She rolled her eyes once more before turning on her fringed ankle boot. “Goodbye, loving and arsonist sister,” she called on her way out.
“Say hello to Skyler for me. Peace to Mother Earth.” I held up two fingers to her.
She gave me her middle finger as response.
I shook my head as the door slammed closed.
My sister and I were polar opposites in every way. And not just the way she rebelled against black like I did pastels. She fell in love all the time, letting everyone in.
Me? I avoided it like I did pastels and let no one in.
Well, apart from the guy under my skin.
Silence which descended on my black-and-white living room itched my skin. It was far too accommodating for thoughts that needed to be unthought.
I jumped when “Sexy Bitch” punctured the air. Then I glanced to my black quilted Chanel, realizing where the sound was coming from and who was calling.
Only one person would program that to be their own personal ringtone. Especially when I just changed it from “Remember the Name.”
“Hey, slut,” Rosie greeted when I answered. “I feel like partying tonight. Or causing some form of trouble. In?”
I gazed around my quiet living room, the stillness and silence more than a little stifling.
“So in,” I said without hesitation. Maybe I should have started being responsible.
Maybe I would.
Tomorrow.
Horns sounded through the phone, which I had no doubt had to do with Rosie’s driving. “See you in five. Wear your new shoes.”
The car stopped, and I frowned.
“Is this my house?” Rosie asked, leaning over me to peer at the small cottage.
I peered with her. “No. I’m reasonably sure it’s mine.”
The door opened, and because I had been peering at the window, and Rosie had been leaning over me, I almost toppled out, not expecting it. My seat belt caught me, and I hung there for a moment, suspended in the air.
“Fuck,” Dwayne muttered, amusement dancing in his tone.
It was the first word he’d spoken since he’d picked us up from a club in Hope. Lucky had come too, with Wire driving the truck. All three of them were not exactly impressed to be traveling to a club the next town over, where they had rumblings of trouble with a rival club, to pick us and Rosie’s car up at 2:00 a.m.
He and Lucky had played rock, paper, scissors. Which Lucky had been more than happy to win.
Hence Dwayne playing taxi driver.
A job he did not like, which was precisely why Rosie and I were in the back seat and had flat-out refused to sit in the front when he’d requested it. Or demanded with a healthy spattering of curse words.
But two drunk, stubborn females could always beat one muscled, tattooed biker.
Any day.
He was currently giving us the silent treatment.
Well, he had been, until this mishap.
He gently pushed me back and bent his considerable form into the car so he could lean over me to unbuckle my seat belt.
As if I couldn’t do it myself.
“You smell nice,” I observed as he leaned back.
He did. A mixture of crisp soap and leather. And man.
I hadn’t smelled that in a while.
In two months, to be exact.
Two months ago, when I’d tasted only the lips of a man for a handful of seconds that were enough to imprint his scent in my memory.
Dwayne’s scent was different. Nice.
Though it wasn’t the same, and my body didn’t respond with the same fire as he who shall not be named. I wasn’t dead. Dwayne was hot. And smelled good. Plus, I was drunk.
I noticed.
“Get out of the car this year, Lucy,” he commanded.
I grinned at Rosie, clutching my purse and kissing her cheek. “See you never,” I said.
“Love you always,” she replied, as we had been saying since we’d known each other. In other words, forever.
Dwayne righted me as I stumbled slightly getting up.
His grip on my arm was firm and not entirely unpleasant. He rested his other hand on the open door, eyes illuminated by the lights of the car as he spoke to Rosie. “Stay put. And try not to get yourself into trouble while I walk Lucy inside.”
She gave Dwayne wide eyes that worked on all of our teachers in high school, and sometimes Cade. “It’s an empty car on a quiet street on a Wednesday night. What possible trouble could I get into?”
Dwayne gave her a look. He knew too well just how much she could get into, considering there was a “Rosie Protocol” for the Sons of Templar and he’d been a patched member for almost a decade.
She crossed her arms, leaning back. “Fine, I’ll try. I can’t make any promises if I get bored.”
I grinned as Dwayne closed the door and moved his hand on my waist to direct me up the cobbled walkway to my house.
“She’ll get bored in eight-point-five seconds,” I informed him happily.
He didn’t reply.
I blinked up at my house in the moonlight, the porch light not yet on. The grass was green and healthy, and even though you couldn’t see them, white flowers framed my walk. Not planted by me, of course; my mom was the flower child of the family. And Polly, on occasion, when she was dating a landscaper.
The house was small, made from pure white weatherboard and blue shutters, removed from town so I had the beach backing off into the distance. Not that I ever went; the view was nice, but my pale skin went from pearl to lobster if I exposed it to the sun for too long.
It was small but full of chic furniture that had taken me years to accumulate.
Why had I even been thinking of leaving?”
“You think there’s a point in your lives when you and Rosie might ever grow up?” Dwayne asked mildly.
I pretended to think on it as he unlatched my gate. “Maybe, when we’re eighty. No, wait, we’ve already planned on being the first people to invent a resting home that gives you wine through IVs.”
His grasp moved from merely supporting me to something more. Something maybe even nice enough to forget my stance on bikers and remember the glances and “almost” with Dwayne over the years.
“Don’t,” he murmured, pulling me slightly closer to his muscled body as we walked. I leaned into him, because the world was tilting and because he was hot and I was a woman. “Grow up,” he clarified. “You’re perfect the way you are. Never borin’, that’s for sure.”
I tipped my head back to look at him, a feat in itself while walking on cobblestones in heels as the world tilted. “Only time I’ll be boring is when I’m dead.”
His jaw hardened. “Well, let’s make sure that never happens. Nor will you talk about that shit while—”
He abruptly stopped speaking and yanked me behind him. I tottered slightly and clutched the back of his cut for balance as he pulled his gun from it.
“Stay the fuck where you are, asshole,” he hissed.
I blinked away the stars from the movement, trying to register what exactly was going on.
A figure emerged from a sitting position on my porch, illuminated by the sensor lights as he moved.
I couldn’t properly see on account of the fact that Dwayne was a better door than a window.
“Easy, mate,” a familiar deep voice said. “I just managed to leave a desert full of bullets and not have one hit me. I’d rather not have that just so I could die by one on a porch in a little town in the New World.”