Chapter 16 Isla
ISLA
The soup tasted so good.
At least, that’s what Kai reassured me when he inhaled his portion.
But it isn’t enough to explain why I’m still here. Especially when I can’t rationalize it to myself.
Kai is sleeping in the armchair by the fire I quietly threw an extra log on. His soft snore is…reassuring. And I take a moment to study his face. He has such strong cheekbones, and long dark lashes.
We don’t expect anything from you. Not me. Not Garrett. We just…we like having you around.
There’s an intimacy to his words. One that hints at more. But that can’t be right.
I collect the bowl from the floor next to him and place it by the sink.
There’s a thud upstairs, followed by a loud “Fuck.”
I pour some soup into a bowl, grab a spoon, and head up to Garrett’s room. This time, I find Garrett awake and leaning gingerly toward the floor to pick his phone off the ground.
“Wait,” I say. “Don’t strain yourself. I’ll get it for you.”
He flops back onto the bed. “Thank you.”
I place the soup on the bedside table and grab the phone before handing it to him. “How are you feeling?”
Garrett’s earnest hazel eyes meet mine. “Like I got run over.”
“Do you need some of the…?” I point to the door where the gas cylinders sit out in the hall because I can’t remember what the gas is called.
He shakes his head. “Nah. Made me feel ill.”
Silence falls between us, as I stand a couple of feet away from the bed.
My skin prickles with the awareness of him.
The sheets sit low on Garrett’s hips, his chest exposed.
His ink is old school. Poorly done, like those cheap tattoos done with pen ink.
His shoulders are wide, his forearms thick with veins.
And a thatch of hair spreads across his chest.
His body is powerful and muscular, meant for aggression. His abs aren’t as fully defined, and yet, the dip of his muscles beneath the sheets is frighteningly delicious.
When I glance to his face, he’s watching me. Not in the hungry way men have before, not in the entitled way I learned how to not flinch away from. But a curious way that is assessing without judging.
“I don’t bite,” Garrett says. “At least, not without consent. You can come closer.”
I relax my shoulders and take a few steps to the bed. “I brought you soup.”
He cracks a half smile. “I saw.”
“I didn’t know if you were hungry.”
Garrett glances toward the bowl. “I’m not sure if I am either. It sure smells good. But the idea of moving to eat it is more than I think I can deal with.”
His voice sounds rougher than usual. Maybe it’s just as a result of pain and medication.
Perhaps it’s that my senses are heightened because of everything that has happened today.
Or maybe it’s because, right now, we’re alone in his dimly lit bedroom and there’s nothing between us except a blanket, that bowl of soup, and a silver spoon.
I clear my throat. “Do you…want me to help you sit?”
His eyes flick down to his chest and bandaged wrist. “That’d be good, if you don’t mind.”
Do I mind? I offered before I’d thought it through. It will mean getting hold of his naked chest. But this is different. He’s sick and needs help. This isn’t some biker in the clubhouse, so deep in his cups that he can’t remember if I’m Isla or Petunia.
“Of course.”
I step closer and slide my arm behind his shoulder. His skin is warm and soft to the touch, solid in all the ways I’ve thought he was. Like a brick wall covered in pillows.
“Does this hurt?” I ask as I hold him tightly.
“No.”
But he winces as we shift.
“Sorry,” I murmur, my lips close to his ear.
“Not your fault.” The sound is followed by a grunt.
I adjust my grip until he’s propped against the headboard with pillows from the other side of the bed tucked behind him.
His breathing evens out, but I can see the tension lining his jaw and the beads of sweat on his brow. I tug the sleeve of my sweatshirt over my thumb and dab it away.
He reaches for my wrist, holding it gently between his finger and thumb, revealing just how large his hand is in comparison. “Thank you.”
Those two words land deeper than I expect. “You’re welcome.”
I grab the bowl in one hand and the spoon in the other. He reaches for it, but as soon as his shoulder twists, pain flashes across his face.
