Gratitude.
Something dangerously close to joy.
I lifted a finger before he could ruin it by looking too happy.
“And Dylan?”
“Yeah?”
“If you turn this into some tortured biker poetry about fate and fire, I’m leaving you with the cat.”
He looked down at Cupcake, who appeared ready to ruin his life for sport.
Then he looked back at me.
“One normal date,” he promised. “No poetry.”
“Good.”
But as he smiled, soft and crooked and mine in a way he had never been brave enough to be before, I knew we were both lying a little.
There had never been anything normal about us.
Maybe there never would be.
But for the first time, abnormal did not feel like a wound.
It felt like a beginning.
Destiny
Dylan picked me up in a truck.
Not on a motorcycle.
Not in some dramatic blacked-out vehicle with club shadows tucked behind the windows.
A truck.
A clean, dark gray pickup with a cracked leather keychain, a travel mug in the cup holder, and one of Nate’s ridiculous get-well cards shoved into the visor where Dylan had probably forgotten it existed. The card had a cartoon skeleton on the front wearing a leather vest and the words YOU’RE NOT DEAD, BRO written in glitter pen across the top.
I stared at it when I climbed in.
Dylan saw me looking and sighed. “Nate.”
“That explains the glitter.”
“He said it made the card festive.”
“It looks like a craft store committed a felony.”
“Yeah. That tracks.”
I laughed before I could stop myself.
The sound filled the cab, small and startled, and Dylan looked at me like I had handed him something breakable.
Not hungry.
