Chapter Eighteen
Gunner
With my hands in the soapy water, Malcolm squeezed up behind me. “You have to stop flirting with him,” he whispered in my ear. “What if he gets upset about it?”
“Did he look upset about it?” I asked. “He’s eating up the attention. I can tell.”
Malcolm took a couple of dishes out of the rack, drying them and returning them to shelves. “I really hope they clear the road in the morning.”
“Yeah, me too,” I said, although I knew it was at least half a lie. With the weekend off between jobs, I didn’t really have much to do back in Seattle. Most weekdays, I just got home and collapsed, exhausted from work. Sometimes, my friend Laura would come over, and the two of us would smoke a joint and shoot the shit. She used to live next door, but after she moved away, she kept coming by. Outside of that, though, I didn’t get up to much except for going to the bar with the guys from work every now and then. Even then, we didn’t do much but sit, drink, and stare at each other.
I finished up the dishes. When Malcolm smiled at me, taking the last fork from my hand, I realized I was glad to have done the chore. “Let’s go on the porch,” I said. “I want Maddox to give me some of that wine.”
I instinctively pulled out my pack of smokes but saw that there were only two left. Shoving it back in my pocket, I grabbed Malcolm’s elbow instead.
Outside, I could see the stars, full and bright above us now that the clouds had passed. Maddox was sitting on an old couch, drinking his wine and staring over the yard. I saw that the light above the workshop was on. Some of the sculptures glinted with its reflection.
He looked so damn handsome sitting there, with his chiseled jaw and his swoop of black hair, speckled with gray. He wore his tattoos well, and with a T-shirt clinging to his muscles, I could see the intricate work on the sleeve of ink that covered his arm.
“How about that wine?” I asked.
“Go ahead, have a bit.”
I picked up the bottle, swigging directly from it, then handed it to Malcolm. He rolled his eyes, grabbing one of the cups sitting on the table, and poured himself a splash. “Sit with me on the swing,” he said, grabbing my hand.
The porch swing was sideways to the couch, and when we sat down together, the view of the mountains opened up before our eyes.
“Careful not to rock that swing too much,” Maddox said, winking at me. “Old chains.”
My stomach tightened, and I felt flushed.Was he flirting with me?
I threw my arm over Malcolm’s shoulder, glad to feel like he was my guy for a minute. “Do you ever race your motorcycle?” I asked Maddox.
He scoffed. “Racing isn’t my poison,” he said. “Anyway, that bike takes me a lot of places. I try to treat her right.”
“You must have raced it at least once,” I said, not believing his modest attitude. I saw the tattoo of the motorcycle on his arm, and it did not look like a friendly old steed. It looked like it was exploding forward and flying off his body. “Or taken it up to full speed. Aren’t you curious how fast it can go?”
He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “With this bike? No. With my last bike, though…”
Malcolm perked up beside me. “What happened with your last bike?”
“More like what happenedtomy last bike.”
“What?” I asked. “You wreck it?”
“In a ball of flames,” he said. “Swear to god.”
“No way,” I said, reaching out to grab the wine from the table. I took another swig, then rested the bottle on my leg. “If the motorcycle went up in a ball of flames, you wouldn’t have made it.”
“I jumped off,” he said, shrugging. “I was a little rougher for the landing, but I made it.”
“What happened?” Malcolm asked.
“I’ll tell you what happened,” he said. “And it had nothing to do with racing the bike or seeing how fast it could go, believe me. I was speeding that thing, but it wasn’t because I wanted to. I had a guy on my tail, and he was out of his fucking mind, waving a gun through his car window and screaming to all hell.”
“Who was it?” I asked.
“A man who thought I had stolen a briefcase full of cocaine from him.” He shook his head, almost laughing about it. “Which I hadn’t,” he clarified. “I don’t touch that stuff. it’s all dirty money. Once I realized I couldn’t lose him, I tried to take a sharp turn and started to lose control of the bike. We were on the outskirts of the city, and I managed to angle it toward an empty lot instead of careening into a tree or a car. That guy was hot behind me, and when he shot at me with his handgun, I had to dive off the bike to dodge the bullet.”
