12. Willow
12
WILLOW
I wake up to the smell of smoke.
My eyes shoot open and I’m out of bed before my brain kicks in. An adrenaline spike launches me from sound asleep to wide awake in a microsecond. I take the stairs two at a time, the smell getting stronger as I go. Following my nose, I rush into the kitchen and find… a biker making breakfast.
Dragon looks up as he dumps a couple of pieces of charred toast into the garbage. “You need a toaster from this fucking century.” On the stove, bacon is sizzling away in my grandmother’s cast iron frying pan.
I definitely don’t hate seeing him standing there shirtless and barefoot, with his jeans hanging on his narrow waist by a belt and a prayer. His hair is loose, tucked behind his ears and hanging down his back like a silky curtain. I must be staring, because his eyebrow quirks up and he smirks at me. “If you want a closer look, I’m not stopping you, but fair warning, the view isn’t bad from here, either.”
For the first time I remember I'm wearing an old concert t-shirt and nothing else. I cross my arms over my chest so I don't blind him with my headlights but it only makes his eyes drift down to where the shirt skirts my thighs. “I thought the house was burning down. There wasn’t exactly time for pants. And yeah, you have to watch that toaster like a hawk, it goes straight from barely warm to charcoal.”
He nods his head towards the kitchen table. “Sit down. I’m just about ready to start the eggs if you’re hungry. How do you like ‘em?”
“Over easy. Thank you. I'm just going to go put on?—”
“Sit your ass down. This is your fucking kitchen, and you came all over my hand last night. Modesty is just society’s way of controlling you by making you feel guilty for being human and having a body.” His black eyes look dead serious. “And it would be a fucking crime to hide those in tit jail.”
“…do you mean a bra?”
“That’s what I fucking said.” He slides the bacon out of the pan onto a plate and smoothly cracks two eggs at the same time, one in each hand.
My jaw drops. “Jeez, were you a chef in another life? I couldn't do that to save my life.”
He chuckles. “Nothing formal, but my first job was in a diner bussing tables and cleaning the kitchen. It fucking sucked, so I basically harassed the cooks into training me. By the time I quit, I’d been cooking the morning shift for a couple years.”
I feel a little useless waiting for food in my own kitchen. I'm not used to an in-house breakfast chef. “Is there anything I can do?”
“Yeah, I got no clue how to work that fucking spaceship of a coffee machine. If it can handle just making a cup of black coffee, that would be much appreciated.” He nods his head at my Barista Pro.
“Oh! Sure.” I set up the machine and start making us coffee, doing his first and using my ‘Bad Boys Do It Wetter’ mug.
When I hand it to him, Dragon reads the side and laughs. “You doing okay?” he asks. “After last night.”
“Do you mean when we… or—” I mime pistols shooting with my fingers.
“You’re really fucking cute, you know that?” he asks.
“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”
“It’s good, baby. I haven’t had a lot of cute, and it’s nice to get a reminder that it’s still out there.” When the toast pops out, he grabs them just in time to plate two perfectly cooked eggs with a few slices of bacon. “I meant the drive-by, but if you want to talk about how fucking good you felt grinding on my dick, I won’t stop you.”
I must be getting used to how they talk, because the part about me being cute makes me blush way more than the part about the lap dance. “Is that what it was? A drive-by?”
He fixes his own plate, basically doubling everything before sitting down. “Just some assholes looking to shake their limp dicks at us and cause trouble.”
“Does that happen a lot? Are you okay?”
“Fuck, can't remember the last time someone asked me that.” He loads egg onto a slice of his toast and chews, a thoughtful look on his face. “I'm fine. There’s a reason we have people stationed at the gate and drive patrols around the neighborhood. Random shit like last night is pretty rare.”
Everything tastes amazing. There’s something special about food when someone else makes it. “Did anyone get hurt?”
What is going on with my life? I’m sitting at the kitchen table in nothing but a t-shirt, eating breakfast with a biker and chatting about last night’s drive-by while I swoon over his ability to make perfect bacon. Some things really are stranger than fiction. “I met Paige and Bonnie last night.”
“Yeah?
“They seem nice. Paige told me that she has three boyfriends in the club. Is that the right word?”
Dragon laughs. “They’re her men. It’s closer to marriage than dating.”
“Bikers don’t get married?” I wrinkle my nose. I’ve never thought that marriage was a requirement for a good relationship, but in my experience, the guys that make a big deal about not getting married are usually jerks in the long run.
“You want the pretty version or the real one?” Dragon licks bacon grease off his thumb and I’m almost too distracted to answer.
“Um, the truth?”
“The MC answers to its own laws. Plenty of brothers marry their old ladies for legal or personal reasons, but what a man does outside the club is his own business. I’ve known guys who have a wife in the suburbs and an old lady in the club.” He holds up a hand when he sees the disgusted look on my face. “Didn’t say I approve personally. Unless everyone’s cool with it, that’s a shitty way to treat someone, but it’s important to know that to that guy, his old lady is the woman he took an oath to in front of his brothers. She’s the one who wears his patch. Savage, Crank and Poe stood in front of Hellfire and the rest of us and swore to protect and honor Paige, and when Paige accepted their patches, she did the same. Getting married to three men isn’t exactly a legal option, you know? But to the club, even if they did it wouldn’t change anything because she’s their fucking property in this world. She’s under the protection of the Outlaw Sons, and nobody touches her without answering to her men.”
