I eyed Mercy as she worked quickly and efficiently, showing me what I needed to do to prep the shrimp. Washing my hands, I took over after she ran me through the process with three different shrimp.
We worked in silence for a while, then started up some light-hearted chatter. The kind you did when you were first getting to know someone. You know, after the casual talk about how your boyfriends kill people when your life was in mortal danger.Just girly things.
It didn’t take me long to realize I really liked her and could see us being friends. I got the feeling that was what OD and Kilo were hoping for. They’d shoot each other meaningful glances anytime the two of us were in the room together.
Normally, that kind of thing would make me claustrophobic. Like I was trying to crawl out of my own skin. Forcedhuman interaction wasn’t usually my thing. I liked my human interaction unconscious and bleeding. But not this time. I attributed it to Mercy being so easy-going and sweet. It was impossible not to like her. And she wasn’t pushy, even if the two bikers in our lives seemed to be.
“So how did you and Kilo meet?” I asked, focusing on my task. Out of the corner of my eye I saw her stiffen slightly. I was about to tell her she didn’t have to share when she started talking.
“We moved in next door to him,” she said.
That didn’t sound too bad. Not bad enough for the nervous energy rolling off her. I was sensitive to body language. Came with the job. My patients couldn’t always articulate what was wrong, so I got really good at reading their energy and visual cues.
“My mom, sister, and I were on the run,” she added.
Yeah. Okay, that made more sense. Plus, OD had mentioned someone trying to kill her.
Oh how quickly my life turns upside down that‘we were on the run’,AKA, people were trying to kill us, equals, this makes perfect sense.
I worked slowly and carefully as she recounted everything that’d happened with her father, the club, and Kruzman. “Wow,” I said when she finally fell silent. “That must have been so hard to deal with.”
She looked over at me. “You’d know.”
It hit me then that she was right. I’d had my head buried in the sand. Just doing the next thing that needed doing in order to get by. Trying to find Ryan was like my lifeline. The only thing that got me from one day to the next. But my life was just as chaotic as hers had been a mere six months ago.
Seeing her like this, now, was almost like a glimpse into a possible future for me. I hoped mine would turn out just as well.Maybe not the being pregnant part. Panic slid over my spine at the thought. I wasn’t quite ready for that level of domestication.
The silence between us stretched out for a few minutes before I realized that Mercy was practically buzzing beside me. “What?”
She gave me a side eye with a guilty smile. “Has OD made you his old lady?”
I made a face. “His what?”
She laughed. “It’s what they call their wives.”
I choked on air. That was how fast the panic closed up my throat at the word wife. Then I wheezed as she whacked me on the back so hard I nearly toppled into the giant metal bowl filled with shrimp. “Oh my God,” I gasped. Images of babies in leather vests flew across my imagination, a wedding dress with biker patches.What the hell?
Her laughter floated through the kitchen as she walked over to wash her hands. “I know I shouldn’t pry,” she said, “but I’m dying to know. The way he looks at you makes me worried you’ll go up in flames.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. “Being attracted doesn’t mean he’s going to marry me.”
She made a face that clearly said she disagreed. “I’ve gotten to know these men well. Especially Overdrive. He and Kilo are best friends,” she explained. “He doesn’t show this kind of interest in women.”
“Sexual?” I asked, raising my brows. No way I believed that.
She shook her head. “That was the only kind he did show before. This is more. Be glad he hasn’t chained you to the wall.”
Setting the shrimp I’d been holding down, I sighed and turned to face her. “I don’t know what this is. I like him. A lot. But…” I searched for how to admit to her that I was a bit damaged. Okay. A lot damaged.
She watched me, her face open and curious.
“I have issues.”
It was her turn for her eyebrows to shoot up. “What kind of issues?”
“Abandonment issues,” I admitted. The fact that I was even telling her any of this was nothing short of a miracle. “My mother left us when Ryan and I were young. But not before years of her telling me how much she regretted having me. And him. And how we ruined her life.”
And now my brother had left me behind in the dust, too. It was all a bit much for me not to have issues.
