Chapter 13 Stud #2
She shakes her head. “No. For the first time in a long time, I don’t. It feels good not having to define everything. Not having to meet a list of criteria to be worthy of staying.”
I brush my thumb over her shoulder absently. “You’re worthy of staying because you exist. Everything else is noise.”
The words come out before I can filter them. They’re more honest than I meant to be.
She freezes, then presses her face into my chest, hiding. “You can’t just say things like that.”
“Why not? They’re true.”
“Because it makes me want to,” She swallows the rest.
“Want to what, Holley?” I challenge, low, amused and already knowing.
She fists her hand in my shirt. “Want to keep you.”
The confession is a punch straight to the ribs. It hurts and warms at the same time.
I exhale slowly, resting my chin on her head. “I’m not the keeping kind,” I say. “But I’m not gonna pretend I don’t want to stay longer than I should. And you can have me for right now.”
Her breath hitches. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
She relaxes, just a little. The slow burn shifts again, deepening into something heavier, richer. In those quiet moments, we let our bodies speak for us in a language only we know.
The roads are clear by Friday.
I know it the moment I look outside. The plows have been through again. Cars creep slowly along the main drag in the distance. The sky is that pale, washed-out blue that only comes after snow, bright and unforgiving.
It’s time.
I pack in stages, leaving my bag open in the bedroom while I move through the cabin.
I’m not in a rush. I fold shirts more neatly than usual just to give my hands something to do.
I check the bike twice, making sure the cover kept the worst of it off, that nothing’s frozen that shouldn’t be.
It’ll be cold as hell riding out, but I’ve done worse.
Holley watches me from the doorway for a while, wrapped in my hoodie again, hands in the front pocket like she’s holding herself together.
“You don’t have to go today,” she says eventually.
I look up at her. “I do, baby”
“I know,” she admits, voice small. “I just had to say it once.”
I cross the room and hook a finger under her chin, tilting her face up so I can see her eyes. “I stay too long, I start breaking all my own rules.”
“Is that a bad thing?” she whispers.
“For you?” I brush my thumb over her cheek. “Yeah. Because I’d start wanting things I told you I can’t give. And that’s not fair to either of us.”
She nods, blinking fast. Tears don’t fall, but they’re there, glittering bright right at the edge.
“Come ride with me,” I offer suddenly.
She blinks. “What?”
“In the spring,” I clarify. “When it’s warmer. When you’ve saved a little more and figured out what the hell you want to do with that car and this house and that job. Take a weekend. Or a week. Come down to Salemburg. Let me show you my world for a change.”
She stares at me like I’ve handed her something fragile and surprising. “Tony, that’s—”
“An invitation,” I clarify. “Not an obligation. Not a contract. Just any time you want to see me, you have a place to go.”
Her throat works. “Where would I stay?”
“With me,” I answer easily. “Got space. Couch, bed, whatever you’re comfortable with. The club’s got a compound on the outside of town. I’ve got a room there. It’s not a cabin, but it’s home.”
She lets out a shaky laugh. “You’re inviting me to your biker clubhouse. Do you realize how insane that sounds?”
“You’ve slept in your car in the mountain winter,” I retort dryly. “I think your risk tolerance is already questionable.”
“Touché.” She smiles. “Can I…” She hesitates. “Can I really come any time?”
“Any time,” I confirm. “You text me, you call me, I make sure someone’s there to let you in if I’m on a run. You need to get out of that town for a bit? Those doors are open.”
Her eyes flood, but this time one tear escapes, sliding down her cheek before she can catch it. I thumb it away gently.
“Hey,” I murmur. “This isn’t goodbye like that.”
“What kind of goodbye is it then?” she whispers.
“The kind where you know I’m not disappearing,” I explain. “I’m just changing locations. This is until I see you again, because trouble, I want to see you again.”
She chokes out a laugh and a sob in the same breath. It guts me.
“Will you text me?” she asks, voice small. “Or call?”
“Yeah,” I say simply. “Not every hour. Not every day even. But yeah. I’ll text. I’ll call. You can text me too, you know. You don’t have to wait for me to start it.”
“I don’t want to be a bother,” she says.
“You won’t be.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do,” I say, firm. “Because if you ever start to be, I’ll tell you. That’s part of this deal. No pretending. No slow fade because someone’s scared to hurt feelings.”
She exhales, relieved by the clarity instead of wounded by it. That’s one of the things I like most about her—she’s done with half-truths and polite non-answers. She wants the real thing, even if it stings.
