Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
Goldie
I woke up warm, but not regular warm.
Wheels warm.
For a few seconds, I didn’t move. I just stayed tucked against him with my cheek pressed to his chest and one leg tangled with his beneath the sheets. His arm was heavy around my waist, holding me close even in sleep, and his heartbeat thumped steady beneath my ear.
I smiled before I opened my eyes.
That was new.
Not the waking up part. I’d been doing that for years, obviously. But waking up and not immediately feeling like the world was waiting outside the door with a baseball bat?
That was new.
The last few weeks had started with panic.
My eyes snapped open.
My stomach tightened.
My brain was already running through every document, every email, every suspicious signature, every fake company name that had slowly turned my normal life into something I barely recognized.
This morning, I woke up in a biker clubhouse, wrapped around a man who looked like trouble and felt like safety.
Life was downright weird.
Wheels shifted under me as his arm tightened for half a second before relaxing again.
I lifted my head enough to look at him.
He was still asleep. His beard was a little rougher this morning, his hair messy from my fingers and the pillow, and one arm was thrown above his head like he had finally let himself fully pass out.
The man had spent days watching me, protecting me, sleeping in chairs and on top of blankets like some stubborn caveman with manners. Last night, he had finally slept.
Really slept.
A tiny burst of satisfaction warmed my chest.
I carefully slid out from under his arm. Or at least, I tried to. His hand immediately flexed against my waist, stopping me. “Where you goin’?” he mumbled, eyes still closed.
I froze. His voice was rough from sleep, low and scratchy in a way that made my toes curl beneath the sheet. “Coffee,” I whispered.
One eye opened.
“Already?”
“It’s morning.”
“Barely.”
I glanced toward the clock on the dresser. “It’s after seven.”
His eye closed again. “That’s barely.”
I laughed softly. “I thought bikers woke up early to polish motorcycles or threaten people before breakfast.”
His mouth twitched. “Only on Tuesdays.”
“It is Tuesday.”
Both eyes opened and he stared at me.
I grinned.
He grunted. “Smartass.”
“You like it.”
“Yeah.” His hand slid lightly over my waist before he let me go. “I do.” That simple admission landed harder than it should have.
I sat up and pulled the sheet to my chest, suddenly very aware of everything we had done the night before. Not in a regretful way. There wasn’t a single part of me that regretted Wheels. But daylight had a way of making things real.
And this? This felt very real.
Wheels must have seen something flicker across my face because he pushed himself up onto one elbow, the sheet falling low across his waist.
“You good?”
There it was. His constant check-in.
This time I smiled. “I’m good.”
His eyes searched mine for a second longer before he nodded. “Good.”
I leaned over and pressed a quick kiss to his lips. It was supposed to be quick, anyway.
Wheels’ hand came up, fingers sliding into my hair, and he held me there long enough to turn quick into something slow and lazy. Something that made the room feel warmer. Something that made me briefly reconsider coffee.
When he finally let me go, I blinked at him.
He looked far too pleased with himself.
“Coffee,” I reminded both of us.
“Right.”
“And clothes.”
“Less important.”
I pointed at him. “You are trouble.”
“Never said I wasn’t.”
I climbed out of bed and grabbed clean clothes from the dresser while trying very hard not to feel his eyes on me. I failed. Mostly because I liked feeling his eyes on me.
I dressed quickly in jeans and a soft yellow T-shirt, then twisted my hair into a messy knot at the back of my head. Wheels pulled on jeans and a black shirt, then shrugged into his cut with the same easy confidence he did everything.
By the time we stepped into the hallway, the clubhouse was still mostly quiet.
A floorboard creaked somewhere downstairs. A door closed softly at the far end of the hall. Someone coughed behind a closed bedroom door, then muttered a curse.
Wheels took my hand as we headed down the stairs.
He didn’t ask. I didn’t pull away.
At the bottom of the stairs, the common room looked softer in the early morning light.
Sun filtered through the front windows, catching dust in the air and making the patched plywood look less ugly.
The bar was clean from the night before, though a stack of plates sat by the sink and someone had left a half-empty bag of chips on the pool table.
Gramps was asleep in the recliner.
Of course.
One boot rested on the coffee table, his arms crossed over his chest, chin tucked low. Every few seconds, a snore rattled out of him, then stopped long enough to make me wonder if he was alive before starting again.
Wheels glanced over. “Medical protocol says he’s fine.”
I bit back a laugh. “The snoring system?”
“You’ve learned fast.”
“I had good teachers.”
He squeezed my hand once before letting go and moving toward the kitchen.
