Eli follows me but pauses before we go inside. He is holding the door open for me but looking out into the parking lot, away from my car and his bike.
“Is something wrong?” I ask.
“No, nothing,” he steps forward, so I have to move inside, and he follows me in.
I’m about to ask what he saw when one of the security guards comes over, looking concerned. It doesn’t take long to convince them Handlebar isn’t a threat, but they still eye him and his cut as he follows me to the elevators.
When we get to my office, I close the door over and offer him a drink, then go around my desk, putting the huge piece of furniture between us. His presence seems to take all the air out of the room.
Eli moves like a cat, graceful for someone so large who invokes fear into people who don’t know him, from the way he dresses and the vehicle he chooses to drive. If people took the time to get to know him, they’d see what I see. He’s a kind hearted, caring man with a deep-seated emotional wound he keeps close to his chest.
Now and then, when we talked, I could see something in him, some deep and lasting pain that he will never talk about. He has erected a barrier between whatever it was and the person he is now.
I’m not a nurturing personality, not by a long shot but Eli spoke to a part of me I never knew was there. And it’s why I ran from him that night, pushing him away, not wanting to take on any emotional baggage.
The men I bring into my life aren’t complicated. They’re more like what happened with Mace. In fact, being with Mace is something that would be easy to fall into on a casual basis because he doesn’t want anything in return.
Eli wouldn’t ask me to help him through his past, but it’s there, whether he intended me to see it or not.
“Everything okay over there?”
I have to clear my throat a couple of times before responding. My thoughts and his appearance here tonight have triggered something I’m not used to. Instead of trying to figure that out I focus on why he’s here.
“Does King know you’re giving me a heads up about what he wants to tell me?”
“He didn’t tell me not to talk about it.”
“So that means no.”
“King knows everything.”
“He’s not psychic.”
“You sure about that,” he grins, leaning back in the chair, making himself comfortable.
“Yeah, I kind of have thought that in the past. How does he know everything? Does he have spies?”
“That would be telling,” Eli takes a long drink from his water bottle then sets it on the desk. “Truthfully, he wouldn’t have sent me to ask you to come to the compound without knowing I would share some information.”
“Well, color me intrigued. What is this piece of information?”
“Things went sideways on our latest run.”
“With the law?”
“No, nothing like that.”
“True, I would have had to bail you out if it was something like that.”
“We’re too good to get caught.”
“Famous last words.”
He huffs out a little laugh, then his face gets serious. “A long time ago, before I joined the club, I worked at a carnival. We traveled around the country a lot, spending a week maximum in each new city, or town.”
I don’t take my eyes off him as he gets a faraway look in his own. We’ve talked sure, but Eli never elaborated on what his life was like before he joined Devil’s Chaos. It’s surprising to learn he grew up in a carnival, but also kind of not.
“I was eighteen and kept to myself, did what was needed. I watched what went on around me, saw some questionable things for sure,” he gives me another little grin, some kind of attempt to lighten the mood, or what he is about to tell me.
