I gesture to my bike. “I’ll follow you over.”
“I need you to have a look at the body for me,” I say, turning to Wolfe. He owns the custom body shop next door to our mechanic Mike, and now that it’s been towed, Layla’s SUV is sitting in the lot between Wolfe’s garage and Mike’s. I tell him all the places I noticed rust, remembering them all from when I first looked it over in her garage.
Wolfe eyes up the Lincoln. Simply repainting isn’t really his forte. He designs and creates really kickass customs for some pretty high-end clients. He’s an artist when it comes to this shit.
“Yeah, I can slide it in.” Wolfe scrubs his jaw and examines the rust along the bottom of the SUV, then clears his throat, pulling his gloves off and stuffing them into his overalls. “It won’t take much to fix, and we’ll clay-bar the underside when we’re done to give her a couple more years.”
“Thanks, brother.” I pat his chest, offering him no explanation to the question I know he’s got running through his head.
But he scoffs. He isn’t letting it go. “Alright, I fuckin’ give in. The fuck is really going on with you? With this woman?” Wolfe stares at me. “I’ve known you a long fucking time. Are you having some sort of breakdown? You need anything?”
There’s no rational explanation yet as to what I’m doing here. My need to look after Layla when she’s stubborn as fuck and doesn’t want to accept help easily is unexplainable, and the need to be near her is part of an equation I just can’t solve yet. Therehasto be a logical answer, but right now I don’t have it.
I shake my head. “I think it’s the exact opposite of a breakdown,” I tell him, thinking of the way her eyes darken to a rich chocolate whenever I look deeply into them.
“Fuck off,” Wolfe says. “After a few days?”
I look him dead in the eye. “This woman—fuck, within the first few seconds.”
As I looked around her place this morning after she’d left for class, I realized two things: her back door is way too easy to get into, and there’s more to the story of her losing her parents than I initially dug up. She doesn’t know who killed them, and the look of pain in her eyes when she talked about them triggered something in my brain. Now finding their killer is like a dripping faucet in the back of my head I can’t ignore. Ineedto know who did it. I need to knowwhyand make it right for her. With one phone call, I already have the hunt started.
I continued through her house alone, spending way too much time doing things I probably shouldn’t. Cleaning, organizing, reorganizing. My obsession grew as I breathed in her perfume and looked at photos of her on the walls. Her smile never truly reached her eyes in any of them. While I worked, I tried to find any rational explanation as to why I can’t stop thinking about her, and the only conclusion I’ve come to is that a rational reasondoesn’t exist. The feeling of peace that spread over me when Layla wrapped her arms around my waist on the back of my bike yesterday is a kind of calm I’ve only felt once before—when I was deep in the desert—and all I know is I needmore.
Wolfe folds his heavy arms over his chest. He knows me better than anyone, so I get why he’d be skeptical. I’ve never seen Wolfe with a woman for any longer than it takes to fuck her and move on. I’ll admit that was my way before too, but now …
“I don’t get it.” He fixes me with a questioning stare.
“I dunno, man,” I offer, running my hand over my head. “All I know is this woman sets something off in me. It’s like I’m just acting on something before I even know what the fuck I’m doing.” I shrug. “I can’t explain it,yet.I’m working on it.”
“You vetted her good?” Wolfe looks me up and down, switching to club business. He’s good at not pressing any kind of emotion for too long. The club sits above all else, and he’ll want to be sure we know every little detail about her before I decide to make her mine.
“Of course,” I retort.
“So you’re gonna make her your ol’ lady? Be a one-woman man? For real?” he muses, his face breaking into a rare smile. “You sure you didn’t eat some of those shrooms Robby brought in?”
I shake my head. “Never been more sober,” is all I offer as I walk towards my bike.
“Chapel at eight tonight,” he reminds me. “Stop at Belgrave first—and fuck, keep your head in the gamebeforethe pussy,” he adds, mentioning the clinic where I’ll need to grab our weekly cut of profits on my way to the club.
“On it,” I call back. I straddle my bike and move to put my helmet on, suddenly remembering the way it felt to have Layla’s warm thighs pressed against me. My mouth waters, just recalling the way she tasted. If she was anyone else, I would’ve fucked her already and moved on, but the part of this puzzle that consumesme is that Ineedher to admit the truth to herself. That she wants me in the same unexplainable way I want her. Iwanther to beg for me.
I don’t just want part of her body—I wanteverypart, and I already know I won’t fucking stop until I get it. I clip my helmet and pull my bandana up, but before I fire up my bike I feel my phone vibrate in my pocket.
When I pull it out I see that it’s Frankie Steadman, our town’s deputy sheriff and friend of the club. I tug my bandana down.
“Been waitin’ for you,” I answer. “You better have some good news for me.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Layla
DELL
We’re having the lemonade auction next weekend if you want to come. Mandy is baking, you could see some of the congregation.
They always ask about you.
My brother’s text popping up stalls the video I’m silently watching at my desk in class: “The Power of Tai Chi for a Slipped Disc.”
