"Says the man who went to work this morning."
"Exactly. I know what I'm talking about." He grins at me. "Your grandmother put up with a lot, but she also made sure I had a life outside the job. You need that too."
We finish our dinner, and I help him clean up the dishes. We talk about normal things. The weather, the upcoming football season, his plans to visit my parents next month. It's nice, this slice of normalcy, this reminder that there's a world outside the one I've been living in.
But as I drive back to Laurel Springs later that night, the weight of everything settles back onto my shoulders. I'm Lee Strather, prospect for Saint's Outlaws MC. I work at the garage, I follow orders, I do whatever it takes to earn my patch.
And underneath it all, I'm Lee Brooks Strather, DEA agent working to bring down a drug operation that's poisoning a small town.
The question is, how long can I keep being both?
When I pull into my apartment complex, I sit in the Charger for a long moment, staring up at my building. Tomorrow I'll wake up, change back into my work clothes, and head to the garage. I'll be Lee again, the kid who wants nothing more than to belong to something bigger than himself.
But tonight, just for tonight, I'm Lee. And Lee is tired of the lies.
I get out of the car and head inside, locking the door behind me. Tomorrow the performance starts again. Tomorrow I go back to being someone I'm not.
But for now, I'm just a guy who misses his real life.
And that has to be enough.
Twenty-One
Allison
"You know you don't have to keep picking me up from work," I tell Dime a couple of days later as I hop up into the passenger seat of his truck. "Or taking me to work. I can start to do both myself again."
He reaches over, grabbing my hand in his. "I like picking you up and knowing you're safe because you're with me. I don't trust anyone else with you."
I kinda want to tell him I don't trust anyone else either, but that's dangerous. "That makes me feel loved, but I have to wonder if it's smart," I admit. "I'm counting on you for everything. As someone who was married previously and counted on the man she had to divorce for everything, it could backfire."
"It could," Dime says. "But it could also end up being the best thing that ever happened to you."
A part of me hopes so, another part of me worries what happens when this undercover operation is over.
We drive in silence for a while, my hand still in his. The familiar route back to his place has become our routine, and I find comfort in that. But underneath the comfort, there's always that undercurrent of uncertainty. The knowledge that this life we're building could be temporary.
When we pull into the driveway, I see Whiskers in the window, waiting for us. She does that every day now, sits in the same spot and watches for the truck. It makes me smile, this little routine we've all fallen into.
"She missed you," Dime says, following my gaze.
"She missed you too."
We head inside, and Whiskers immediately winds herself around both our legs, purring loud enough to be heard across the room. I scoop her up and hold her against my chest while Dime heads to the kitchen.
"You hungry?" he asks.
"Starving. What are we making?"
"I was thinking pasta. The most easy thing ever." He opens the fridge and starts pulling out ingredients. "You feel like helping or you want to relax?"
I set Whiskers down and join him in the kitchen. "I'll help. It'll be nice to do something normal together."
We work side by side, him chopping vegetables while I get the water boiling for the pasta. It's incredibly domestic about this, it makes my heart ache in the best way possible. This is what I've always wanted. Not the grand gestures or the expensive gifts, but this. Standing in a kitchen with someone I love, making dinner, talking about our days.
"How was work?" I ask as I stir the pasta.
"Good. Fixed a Harley that was making this god-awful noise. Turned out to be a loose chain." He scrapes the vegetables into a pan. "Lee's getting really good at diagnostics. Kid's going to make a great mechanic."
