“It’s a ham sandwich,” she said in way of explanation before she headed back to the kitchen again.
“Let’s go,” Gorgon ordered, not waiting for her to follow him outside. The yard stretched wide and cold now that the sun had climbed higher. Snow glittered across the bikes like glass dust. A few of the men were working near the shop, the metallic ping of their tools filling the air.
Gorgon walked ahead of her, his boots crunching in rhythm over gravel and ice. He didn’t speak for several minutes, and Kimi didn’t push. Somehow, she knew the silence between them wasn’t empty. It was strategic on his end.
Finally, he said, “You’re hiding something.” It wasn’t a question, but not exactly an accusation. He was stating a fact, and he was right, even if she didn’t want to admit it.
Kimi nearly tripped on the ice. “You always open conversations like that?”
“Yes,” he said.
She sighed. “You could start with asking me how my day is going, you know.”
“If I wanted small talk, I’d talk to Buck.” He glanced sideways at her. “You said Cole was trouble. What kind of trouble are we talking about?”
“He’s the kind of trouble that doesn’t quit,” she said.
“That’s not an answer,” he spat.
“It’s the only one I’ve got,” she countered.
He stopped walking and turned toward her fully. The wind shifted, carrying the heavy, smoky scent of him—leather and cold air and something darker underneath. “You don’t lie well, Kimi.”
She wrapped her arms around herself, and her chin tilted up. “I’ve had practice.”
His gaze was steady, too steady. “You were running from him long before last night.” Again, he was making a statement, not asking her a question. She hated that he saw straight through her. He seemed to see everything.
“Did he hurt you?” he almost whispered. The question landed softly, almost gently—but her body still went rigid, every nerve lit with habit. Not because of the question itself, but because it brought back so many bad memories.
“I’m not broken,” she said through her teeth.
He didn’t move closer, didn’t push her for answers that she wasn’t ready to give him. He just nodded once, like an acknowledgment rather than an apology. “Didn’t say you were.” The wind scoured a whistle through the trees. The sun peeked over the edge of a frozen roofline, bleeding pale gold into the snow. Then he said something that she didn’t expect. “You remind me of my grandmother.”
Kimi blinked. “That’s a new line.”
He huffed out his breath, almost resembling a laugh. “She was Cree. Fierce enough to stop the wind when she prayed. The kind of woman who’d look at a bear and tell it to move without raising her voice.” His lips twitched, just barely. “She said some people were born carrying storms inside them. You look like one of them.”
Kimi stared at him, unsure what to do with that. “And what does a man like you do with someone carrying a storm?”
He met her eyes. “Keep them from drowning in it.” The words hung between them longer than they should have—warmbreath in the cold air, two people pretending they didn’t just step into each other’s gravity pool.
They walked to an old barn that sat on the corner of the property. Kimi quickly crossed the room and sat down in the corner on a bale of hay. “You have animals here?” she asked.
“Not in this barn, not anymore. My grandmother used to keep a few cows in here. I swear, you can still smell them in the summer months. We only have chickens in a building just outback from the clubhouse. That’s how we keep fresh eggs up here,” he said. She wasn’t sure, but Kimi could swear she saw a ghost of a smile on his lips whenever he talked about his grandmother. Hell, that was the most words he’d said all strewn together since she got there.
“You need to eat,” he said, nodding to the brown paper bag that Trudi handed to her.
She peeked into the bag and pulled out the ham sandwich, opening it and holding half of it out to Gorgon. “I’ll eat, but only if you have half,” she insisted. She stared him down until he sighed and sat down next to her on the hay bale and took half the sandwich. She almost wanted to laugh at how grumpy he seemed at her offering him half her sandwich, but she didn’t. Instead, she took a big bite and hummed her approval around it.
“When was the last time you ate anything?” he asked, taking a bite of his half.
“It’s been a couple of days,” she admitted with her mouth full. “I just couldn’t seem to stomach food.”
“What’s changed?” he questioned. She paused, trying to decide if she should tell him that just talking to him seemed to calm her anxiety. Or that the kindness of the people in his club made her feel less anxious about staying there with them, but she thought better of it. Instead, she just shrugged.
They sat there in silence, eating their halves of the ham sandwich, and for the first time, in a damn long time, she feltalmost safe—normal even. And she was pretty sure that had everything to do with the man sitting next to her on the hay bale.
By the time they circled back toward the clubhouse, Trudi stood on the porch, arms folded. “Road team’s back,” she called. “Buck says you’ll want to hear this.”