I pull the bowl back. “No, let me.”
I perch on the side of the bed, my hip flush against his.
Then, I scoop up a spoonful, blow on it gently, and hold it near his lips.
Garrett looks at me, not the spoon, or the soup, but at me.
The kind of heated look that warms my insides, like a large mug of hot chocolate with whipped cream and marshmallows.
He leans ever so slightly forward and takes the spoon into his mouth.
“How is it?” I ask.
He swallows. “Surprisingly good.”
I bite down on my lower lip to hide the simple pleasure of his compliment. “You didn’t think I could cook?”
His hand falls onto my knee and just rests there, a solid reminder of his presence. “Let’s just say, I look forward to being surprised by what you can do.”
I try not to glow like the porch light of my house that I can see through the window. “Your boyfriend practically inhaled his portion.”
I use the word boyfriend more to clarify to myself their relationship to each other.
That gets a real smile. Pained, but real. “Yeah, Kai never met food he didn’t love. And the asshole can eat a mountain of it without putting on a pound in weight.”
I scoop another spoonful of food and offer it to him. “I wish I had that skill. If I so much as look at a slice of chocolate cake wrong, I gain two pounds.”
He glances at my body. “You look good, sweetheart. Different from how you looked in the club. But better. You changed your hair. It suits you.”
I know he means it as a compliment, but I hate the comparison to club Isla. Just thinking about her…
“It’s closer to my natural color,” I say, trying to escape the feeling in my gut. “Thought I could save money on dyeing it every eight weeks.” Because being such a bright blonde was part of my clubhouse persona, what I thought I had to do.
What I’m trying to let go of.
My hand shakes, for a moment, and Garrett puts his hand over mine to gingerly guide the spoon to his lips. I don’t say anything, simply wait for him to swallow. But I think about leaving.
Maybe I shouldn’t be here.
“You’re safe, Isla.”
“Am I?” I ask.
“You’re asking the man who can’t get a spoon to his mouth unaided. You’re more able to hurt me right now.”
I heard on a podcast that checking in with your body when you feel unsafe is a good thing. Things we’re pre-programmed to feel fear from can feel like real danger when they aren’t. They can induce flight or freeze or fight.
My body is warm. I’m not under threat. And if I’m honest, I feel the fleeting sensation of being cared for.
Even though I’m the one spoon feeding Garrett.
His hand still sits heavy, holding my knee, but not gripping it. He hasn’t slipped his hand higher; there’s been no groping between my legs.
“On a scale from one to ten, how freaked out are you right now?” Garrett asks.
“You want me to put a number on it?”
“Yeah, I do. Where zero is you’re so chill, you could sleep like a baby. And ten is you’re mentally trying to crawl down off the ceiling, and your body feels like it’s covered in fire ants.”
“I think I was just a six but am back to a three.”
“I like it when you’re honest with me, Isla. It’s the only thing I’ll ever ask for. Was it that I talked about your hair?”
I shake my head. “It was thinking about the person I was at the club.”
“You don’t need to be anyone other than who you are while you’re here.”
I look down at the soup bowl and stir it mindlessly for a second or two. All they’re offering is friendship, right? They’re a gay couple. It’s wrong that my insides have been twisted by both of them today.
“Thought of a second thing I might ask for,” he says.
When I look up, there’s a tenderness in his gaze, as if he’s fully aware of my internal confusion. “What’s that?”
He tips his chin at the bowl. “That you feed me the rest of that before it goes cold.”
And just like that, the mood shifts. “Oh, right. Yes. Here.”
Garrett, with my help, makes short work of the soup.
“You want some more?” I ask, putting the bowl down on the side table. “There’s plenty left in the pot.”
Garrett leans his head back in the pillow and closes his eyes. “No. That was perfect. How’s Kai doing?”
“Inhaled two bowls. He was asleep in front of the fire before I came up here. Does he always sleep that heavily?”
