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)
The next morning, I lasted until almost noon without touching my phone. The hotel was slow—midweek lull—and the kitchen sent up a tray of coffee carafes we didn’t ask for because someone downstairs had brewed too much. I poured myself a cup that tasted like overtime and held it under my nose until the steam disappeared. The desire to call him sat on my tongue like a word you know in one language but can’t say in another, almost there but not completely. Finally, I put the cup down, ducked into the laundry room, shut the door, scrolled to his name, and pressed “call” before I could decide not to.
He picked up on the first ring. “Melody.”
My name sounded steady in his mouth, like a thing that didn’t wobble when he said it. “Hey,” I managed with a steady tone, “You busy?”
“No.” A beat. “I’ll be right over.”
There was no noise in the pause where most men would plant a question. He hung up like the next words were waiting to happen in person.
I put my cup in the sink, wiped my hands on my pants nervously, and tried not to fuss with my hair. The braid unspooled the minute I tugged the tie loose, so I smoothed it, split it, and started over. My fingers knew the pattern by now—right over center, left over center—until the end lay like a rope against my shoulder. Boots for the ride, not the squeaky black non-slips I wore for work. I checked that I had my keycard, my phone, my ID.
The tiny voice in my head that wanted to creep in and tell me I was too eager, too weak, that he would crush me was silenced by the loud thundering of my pulse quickening in my brain. I left home behind to have a life on my terms.
I wasn’t about to be held back by fear of rejection or anything for that matter now.
I stepped out into the heat. He was there already, backing the bike into a sliver of shadow, sunglasses on, the line of his mouth unreadable. He didn’t make a show of waiting. He just looked like a man who was ready to go.
“You good?” he asked.
“Yeah.” My voice came out steadier than I felt. “You?”
He slid off the sunglasses and hooked them on his collar. Something eased in my chest at being able to see his eyes. “I am now.” In a swift move, he reached out, tucked a finger through my belt loop and yanked me to him. When I was close enough our breaths mingled, he smirked, “kiss me, baby.”
I didn’t know what came over me. Because I didn’t hesitate. I pressed my lips to his and instantly he took over. His hand on my belt loop moved to my backside and pressed me even closer. Only when I felt my legs turning to mush did he break the kiss. I was immediately lost without the contact.
He held out my helmet. I took it, did the strap without looking, and climbed on behind him. I’d started to learn his cues—the way his shoulders set before a turn, the way he shifted his hips when he wanted me closer or wanted my weight to stay put. The first block, I was a polite passenger, hands light at his sides. By the second, my palms had flattened over his abdomen, not because I had to but because that’s where they wanted to be.
We cut east first, the sun high enough to make the road bright, then took a series of turns that made no sense if you didn’t already know where you were going. He threaded us past a field gone to seed, down a ribbon of asphalt that dissolved to gravel and back to blacktop again, through a low dip where water pooled after rain. South Carolina summer had given the air that thick, green smell, like something living that would still be here after we were gone.
I didn’t talk. Wasn’t what being on a ride was about, I had learned and experienced taking this special timeout. Riding with him was a freedom I couldn’t explain. I watched the way his hands worked the bars, light and sure. I felt the hum of the engine move from my thighs up into my ribs, then into that quiet part of my brain that only ever gets quiet when I’m moving. It was as if all the static I carry—memories that sting, moments that catch, the old voices that crowd my mind—got smothered by wind. On a bike, things that loom shrink back down to what they actually are. A man on a couch. A rule said in a calm voice. A girl with a choice.
He took a left I didn’t expect, and suddenly we were on a rise that gave us a view like out of a magazine—a flat line of trees, a small glitter of water from the lake in the distance. I leaned into his back, and he pressed his palm once over my knuckles where they met at his stomach, like saying, I feel you, without taking his eyes off the road.