He watched me for a second.“And you don’t want me absorbed?”
That wasn’t exactly it, but it also wasn’t not it.
“It’ll be fine,” I said finally.
“We can go for a little bit, and then go do our own thing if you want.”
I shrugged and nodded.“We’ll see.”
At one point, he convinced me to ride the Tilt-A-Whirl with him, which was a terrible choice because I spent half of it laughing and the other half trying not to lose the cheese curds all over my shoes.
He kissed my temple while we stood in line for lemonade refills, and it was sweet and warm and nice.
Nice.
That word kept coming back.
Nice.
Good.
Easy.
All the words that should’ve been enough to drown out the low hum of everything else.
And yet, as the night wound down and we walked back toward the parking lot with the lights of Little Scooters blinking behind us, all I could think about was Saturday.
About walking into the Fallen Lords clubhouse with Jesse beside me.
About Jude.
Because it was his place.His people.His world.His stomping grounds.
And I was about to bring the man I was dating right into the middle of it.
Oh boy.
Chapter Sixteen
Jude
Chaos.
That was the only word for it.
Not organized chaos.Not controlled chaos.Just straight-up, full-blown, no-one-in-charge-even-though-Alice-was-definitely-in-charge chaos.
The clubhouse looked like a party store had exploded inside it.
And somehow, I had been assigned balloons.
“Seriously,” Pipe said, staring at the pile in front of us like it had personally offended him, “how many balloons does she want?”
He sat cross-legged on the floor, surrounded by a sea of blue, green, and purple, like he had lost a bet and this was his punishment.
I reached into the bag Alice had dumped on us, still way too full, and pulled out another deflated balloon.“She said, ‘Don’t stop until this bag is empty.’”
Pipe closed his eyes and tipped his head back, counting under his breath like he was trying not to lose his shit.
