Garrett releases my hand and grabs my chin. “Stop that. We didn’tseeyou at the club because you were so masked up in what you thought being a club girl was that you never showed us who you really are. As for still being that girl? I doubt it. It’s a part of who you once were. Just like I was an army grunt. Did it shape me and change me? Sure. Am I an army grunt today? Hell fucking no.”
That might be one of the longest monologues I’ve heard from him.
The knot in my stomach feels a little tighter. For some reason, there’s an imaginary sand-filled timer in my head. That there’s a statute of limitations on a yes and no, even though Kai denied it.
“Hey,” Garrett says. “Look at me, Isla.”
I lift my head.
“I’m never gonna judge you for who you were and what you did to get through a part of your life. Maybe you should do the same.”
I sigh and look out the window. The sun has risen high enough that its rays are creeping over the bed. “I was thinking about grief earlier.”
Garrett releases my chin, takes my hand, and settles back into the pillow. “Yeah?”
“Nanna was the only person on earth who listened to me. Like, really listened to me. She understood why, after the turbulence I’ve had in my life, it felt like someone as solid, stalwart, and fearless as a biker might be the right person for me.”
“How did you end up at the clubhouse?”
I blow out a breath. “I went to school with Karlie, and she’d started hanging around at the clubhouse. She made it sound so fun. And, at first, the attention felt like everything I’d ever wanted. For a long time, I mistook being used for being popular and wanted. Eventually, Nanna tried to warn me, but I wouldn’t listen. It took her dying to give me a path out. I’m so broken that she’s gone, yet I’m trying to be grateful for what that loss is enabling.”
“And what’s that?”
I shrug. “I can focus on having a whole house to fix. Something to keep me busy. She was too proud to let me help her redecorate the place, and it needs a lot of work. But I get tolie in a bed under my own roof and have some time to figure out what I want from my life.”
Garrett lifts my knuckles to his lips and softly kisses the back of them. His scruff scratches me as he does. “Can I ask you something?”
“Of course,” I say, although I’m already regretting it.
He gestures between us. “Would you consider kissing me?”
My heart throws itself against my ribs. “Garrett?—”
“Just consider. Not now. Not today. Just, sometime, when you’re ready.”
The knot in my stomach pulls a little tighter, even as my core flushes with heat. I can’t help but look at his lips and wonder what it would feel like to press mine to them. “One confusing kiss a day is probably my limit.” I try to make light of it. “I barely survived the first one.”
His expression softens into something that feels utterly safe. “That’s why I saidconsiderandsometime. Not now. There’s no clock running. You don’t have to decide anything today. Or tomorrow. Or this month.”
I meet his gaze and am sure he can see I’m bracing for someone to take advantage of the part of me that craves connection. “It’s not you,” I tell him quietly. “It’s not Kai either. It’s me. I don’t trust myself with anything, yet. I don’t know who I am without the bullshit, and I don’t know what’s real.”
Garrett nods. “I like it when you open up to me, Isla. Like that you can trust me to hold your feelings safe. We take it slow. And when you’re ready, you come to me and tell me you’re ready for that kiss.”
There’s no persuasion or pressure in his tone.
But there’s certainty, a hint of promise, that the kiss will happen.
His fingers gently close around mine, warm and rough in a way that sends another pulse of heat between my legs, thenkisses my knuckles again. This time, he lingers, his breath warm against my skin.
It feels like so much more than a kiss; it makes me shiver.
“Go do your chores,” he murmurs as he releases me. “Take two hours—I spoke to Greer already; she’s coming to collect the cannisters. Then, come back.”
I blink back the ridiculous stinging in my eyes. “You’re not mad.”
“I guarantee there will be plenty of days you piss me off, but today isn’t one of them. And I promise I won’t be, even if you decide this dynamic isn’t for you and say no. Disappointed, sure. But not mad.”
I ignore the voice instructing me to say yes. “I’ll bring lunch.”
