Lindsay laughed through the tears. The plant went on the windowsill. She stayed for an hour.
Visitors came and went all afternoon. The prospects kept trailing boxes through the front door, following Bea’s directions on where everything went — kitchen, bedroom, spare room — Bea pointing with a coffee in one hand and the kind of confidence that suggested she’d been planning this in her head for weeks rather than hours. Road captain, I thought. She’d picked that up from me.
By late afternoon, the last box was down. Bea stretched her arms over her head, then dropped her hands to her hips and looked around the living room.
“We did it.”
“We did.”
“We have the house to ourselves.”
“I know.”
She looked at me. Slow. Deliberate. “We have a brand-new couch. A brand-new bed. A brand-new kitchen table—”
“Bea.”
“—and a porch. We didn’t check the porch.”
I had her off her feet and against the wall of the new hallway before she’d finished laughing, her legs hooked around my waist, her mouth on mine.
“Which one first?” she murmured.
“All of them. We have all night.”
She grinned against my mouth. “Biker domestic bliss.”
“Biker domestic bliss.”
Outside, the compound was quiet. Danny’s routes on the wall. Bea in my arms. Any screaming of my name she was about to do was going to happen in a house where only I would hear it.
Epilogue 2
?
— Bea —
Three Months Later
I knew something was happening when Holden told me to wear something nice tonight.
“How nice?”
“Nice enough that you’ll remember tonight.”
He wouldn’t say more than that. Just kissed me and left for the clubhouse with that particular expression he got when he was planning something — focused, certain, three steps ahead. The old Holden would have been planning a route. This Holden was planning something else.
Indira called an hour later. “You know what’s happening tonight, right?”
“I have no idea what’s happening tonight,” I deadpanned.
“Oh.” A pause. “Forget I said anything.”
Wrong play. I should have saidI know, I just don’t want Holden to know— then she would have given me everything.
“Indira,” I whined.
“Wear the green dress. Trust me.” She hung up.
