I didn’t let her finish the second syllable in that word. I turned and glared at her. Had she no fucking idea what I was at risk for?
To be fair, no, she did not. She could not have. I’d only known it for a few days now. How the fuck would someone not immersed in the biker world have any conception of the danger that lay ahead?
How the fuck, especially, would someone who would so naively…fucking hell, move here?
“What are you doing here?” I said, sincerely curious.
Callie drew in a breath. Never once did we break eye contact. I’d never entirely forgotten how intoxicating those brown eyes were, but I’d forgotten just how much they could hold me. King, Crush, Satan—no one had a fucking glare like she did. No one could look and hold someone down, or at least me, like she could.
And like one of those stupid finger toys, the more I tried to pull away, the more I found myself being pulled into her gaze.
“I could lie and say it was a massive coincidence, but I know you’d see through that instantly,” she said. “I came here for you.”
“That was a stupid fucking choice.”
“I don’t care. It’s the right choice.”
“It’s the wrong choice for your safety.”
“You think I wasn’t aware of that?”
Goddamnit, was this woman insane? I wouldn’t recommend what I was doing to another dude. And now my…mywifewas saying this?
I wanted to call her my ex, my separated spouse, something to indicate the distance that I wanted to feel. But no, there was fucking nothing, because life couldn’t be that fucking easy, now could it?
“You think you’re stepping into something you understand, but you don’t, Callie,” I said.
I immediately regretted saying her name. There was something sweet and wonderful about it, the way it just rolled off my tongue. It was a sensation I really would have preferred not to feel.
“This is a fucking nightmare scenario. People around me are going to die; it’s just a matter of which side wins first. You get near me and you are going right in the line of it all. I told you to make me dead so that you would never be a part of this ever again. Don’t be foolish. Don’t put yourself in the middle of that nonsense. You don’t have to be.”
“No, but if it’s the price I pay for us being back together, I want to.”
I threw up my hands. Clearly, reasonable conversation wasn’t going to work with Callie. I didn’t like to say this, but it looked like I was going to need to be more assertive, perhaps even ruder.
“Let me get one fucking thing into your skull right now, since not a goddamn thing else seems to be landing with you. I do not want to get back together. Not now, not ever. I thought that telling you to move the fuck on would get the point across. It was for your own fucking good. But apparently not, so here I am, in a fucking grocery store, having to explain all this shit to you. Do. Not. Look. For. Me!”
I’d never seen Callie look so hurt in my life. It pained me. You think I took pleasure in telling the woman I once made vows to to fuck off?
But she didn’t break. For better or for worse, it reminded me of how strong she was, why I’d been attracted to her in the first place. I was not a good person. I was selfish. I looked out for me and pretty much no one else. I wasn’t smart, I didn’t have a lot of money, and I tended to make dumb decisions. No woman should have ever wanted me for more than a night, maybe a weekend if they were really horny.
That wasn’t the case when I first met Callie.
She kept insisting that beneath my hardened skin lay a soft soul or some other poetic shit I couldn’t remember. The general idea was I was a better person than I gave myself credit for. I thought that was a dumb fucking statement, but strangely enough, hearing someone else say it somehow gave me confidence and belief in myself. Call it fucking crazy…
No, fucking crazy was standing here and admiring Callie not breaking after I’d told her to stop. What the fuck was going to get the point across?
“I hope this is the last time I ever have to speak to you for your own sake,” I growled. “Move on. If you really did move here, start looking to date other men. Don’t ever get involved with a biker again. Things are about to get really goddamn bloody and awful here, and the last thing I need is to know that you’re in the way somehow. If you choose to ignore me and keep trying to be involved, be warned. I cannot protect you. In fact, you would be inviting danger. If you come near me, the odds of your death go up greatly. You’ve been fucking warned!”
And even still, that fucking gaze upon me…I could not rip my eyes from her so easily. It was like telling a fat kid to turn away from the pizza; good fucking luck making that last longer than a few seconds. Why was it so fucking hard?
Because I still care about her. Because I still lo—
Finally, I jerked myself around and walked down the aisle. I preferred anything to Callie right now.
* * *
One of the perks of having to live in the shadows and making ends meet was that I got really damn good at not just hooking up with women but doing so quickly and more or less hanging around.
