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)
Elaina lived in my thoughts, too. The way he spoke about her. She was a true treasure. Like a person he loved enough to be present for and drop anything if she needed him. He rarely brought her up; when he did, it was practical and warm. I tried to picture meeting her and landed on a thousand possible versions—none of which happened in the next month, which was a mercy. Some things need different timing.
What did happen, today, was Lyric. We were on break behind the hotel, sitting on the curb where the shade from the building threw a rectangle of usable air. The sun had that white-hot look, and the cicadas sounded like electricity. The kitchen had sent up sweet tea in paper cups, so icy it hurt my teeth, and Lyric kept spinning her ice with a straw like she could stir the nerves out of it.
“I’m just going to say it,” she said. Her eyes danced like light on water. “Tiny claimed me.”
I blinked. “Claimed you?”
She nodded, and even her nod had a smile in it. “At the clubhouse. In front of the bunnies and some of the brothers. He said it to me first—real quiet, just us—and then he said it out loud. The look on his face, Mel—like he was signing his name on something he wanted to take care of.”
A dozen images flashed through my head. I’d seen what claim looked like when it was a disguise for control. But I’d also watched Tiny with Lyric these last weeks. How he had a big man’s gentleness around her, how he stood between her and the loud rush of live without making it obvious, how he kept a palm at her spine like a security blanket, not a leash.
“How do you feel?” I asked wanting to make sure she was okay with all of this.
“Like I’m jumping off a dock into water I can’t see the bottom of.” She grinned wider. “And like I want to.”
Happy and terrified—she didn’t say the words, but I heard them anyway. They’d been riding shotgun in my chest all month. I didn’t need to map them out for her; she understood the shape on sight.
“I’m happy for you,” I shared, and I was. Happier than I expected, maybe because tiny immunities had been growing in me—against the old fear, against the idea that the only love available was the kind that shrank you.
She tipped her head, studying me. “And you?”
“I’m…good,” I said, then smirked because vague deserved itself. “Gentle but firm, that’s what I got.” I added.
Lyric’s laugh spilled out easy. “He is. You still sleeping in your own bed most nights?”
“Most,” I shrugged. “He respects his rules. Sometimes he breaks them.” I didn’t tell her which nights or how that looked. She wouldn’t ask. We had an unspoken code about not getting into details. I think it stemmed from our upbringing. No one really talked much about sex or relationships.
She bumped her shoulder against mine. “You look softer. In the good way.”
“You look like someone put sunshine in your pocket,” I shot back.
We talked about work because you can’t live on the big talks alone—how the housekeeping cart’s squeak could be heard in three counties, how Mrs. Dockery in 212 kept stealing all the extra soaps and then complaining she was out, and how she wasn’t moving out anytime soon. Then our ten minutes were up, and we stood, rolled our shoulders, and walked back into the hum like two women who knew how to hold their own joy and still clock in.
The rest of my shift went fast. I folded. I smoothed. I listened to the rinse cycle pound and thought about the ways my life had grown bigger even inside the same walls. By the time the clock hit late afternoon, the heat had turned the parking lot into a griddle and my braid stuck to the back of my neck.
Back in my room, I kicked off my shoes and lay back for six seconds before my phone buzzed. One word on the screen: Outside.
Thrasher didn’t send paragraphs. Although, I didn’t need them. I sat up, retied my braid, pulled on my boots, and pressed the heel of my hand to my sternum just because it felt good to steady that spot. Then I went.
The engine’s low rumble reached me before he did, like a pulse coming up the alley. He was leaned against the bike when I pushed through the back door, sunglasses on, forearms tan, his expression the particular blank that meant he was in a good mood but wouldn’t scare it off by saying so. When his eyes tracked up to me, the blank shifted to something I felt low in my stomach.
“You hungry?” he asked.
“Yes.” Real hunger had woken up lately—food hunger, touch hunger, air hunger. I liked feeding all three.