I finish packing, zip the bag, and sling it over my shoulder. The cabin feels different instantly. Less like a suspended moment in time, more like a place again. Four walls. A roof. A temporary stop.
Outside, the air bites my face. The snow on the ground is still deep, but the top layer is slushy, sun hitting it with weak winter light. My breath fogs in front of me as I pull the cover off the bike. Holley stands on the porch, arms wrapped around herself, watching me.
“You’re really riding in this?” she calls.
“Rode in worse,” I answer. “Got gear in the saddlebag. I’ll be fine.”
She doesn’t move until I’ve checked everything twice, until the bike is ready, until I swing my leg over the seat. Then she steps down off the porch and comes toward me, boots crunching in the snow.
“Helmet?” she asks.
I grin and tap the one on the handlebar. “Always, sweetheart.”
“Good,” she says, like she has any say over my level of self-preservation. I kind of like that she thinks she does.
I plant my boots, steady the bike, and lean down as she comes close. She looks up at me, cheeks pink from the cold, eyes too bright.
“This is the part where I’m supposed to be cool and casual, right?” she says.
“Only if you want to be.”
She laughs once, shaky. “I don’t want to be.”
“Then don’t.”
She steps closer until her knees bump mine. Her hands rest lightly on my thighs, like she’s grounding herself there.
“Thank you,” she says.
“For what?”
“For the chili. For the hot shower. For the bed and the blankets and the fire and the way you didn’t treat me like I was broken even when I felt like I was. For telling me the truth, even when it wasn’t… what romance novels would have written.”
I smile, crooked. “I’m not much of a romance novel, Holley.”
Her eyes flick over my face, that same soft affection shining through. “You’d be surprised.”
The slow burn that’s been simmering all week spikes one more time. I reach out, sliding a hand behind her neck, thumb brushing the warm, delicate skin there.
“Come here,” I murmur.
She leans in, and I kiss her.
It’s not frantic. Not claiming. Not goodbye-forever. It’s slow—like everything good between us has been. My mouth moves over hers with all the heat I can’t put into promises, all the care I can’t turn into commitments.
She kisses me back like she understands that language better than any other.
When I finally pull back, her forehead rests against mine for a second, both of us breathing a little harder.
“Visit me,” I say again, voice low, earnest. “Don’t overthink it. Just… come.”
“Okay,” she whispers. “I will.”
“I’ll check on you,” I add. “Don’t disappear on me.”
“I won’t.”
I search her eyes one last time, making sure she believes me when I say this isn’t a vanishing act. That I will be, in my own way, consistent.
“Lock the doors,” I say. “Stay off the roads if it ices again. Raise hell about that heat. And Holley?”
“Yeah?”
“Stop sleeping in the car.”
Her throat tightens. “Okay.”
I release her slowly, fingers trailing down her arm until I have to let go. I pull my helmet on, strap it, then start the bike. The engine roars to life, a familiar vibration under me that has always felt like freedom.
Today it feels like leaving something important behind.
She stands there in the melt and slush, one hand wrapped around herself, the other lifted in a small wave.
I roll forward, then stop long enough to look back over my shoulder.
She’s still there. Watching. Waiting. Not asking me to stay. Not demanding anything I told her I can’t give.
Just trusting that this is not the last time.
I raise two fingers off the grip in a small salute.
“See you, Holley,” I say, even though she can’t hear me over the engine.
Then I ride.
The cold hits hard at first, knifing through my jeans, sneaking down my collar, turning my fingers numb even inside my gloves. The snowbanks blur past in dirty white streaks. The sky is bright, forcing me to squint. I lean into the road, into the familiar rhythm of the bike beneath me.
After a few miles, my mind quiets.
There’s still a knot in my chest, but it’s not panic. Not regret. Just… weight. The good kind, if that’s a thing. The kind you feel when you’ve picked up something you’re not putting down again, even if you’re not carrying it every day.
I think about the way she looked standing in the doorway that first night, half-frozen and half-defiant. The way she watched me in the shower like she didn’t mean to look but couldn’t stop. The way she admitted she wasn’t healed and didn’t try to pretend otherwise.
I think about her saying it makes her feel safer knowing I won’t ask her to be my everything.
I think about the way she said she wanted to keep me anyway.
A smile tugs at my mouth under the helmet.
“Any time,” I’d told her.
And I mean it.
She can walk into my world whenever she wants. And whether I’m ready for it or not, I already know— I’ll be waiting.