Garrett shifts a little, trying to get comfortable. “Today shook him. He hides it well, but he’s been holding himself together with string since he witnessed me get hit by that truck.”
“I overheard Grudge and Kai talking about it. I just assumed you skidded, at first.”
He opens one eye and shakes his head. “I can handle my bike better than that. Kai thinks it was deliberate because of the way the guy responded after. He fled the scene. Then, with the windows getting bricked just before it. Seems like it’s all connected.”
“Oh my God, that’s awful. No wonder Kai is so shook up about it.”
Garrett tries to move again and winces. “I like that you care about him.”
“I care about you both.” Even if I’m not certain what my definition of care means.
The corner of Garrett’s mouth twitches in a smile. “It’ll take him a couple of days to come around, and then he’ll shake it off.”
Time loses its meaning as I sit and talk to him. Somehow, my body begins to believe I’m safe here. “How long have you two known each other?” Perhaps focusing on their relationship will put things into perspective for me.
“Four years, five months, sixteen days.”
The accuracy tells a story all on its own. “How long have you been a couple?”
“Me and Kai have different answers to that.”
He reaches for my hand, and I let him hold it. It feels like the kind of thing friends would do when the other is hurting. But the way he then rubs his thumb over the back of my hand, doesn’t.
“Why would your answers be different?”
Garrett sighs, a look of complete contentment on his face. “He’d say we’ve been a couple for four years, five months, sixteen days. I think it’s four years exactly, today.”
“I’m curious, why the difference?”
“Let’s just say there was a window, from what I thought was going to be a one-night stand and me finally seeing what was right in front of my face. I pushed back hard against Kai’s every effort to bundle the two of us up into something, for a while.”
The story fits their personalities. And just reinforces why having thoughts about the two of them feels like a slip back into old habits and old patterns.
“Is it always a secret, the two of you?”
He opens his eyes, but I see no hostility for my question.
“It’s not really anybody else’s business.
We’re not ashamed of who we are. And there are places we go where we can be out and open about our relationship.
But club politics can be messy, and the membership’s not always progressive.
It’s why we’ve been nomad for so long. Easier to let who we are disappear when we spend time on the road doing jobs for King. He knows. Catfish and Wren know.”
I chew on my lower lip. “But you don’t mind me knowing?”
Garrett stares at the blanket covering his legs, for a moment. “Kai wouldn’t have taken your hand and brought you in here earlier if we did.”
“But Butcher and Greer know.”
Garrett nods. “As of today, they do. Grudge and Smoke might be guessing. Eventually, they’ll all know.” He pauses and looks down at our joined hands. “You’re good for Kai. Good with him, I mean.”
“I barely did anything.”
“You were there. You held him when I couldn’t. You cared for him and fed him. That’s not barely doing anything.”
The air in the room thickens around us. He’s not flirting with me or suggesting anything. But the way he says it leaves me…stirred.
“He was scared…and trying really hard not to scare you.”
Garrett smiles and places his bandaged arm on what I now think of as Kai’s side of the bed.
“That’s him. Always trying to protect the people he loves.
I suppose we’re the same that way. It’s why we’re more worried about you than you realize.
That thing with your uncle, watching you struggle the other day. ”
My heart immediately conflates the two sentences.
Always trying to protect the people he loves.
We’re more worried about you than you realize.
I’m not sure what he means when he says people they love. It must be as family. The platonic way the Outlaws love one another.
But I can’t help wishing that maybe they both could—
“Isla,” he says, cutting through my thoughts.
He said he wanted honesty. “I’m…not good with bikers.”
“We get that. But here, in our home, we’re just two guys trying to build the best life we can with people we love and care about.”
There’s a natural impulse to want to be that person. To morph myself into what they need, to become the person they love. It’s a combination of old habits and the desire I still have to be loved and protected.
It feels like falling back into a pattern.
And yet, I still find it impossible to get up and leave.