“I’ll be in the garage.” I had to get out of here before I lost it completely. I’d either scream at them or cry, and neither helped my situation.
Either ended up making me look weak or worse, like I cared.
No one stayed for me. I reminded myself of that every single step from Colt’s room to the garage, where I walked straight into the back room and closed the door, sealing myself off from everyone and everything.
6
HAWK
SEVEN YEARS AGO…
Two days after my night with Callie.Our.Our night with Callie.
That was the only way I knew to mark time. Before something or after something.
Callie being an after put a foul taste in my mouth and sent me on rides long enough to melt my ass into the leather seat. It didn’t help.
Neither did noticing her in the bay every morning before daylight. She worked with a kind of intensity I admired, but one that I knew from experience might cause her to burn out.
Not on the work.
She’d never tire of the work, but her mind and body would crash and burn at some point.
And the bylaws prohibiting me from taking her and claiming her publicly as ours meant I couldn’t be there to pick up the pieces.
Better all around if I mitigated the damage in the first place.
Grimacing at the tightness in my neck from another sleepless night, I poured two cups of coffee from the pot in the main room and carried them across the lot.
She heard me before I made it halfway between the house and the bay door.
Her head snapped up, shoulders squaring even before she turned.
The swivel of her head brought her chin to her shoulder, and it ripped me into a memory of our night together.
Except then her eyes had been full of passion and heat.
Today, they remained dead, the flat expression of someone going through the motions.
Like Colt. Damn him for taking off again and leaving me with the recovery. Again.
I set one cup of coffee on the workbench beside her and wrapped both hands around mine.
She looked at it, then at me, her lips pulling to one side. “Thanks.”
Oil coated her palms and the crevices of her nails, but she barely wiped them on an old shop towel before she picked up the cup and took a sip.
Her eyes fluttered shut, and the barely there sigh told me a hell of a lot about her.
She could have gone into the house at any time and made herself a cup, but she’d been avoiding it, choosing to spend almost twenty hours a day in the shop.
Shadows ringed her eyes, confirming my fear that she wasn’t sleeping well.
“I have a job for you.” I pulled a folded paper from my back pocket and set it on the bench, tapping it with my index finger. “Parts run two counties over. Our regular guy is laid up.” Running the club with order to maintain our reputation kept me from pushing her against the wall and demanding she tell me why she couldn’t sleep at night. That and the fact I had a hell of a lot of respect for her and even though I knew she wouldn’t tell me no, I refused to put her in that position.
But damn it all if I hadn’t sat up last night trying to figure out a way to create a new rule to override the Old Lady status previously set in the charter.
Our reputation as a ‘by the book’ club meant I couldn’t just make shit up for my benefit.
