Not your problem. She’s single, you’re single. You have interest.
It doesn’t matter what happened in the past. It only matters what you do going forward. What you do to make things right.
“Well, guys, I think this will be something great,” I said, rising from the couch. “I think since Cole won’t get back to us for a couple weeks, there’s nothing for us to do but lie low.”
“Not fight now?” Connor asked.
I shook my head.
“Cole might have bailed you all out once, but I wouldn’t exactly assume he’d do it every time. Let’s not take advantage of him, shall we?”
Garrett snickered as if he’d heard an innuendo in there. I ignored it.
“I’m going home.”
“What?” Garrett said. “Half this group got out of prison, and you’re not going to hang?”
I shook my head.
“Shitty day at work, and I need to think about how we will make this possible MC work. So…yeah.”
Four of the other five guys sort of shrugged, calling me a pussy or a bitch but not pressing the matter. One of them was right to have his suspicions up.
“All right, have a good one,” I said, waving to everyone and ignoring Steele’s glare as I walked out of the house.
As soon as I stepped outside, I unlocked my phone. I got on my bike, sent off the message I needed to, and pocketed it.
I tried to ignore the fact that Steele had been staring at me the whole time that I’d been writing the message.
Tara
It was about eight-thirty at night, and I had spent roughly the last eight hours in front of my laptop, just working on whatever I could for the solar farm.
It wasn’t a great distraction. I still thought about last night plenty. I still wondered why I’d pushed Brock so hard on something that ultimately didn’t matter that much. I still wondered why I’d even put myself in that spot.
But there was literally nothing else I could do to calm my mind down. At least by doing work now, I was doing something productive, doing something that would ensure I would get ahead of schedule and get promoted down the line.I wonder if this is why Dad works as much as he does. To distract himself. To avoid having to deal with emotional shit.
Without question.
My phone buzzed in my pocket. It hadn’t buzzed all day, making this even more curious. I looked down.
It was Brock.
And it was a deceptively simple text, one that made me gulp.
“What are you doing right now?”
No one sent that text on a Saturday night without having a follow-up question. No man sent that text to a woman without hoping to have something more happen. Brock would not have sent that text to me without…
“Working haha. It’s boring. You?”
I sent the message back. I turned my attention back to the laptop, but as soon as I saw the bubble forming on Brock’s text screen, I closed my laptop. For better or for worse, he had me fully captivated.
“Just left the boys’ house now. Can you come over?”
I gulped. Was this really about to happen? If I said yes to this, there was no turning back. There was no going over there and just… I knew what would happen.
I thought about last night. I thought about this morning. I thought about the drive over I-40, how I’d never done anything, how I couldn’t break the rules unless they were broken for me. I…
