, he wanted to know more about me. And two, the more important one, it was to protect himself. He was scared of getting hurt. Which, hey, I one hundred percent understood. “What do you do with it, then?”
“I just need to give it a test run, which I won’t be doing around here.”
“Right, because snow and motorcycles don’t mix.” I gave him a nod. “Then where are you going to go?”
“I’ll probably head down to Georgia for a few days. Maybe Florida,” I answered. “I’ll load mine and Wrangler’s up on a trailer and haul ’em down there. Run it around a bit, and probably get a few miles in on mine. Don’t want the girl getting angry at me because she feels neglected.” He sent me a soft smile and shook his head like he thought I was silly. “Then I’ll stop by Gray Fort and drop off Wrangler’s to him.”
“Sounds like a nice little break,” he said. There was something in his tone that scratched at my skin like a needle. I wished I knew what the fuck I was missing. “Maybe it will do you good to be social, too.”
With furrowed brows, I grunted.
“Why do you hate people?” he asked.
