Chapter 5
CHAPTER
FIVE
Addie
Last night was living in my skin. His mouth.
The sound I'd made when he put me on that desk, the forehead kiss at my back door that wrecked me worse than everything before it.
Louetta had seen him walking away from my porch and said "Mm-hmm" and that "Mm-hmm" was still in my bones when I pulled into Louetta's lot at closing for a to-go plate and found someone leaning against my truck.
Silhouette I'd know blind, drunk, dead asleep.
My hands were shaking before I placed him.
Everything in me dropped to basement-cold. Keys laced between my fingers, mama's lesson, learned before I was old enough to need it.
He looked good. Of course he did. Clean jaw, pressed shirt, groomed to the last damn detail. Monsters iron their shirts. That used to make me proud. Now it made my stomach fold. He smiled like we'd bumped into each other at the grocery store.
"Adelaide." Nobody in Amberlin Falls used my full name. Nobody alive said it except the man who'd trained me to answer to it. "You look good. This place suits you."
"Get off my truck."
"I just want to talk." Hands up, palms out, soft eyes. He never raised his voice in Lexington either.
"Did you like what I left you?"
The wildflowers. Brown paper twist on my shop mat yesterday morning.
I'd put them in a jar and breathed them in and smiled, thinking of Cage.
He did things without expecting credit. My skin crawled.
He'd been at my door. Stood on my mat. Left them where I'd find them first thing, and I'd held them to my face smiling at the wrong man.
"I know you're alone up there at night." Still smiling. "You shouldn't be by yourself, Addie."
"Get out of my town, Corbin."
He tilted his head. Patient. He was always patient right before he wasn't.
"I mean it. I will call the sheriff. I will make a scene in this parking lot. You do not get to show up here."
On his way to his car, low enough it was just for me. "We're not over."
I sat in the truck with my knuckles white on the wheel, and it wasn't anger. I knew what his reasonable sounded like right before it stopped being reasonable, and my body remembered what came after.
The bikes came down Ridge Road. A dozen machines, engine noise rolling through the valley before the first headlight cut the fog. Headed toward the clubhouse.
I pulled out of Louetta's lot and drove toward them. First time in my life I'd driven toward somebody instead of away.
The prospect at the gate didn't know me. I waited with my engine running while he called it in. He muttered Church into the radio and shrugged at me, which cleared everything right up.
An older brother came out instead. Silver in his beard, cut worn soft at the edges, steady in a way you don't get without years of shit going sideways. He read my face, didn't ask, and walked me inside with his palm on my shoulder blade.
"Preach," he said, tapping his chest once. Nothing else.
Two women at the pool table sized me up. Tight jeans, loose hair, hips cocked, owning the room. I knew what they were before anyone said it. The math wasn't complicated.
Preach caught where I was looking. "That ain't been him since we lost Echo," he said, quiet enough the women couldn't hear. "Make sure you're ready for this life, darlin'. It ain't for the faint of heart."
He set a beer in front of me at the bar. "We won't be long." Then he disappeared through a heavy door at the back and it dropped shut.
I sat there and drank the beer because what the fuck else was I going to do.
The women from the pool table had drifted closer, comfortable as barn cats—bodies pressed against prospects, fingers hooked in belt loops, not a shy bone among them. I watched them and wondered how many had been his. I told myself not to count. I counted anyway.
What the fuck am I doing here?
Preach had looked me dead in the eye and told me to be sure.
Was I? Sitting on a barstool in a clubhouse full of men I didn't know, women who had history with the man I'd let between my legs last night, a prospect wiping the bar around me like I was furniture.
The room smelled like cigarettes and leather and sex.
Am I sure? Am I fucking sure?
I was two steps from leaving when some guy dropped onto the stool beside me. Easy grin, enough cologne to strip paint.
"Name's Nickel." His fingers landed on my forearm. "You waiting on one of my brothers, or?—"
The heavy door banged open. Cage came through it already vibrating, teeth bared, shoulders rolling forward like he was about to hit something. His eyes landed on Nickel's hand on my arm and his whole face shut down.
Four strides and he had me, the hinge of my jaw caught in the same hand that had slid up my neck last night, and his mouth on mine before I finished breathing.
His other hand spread wide across my lower back, staking out acreage, pulling me flush against him. He kissed me until my knees gave out. When I tried to pull back he held. When he finally let me breathe I chased his mouth without deciding to.
The brothers filing out behind Cage weren't quiet about it. Somebody whistled. "Fucking finally" from the back.
"Neanderthal," I said, still fisted in his shirt, my mouth swollen and my face on fire.
