Garrett sighs, a look of complete contentment on his face. “He’d say we’ve been a couple for four years, five months, sixteen days. I think it’s four years exactly, today.”
“I’m curious, why the difference?”
“Let’s just say there was a window, from what I thought was going to be a one-night stand and me finally seeing what was right in front of my face. I pushed back hard against Kai’s every effort to bundle the two of us up into something, for a while.”
The story fits their personalities. And just reinforces why having thoughts about the two of them feels like a slip back into old habits and old patterns.
“Is it always a secret, the two of you?”
He opens his eyes, but I see no hostility for my question. “It’s not really anybody else’s business. We’re not ashamed of who we are. And there are places we go where we can be out and open about our relationship. But club politics can be messy, and the membership’s not always progressive. It’s why we’ve beennomad for so long. Easier to let who we are disappear when we spend time on the road doing jobs for King. He knows. Catfish and Wren know.”
I chew on my lower lip. “But you don’t mind me knowing?”
Garrett stares at the blanket covering his legs, for a moment. “Kai wouldn’t have taken your hand and brought you in here earlier if we did.”
“But Butcher and Greer know.”
Garrett nods. “As of today, they do. Grudge and Smoke might be guessing. Eventually, they’ll all know.” He pauses and looks down at our joined hands. “You’re good for Kai. Good with him, I mean.”
“I barely did anything.”
“You were there. You held him when I couldn’t. You cared for him and fed him. That’s not barely doing anything.”
The air in the room thickens around us. He’s not flirting with me or suggesting anything. But the way he says it leaves me…stirred.
“He was scared…and trying really hard not to scare you.”
Garrett smiles and places his bandaged arm on what I now think of as Kai’s side of the bed. “That’s him. Always trying to protect the people he loves. I suppose we’re the same that way. It’s why we’re more worried about you than you realize. That thing with your uncle, watching you struggle the other day.”
My heart immediately conflates the two sentences.
Always trying to protect the people he loves.
We’re more worried about you than you realize.
I’m not sure what he means when he says people they love. It must be as family. The platonic way the Outlaws love one another.
But I can’t help wishing that maybe they both could?—
“Isla,” he says, cutting through my thoughts.
He said he wanted honesty. “I’m…not good with bikers.”
“We get that. But here, in our home, we’re just two guys trying to build the best life we can with people we love and care about.”
There’s a natural impulse to want to be that person. To morph myself into what they need, to become the person they love. It’s a combination of old habits and the desire I still have to be loved and protected.
It feels like falling back into a pattern.
And yet, I still find it impossible to get up and leave.
17
SHADE
Pain grinds in every part of my body. It’s a dull, bone-deep ache that pulses in time with my heartbeat. Every breath drags raw across my ribs, and every shift of muscle feels like being ripped asunder.
Everything about this handpicked mattress feels wrong. It’s too soft, too hard, and too hot, all at once.