I’m an independent, modern woman, but a tiny feral part of me wants to hear someone say something like that about me. “Do you want that someday? An old lady?”
He chokes on his coffee. “Haven’t thought about it much. You?”
Why does that make me sad? “I’m not in a rush, but eventually, sure.”
“Did you have the white picket fence childhood? Mom, Dad and a dog named Spot?”
“I wish.” Nervous about opening up, I fidget with a ring I found in my grandmother’s things. It’s nothing fancy, just a gold band that looks like braided rope, but I remembered it from when I was little and going through her jewelry box. “This place is the closest I’ve ever had to a real home. I bet your birth certificate doesn’t say Dragon, but my full legal name is Willow Aurora Skye. My Dad’s from Ohio and my mom grew up here, but they like to say they’re children of the wind. They’re in Thailand right now, working at a yoga retreat for some influencer, but that could change tomorrow. I’ve lived in a van following the Dead. On a boat for a year. In multiple communes.” I count things off on my fingers. “Mom does online tarot reading, and Dad builds websites for alternative communities. He’s basically the go-to guy if your coven needs a shop portal. You name it, they’ve tried it unless it involves a real job contract and a permanent address.”
“They sound… fun?” Dragon says it like he had to dig really deep to find a positive description.
I have to cover my mouth not to spit out eggs when I laugh. “Oh, they’re a blast. Honestly they’re nice people, but they had no business raising a child. The only reason I have a high school diploma is because they always came back here when they ran out of money or needed time to plan their next adventure. My grandmother put her foot down one summer when I was about twelve and it was obvious ‘unschooling’ wasn’t working. She told them either they got me a laptop and signed up for online classes, or she was going to report them to child services and fight for custody. I had to do most of it on my own, but I did it, and then when I was seventeen, I sat them down in an ayahuasca retreat and told them I felt called on my own journey and left. Why are you looking at me like that?”
He laughs, an utterly baffled sounding rumble in his powerful chest. “You seem so well adjusted, but that's fucked up. How did you end up back here?”
Talking about myself so much makes me uncomfortable. “It’s not that exciting really.”
“Fucking sounds it.” He sounds genuinely interested.
I understand why people are fascinated by my family, but I usually feel like a fraud when I talk about growing up all over. I didn’t get the rich kid travel experience. There were some good times, but most of my childhood memories revolve around sitting alone in a dingy room while my parents were off with the other adults. That’s probably why I became obsessed with writing. In stories I could be anyone, anywhere.
“I moved to New York City because it was the farthest I could imagine from how I’d grown up, paid way too much to live in cramped little apartments with other people because I had no money, and I loved every second. I always wanted to be a writer, and I ended up self-publishing a series of books that didn’t make me rich, but did well enough to get an agent interested in my ideas.” I look around the kitchen and smile. “My grandmother was always my biggest fan. I came back here to be with her before she died, and once I was away from New York, I realized I didn’t have much holding me there. Keeping the house is a great way of saving money while I write my next books, but it’s also been nice to reconnect with my memories here. I’ve never really belonged anywhere before, you know? And maybe I won’t end up staying, but it’s worth a shot.”
He nods. “I kinda know that feeling. Not the same, but my childhood was… how do I put it nice? Independent. Mom ghosted earlier than I can remember, and my father wasn't around much.”
“I guess if he was raising you on his own he had to work a lot.”
Dragon runs a hand through his hair and shakes his head. “Not work. Jail. It was always petty stuff. He'd take whatever he got his hands on and try to hock it, but he was never fucking smart about it. Too much booze and too many pills. I got shuffled around a lot between foster care and relatives that didn’t need another mouth to feed. I was fourteen when I started working at that diner I told you about, and as soon as I started getting paid, I took off and never looked back.”
I reach over and touch his arm. “That's awful. I'm so sorry.”
He shrugs like it's not a big deal. “People have it worse. I’ve always been big for my age so I didn’t get hassled much, and I’ve never fucking regretted joining the Sons. They’re my family now.” Dragon's phone dings. He pulls it out and flicks through his notifications. “Shit.”
“Everything alright?”
He stands, the chair scraping on the floor. “Gonna have to cut this short. Hellfire's called Church, and I’m already fucking late.” He quickly puts the last bit of egg and toast in his mouth and chews, washing it down with cold coffee.
“Church?”
“Official club meeting. I’ll catch shit if I don’t show.” He leans down and kisses me, sliding a hand up the side of my shirt and flicking his thumb over my nipple. It’s over before I even realize what’s happening.
“Hey!” My belly tingles and my nipples are hard little points tenting the front of my shirt. I’m not sure if I’m annoyed that he did it, or that he didn’t stick around so I could decide how I feel about it.
But I definitely don't hate it.