His thumb traced my cheekbone. "Damn straight." No apology in it. "You're mine, baby. These fuckers needed to know."
His face changed. The heat dropped out of his eyes and ice replaced it.
"Tell me what happened."
I told him. Corbin at my truck. The wildflowers I'd thought were his. That he knew I was alone at night. We're not over.
His mouth thinned. His body stayed against mine but his head was already somewhere else.
"I'll go to Hutchens," I said.
Cage's hand tightened on my hip. "No." Hard. "You're mine to protect. I don't trust the sheriff."
My knees hadn't come back yet.
He turned to his brothers, my hand still caught in his. "That fucker showed up. Knows her schedule. Knows when she's alone. I want eyes on him, intel, and a prospect on her shop tonight."
Preach nodded once. "On it, Prez."
Cage held my eyes. "You’re staying here."
"Like hell I will.” It was hot and loud and I didn't give a shit who heard it.
The brothers closest to me grinned. One of them elbowed the guy next to him. "Prez has his hands full with this one."
Cage pulled me toward the porch. I went because my legs were shaking, not because he told me to.
"I'm not staying here, Cage. The last man who decided where I slept is the reason I'm in this town."
He flinched. Actually flinched. Good.
He stepped into me, hands on my hips, mouth at my ear. "Baby. I'm not him. I'm not ever going to be him. But that man knows where you sleep and I can't fucking think straight until I know you're safe. One night. Give me one night."
Mine. Corbin used to say that word and I'd fold myself into whatever shape he needed. Cage said it and my fists unclenched. I wanted to lean in instead of pull away, and that scared me worse than Corbin in the parking lot, because at least Corbin I understood.
"One night," I said. "And don't get any ideas about this being a regular sleepover."
"Angel, I wasn't planning on sleeping."
I shoved his chest. He caught my wrist and kissed the inside of it. Fucker.
On the porch steps, I leaned into his shoulder and took a breath.
He didn't ask. I told him anyway. He'd handed me Gabriel in that office. Fair was fair, even when fair tasted like bile.
"We were engaged." I pulled my knees up and talked to them instead of him.
"He chased me so hard I thought nobody would ever love me like that.
" I laughed, empty, ugly. "Irony's a bitch.
He drove me to work and kept the car. My girlfriends disappeared so slow I can't tell you the month I lost the last one.
My paycheck went into his account. I asked permission to cut my own goddamn hair.
I had a career and I watched it go while he told me I didn't need the stress.
" I swallowed. "My savings went into a joint account I never had the PIN for.
By the end I couldn't trust my own eyes.
He'd tell me the sky was purple and I'd believe him. "
Cage's hand found my thigh. Squeezed once. Didn't interrupt.
"The first time he grabbed me, he cried after." My throat closed and I pushed through it. "That's the part that won't let go. Not the grab. Me holding him after. Telling him it was okay." My knuckles, the ones that had been white on the steering wheel an hour ago.
Cage reached over and laced his fingers through mine on the cold concrete. Held on. That was it. He sat with the worst thing I'd ever said out loud and held my hand on the steps like we had all night.
"Had a feeling since the screen door," he said. Quiet. "Wind caught it and I moved too fast. You got small." He squeezed my hand. "I'm glad you told me."
We sat with that a while. Neither of us talked.
The creek ran below the ridge and the cold concrete numbed my ass and his thumb kept moving across my knuckles, steady, like he was sanding a rough grain smooth.
My breathing came back in pieces. His shoulder stayed against mine, warm and solid, not going anywhere.
"Nathaniel."
I turned so fast my neck cracked.
"Only my mama and Gabe ever used it once I prospected in." His eyes found mine and stayed. "When it's just us, that's who I am."
I said it once, low. Nathaniel. His fingers tightened through mine.
We sat there a while longer. His hand stayed in mine, steady, warm. I could still feel his mouth on mine. I could still feel Corbin's voice in my ear.
Cage walked me to a room at the end of the hall, his hand low on my back, thumb brushing bare skin where my shirt had ridden up. I sat on the edge of the bed and his eyes tracked me down.
"Lock's on the inside," he said. "I'll be back. Gotta make sure the prospect's set up at your shop."
Then he pulled the door shut and his boots went down the hall.
I sat there in the dark. He'd claimed me. In front of his whole club, his hand on my jaw, his mouth on mine, every brother watching. Louetta would take one look at me tomorrow morning and know. She never needed the details.
And Corbin was out there somewhere doing what Corbin does when he feels replaced.
I whispered the name once more into the pillow. Nathaniel. A locked door in a biker clubhouse thick with smoke and sex, and safer than I'd been in four years. My mama would've had opinions about that. Every last one of them would've been right.