Chapter 11
CHAPTER
ELEVEN
CARBON
When Harry leaves with that douche nozzle Austin, I feel my insides shred. