Chapter 1 #2
“Jess,” she answered, and I knew by the way her eyes widened she hadn’t meant to tell me her real name. “Jessie.”
“Jessie,” I repeated, “that’s a pretty name.”
“Thank you,” she answered softly, shyly.
“Hey, Stone!” a deep voice called from behind me. I didn’t have to look to know it was Bones. “You coming in, or what?”
“I’ll be right there.”
“Okay, but Cowboy said you better hurry up because he can’t be responsible for how we’re looking at your food,” Bones teased.
“Right,” I muttered. I heard the door shift shut, a bell ringing on the other side of the diner.
“You need to go,” she whispered, stepping out of my hold.
“I could always order something else later.”
“Oh no.” She shook her head. “I’m just… boring, really.” The smile she pasted on was fake if I’d ever seen one. “If I can get my hat.” She pointed at the baseball hat in my hand.
“Here.” I placed it back on her head. Seeing her with it on felt weird.
Funny in a way I couldn’t explain other than I wanted to see what she looked like wearing that old Dodgers hat in the sunshine, maybe while we had a picnic at a park.
Picnic at a park? When the hell had I ever had a picnic?
Shit, when was the last time I’d even been to a damn park?
Fuck. I was starting to sound like Cowboy, Bones, and Griffin when they fell hard and fast themselves.
But this wasn’t that. It couldn’t be. Not when I was just riding through this tiny little town and back home to Vegas and she… shit, I had no idea about the pretty woman hiding in the shadows.
“I’ll walk you to your car.” It was the least I could offer. Maybe she was a local. I could ride back and take her to dinner when I didn’t have half the club probably watching me talk with her.
“My car?”
“Yeah, weren’t you just right over––“ I glanced towards the darkened area of the lot I’d spotted her shadow in earlier, but it was empty.
“I don’t have a car,” she shared.
“Oh… waiting on a bus or something?” I asked, not liking the idea of her on public transportation in the middle of the night.
“Something like that.” She pressed her lips together as I lost her dark gaze. An ugly knot formed in my gut.
“Something like that?” I repeated, unable to stop the way my voice dropped. She couldn’t mean... “You weren’t going to hitchhike, were you?” I tried to tease, but my own smile faltered when I saw the look on her face. I’d hit the bullseye with my stupid guess.
Shit. The thought of my sweet, innocent-looking princess getting into some stranger’s vehicle made acid slosh in my belly.
“There’s nothing wrong with hitchhiking,” she answered softly, standing up a little straighter, tipping her pretty, smooth-looking chin slightly upward.
“Especially when you’re trying to get away fast.” I could have sworn she mumbled under her breath but couldn’t be sure with the way the wind picked up.
Everything inside of me wanted to yell at her.
Shake her until she saw reason.
But I knew if I did, I’d lose any chance at finding out more.
Of keeping her. Mine, a voice whispered in my head.
She was mine. This beautiful, angelic princess was mine.
I might not know her full name or how she took coffee, or, fuck, if she even liked coffee!
But I knew that at the end of the day, she was mine.
If I let her walk away from me or if I walked away without her on the back of my bike, it would be something I’d regret for the rest of my life.
“You heading somewhere in particular?” I asked. She opened and shut her mouth. Her eyes drifted back to the Steel Sinners patch on my chest.
“Are you… are you in the kind of, um, gang, I mean club, that is good or bad?” My eyes widened for a split second. Not because I hadn’t been asked this before but because she seemed too timid to ask something as bold as that.
Fuck, the fact she had made me proud as hell of her.
“I guess that depends on who you ask,” I answered. She licked her bottom lip and looked towards the bikes.
“Right, well, I should…” she pointed out towards the travel station across the way. That acid in my gut started to roil and burn. She was thinking about hitchhiking with a trucker? Hell no.
“You running from someone, princess?” I was done playing games.
She was mine.
There was no way in hell I’d let her get into some strange trucker’s cab and disappear.
I was thirty-fucking-eight years old and suddenly, as I stared down at her, I realized everything I’d been through, everything I’d done, good or bad, had happened to lead me right to her.
Fear flashed in her eyes, and before she could take a step backwards, my hand reached for hers and tangled our fingers together.
“You can tell me.”
“But you said—” Her eyes flitted to the patch on my chest.
“Depends on who you ask,” I repeated. “But I can tell you right here, right now, there isn’t a woman you could ask who would think we’re bad,” I promised and meant it. The Steel Sinners might be into shady shit, but we didn’t peddle in flesh or condone a man laying hands on a woman.
Her pretty mouth parted and then shut before her gaze dropped to the ground. With my free hand, I tipped her chin up, cupping her face, stroking the apple of her cheek with the rough pad of my thumb. “You can trust me, princess.”
“I might be,” she confessed. I nodded slowly.
“How old are you, Jessie?” I asked hoarsely. She looked young. She had to be at least a decade younger than me, if not more, but at that point, I didn’t care. I just needed to make sure she was a goddamn adult.
“Twenty-two.” My Adam’s apple bobbed. Sixteen years younger. Not that I was going to let that hold me back.
“You sure, baby girl? Can I trust you’re not lying to me right now?”
“Would it change whatever you’re thinking about offering?” she countered. Fuck, my lips twitched.
“No,” I answered honestly. It should. If she told me under a number, I shouldn’t want to toss her on the back of my bike and take her home with me.
“I’m twenty-two,” she repeated. “Here.” She pulled something out from her back pocket and showed it to me. A small ID wallet.
Jessica Juarez. Twenty-two from California. And mine.
“Okay. What you running from?”
“You sure…” The hesitation in her eyes killed me. “You sure I can trust you?” I shifted the hand I had hers in so our pinkies could tangle together.
“I pinky promise you can trust me, princess. With everything and anything.” Forever. I kept the last word to myself, but the vow was still the same.
And I meant it.
A promise I would keep to my dying day.