Total pages in book: 81
Estimated words: 75833 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 379(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 253(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75833 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 379(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 253(@300wpm)
We let the forks scrape around our plates a bit and the sounds of the night tuck themselves around the house. After, I wrapped the leftovers and did the dishes while she wiped the table like it was a task she needed or maybe it was simply to have a little space. I gave her a towel. She dried, we stacked, it went easy.
“What about you?” I asked when we drifted to the shelf in the living room. She was looking at the picture of Elaina with the gap-toothed smile.
“What about me?” She glanced at me from the corner of her eye.
“What do you do when you’re not working? What do you like? What are you going to want six months from now that you don’t have today?”
She looked back at the photo like she could hide in it. “I read.”
“What?”
“Whatever I can get cheap.” A hint of a grin. “Romances, sometimes. The kind that promise it’ll all work out.”
“Those lie,” I shot back with a huff.
“Maybe,” she allowed. “But sometimes lying is the only way you get through the chapter you’re in.”
That hit harder than she knew. “What else?”
“I like the way the air smells before it rains.” She sounded surprised at herself. “And when you walk into the kitchen at five a.m. before anyone’s speaking and it’s just the coffee and the clock. And new things like riding. I like that now.”
I filed that one away, too. “I’ll teach you to drive one,” I said. “If you want.”
Her head whipped up. “To drive?”
“Not tonight. Not next week. But when you’re ready, yeah.” I pointed at my chest, then the bike outside like it was an oath. “You shouldn’t count on anyone else to take you where you need to go.”
The way she swallowed—like that sentence had weight—told me I’d said a thing she’d keep.
We sat on the couch after that, two feet of air between us like a line drawn in chalk. The TV wasn’t on. The house made the house noises: a tick in a vent, a soft settle of wood. “You ever think about leaving this place?” she asked. “Not the house. The state. The life.”
“Sometimes I used to. Not the club, this is my life. The state yes because I didn’t like feeling caged or tied down for a while.” I stretched one arm across the back of the couch and kept it there instead of dropping it across her shoulders where it wanted to land. “But this life is a choice I made with clear eyes. It doesn’t own me. I could walk if I needed to. Wouldn’t be clean. Wouldn’t be pretty. But I could. Except I don’t want to. This is where I’m supposed to be.”
“You like it,” she said, not a question.
“I like the brothers count on me. I like the order we make out of chaos. I like knowing whose problem is whose and solving it. The rest is noise.”
“And the noise?”
“Sometimes it’s loud.” I cut her a glance. “You don’t need that part. You got enough noise on your own.”
She stiffened a hair, like I’d brushed a bruise. I was careful with my next breath. “I’m not asking,” I said. “I’m observing. You don’t owe me your before.”
That eased her shoulders. “Thank you.”
We sat with it. The night pressed up against the windows, thick as velvet. I wasn’t in a hurry. That surprised me a little. My blood didn’t do patient by default. I looked at her hands where they rested on her knees. She wasn’t shaking with me. Her nerves had gone away. Something about that fed the caveman inside me.
“Come here,” I commanded needing her closer.
She moved like she’d been waiting for the permission. I slid my hand along the back of her neck and tugged her in, mouth brushing hers once, then twice, testing. She rose onto her knees and ended the test. Heat climbed fast, the way a small flame finds dry kindling.
I kissed her slow on purpose. Not because I couldn’t go hard—God knew that switch was easy to flip—but because slow felt like telling the truth. She made a sound when I cupped her jaw that I could have listened to on a loop.
Her weight came into my lap, knees bracketing my thighs, and my body answered with a blunt honesty that didn’t care about careful plans. I curled one hand over her hip, the other at the back of her head, and gave myself five seconds to memorize the way she fit. I felt the tremor when it cut through her, the sharp inhale that says a body remembers, both kinds of memory, the good one underneath the bad. I stilled, held rather than pushed. “Okay?” I asked against her mouth.
She nodded, but I waited for the words.
“Okay,” she said, and it was clear. Then she kissed me like a person choosing their life.