I followed him behind the bar and into the small kitchen. It was cleaner than I expected, though that probably had more to do with Tempi than any of the men. A cast iron skillet sat drying on the stove, and a bowl of limes from taco night rested near the sink.
Wheels grabbed the coffee pot and started filling it.
I leaned my hip against the counter and watched him. “You know how to make coffee?”
He turned his head slowly. “You think I survived this long without coffee?”
“I don’t know. You seem like the type who just drinks motor oil and calls it breakfast.”
“Only when we’re out of coffee.”
I laughed.
Wheels looked over his shoulder at me, and for a second, his expression softened.
“What?” I asked.
“Nothing.”
“That’s never nothing.”
He filled the filter with coffee grounds. “Like hearing you laugh.”
My mouth opened and then closed. The comment was too direct and too sweet and too Wheels somehow. Not polished. Not practiced. Just honest.
I looked down at my hands, then back up. “You’re going to keep doing that, aren’t you?”
“What?”
“Saying things that make me forget about everything that is going on around us.”
He hit the button on the coffee maker and turned to face me. “Probably.”
“Watch out, people are going to start thinking you’re nice.”
He rolled his eyes and pulled me into his arms. “I’m just honest, babe.”
I shook my head, but I was smiling.
A few minutes later, we had two mugs of coffee and zero desire to wake anyone else.
Wheels nodded toward the back door. “You want to go outside?”
I hesitated.
“We’ll stay out back,” he said. “I’ll be with you. Door stays open. No going far.”
I wrapped both hands around my mug, and my fear tried to stir. The instinct to stay inside. To stay hidden. To remember the note. The gunfire. The fact that The Ledger had already gotten too close.
But the morning was quiet, and the sun was out. I was so tired of being afraid of air.
“Outside sounds nice,” I said.
Wheels nodded once.
He opened the back door first and stepped out before me, scanning the alley, the rooftops, the parked bikes, the dumpster, the mouth of the street beyond. Only after he was satisfied did he step aside and let me through.
I walked out into the morning. For a moment, I just stood there breathing.
The alley wasn’t pretty. It was brick walls, cracked pavement, bikes lined up in careful rows, a dumpster, and a few stubborn weeds growing along the edge of the building. But overhead, the sky was a clean, pale blue, and the early light hit the brick buildings across from us in gold.
It was the most peaceful ugly alley I had ever seen.
Wheels carried his coffee to the small metal table near the back wall. I hadn’t noticed it before. Two chairs sat beside it, both mismatched and slightly rusty, but someone had wiped them clean.
He pulled one out with his boot, and I sat. He took the chair beside me, angled so he could see me and the alley at the same time.
Of course.
“Do you ever turn it off?” I asked.
“What?”
“The watching.”
His eyes moved from the alley to me. “No.”
I nodded. “I figured.”
He took a drink of coffee. “Bother you?”
“No.” I looked down into my mug. “It should, maybe. But it doesn’t.”
“Good.”
“Sometimes it makes me feel a little less crazy.”
“You’re not crazy.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know enough.”
I smiled into my coffee.
For a few minutes, neither of us talked. The city slowly woke around us.
A truck rumbled by at the end of the alley. Somewhere nearby, a delivery door rolled up with a metallic groan. Birds chirped from a power line like they had no idea secret societies and hidden tunnels existed beneath their feet.
Lucky birds.
Wheels stretched one leg out in front of him, boot scraping lightly against the pavement. “You got quiet.”
“I was just thinking.”
“About?”
I watched steam curl from my coffee. “My sister.”
Wheels didn’t say anything right away. He just waited. That was something I liked about him. He didn’t rush in and fill every silence. He let people get there when they got there.
“Her name is Novalea,” I said.
“Pretty name.”
“She says it sounds like she should be a princess in a fantasy book.”
His mouth twitched. “Is she?”
“Absolutely not. She spilled grape juice on herself last Thanksgiving and blamed the couch.”
“Sounds fun.”
“She is very fun. Possibly slightly crazy, though.”
He chuckled. “She would fit in perfectly here.”
I smiled at the memory. “She’s four years younger than me,” I said. “Which means she thinks I’m bossy, overprotective, and dramatic.”
“Are you?”
“Yes.”
Wheels laughed quietly.
“But only with her,” I added. “Mostly.”
“Uh-huh.”
I pointed at him with my mug. “Don’t start.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”
I took a sip of coffee, buying myself a second. Talking about Novalea made her feel closer. That was good and terrible because if she felt closer, then the danger did too.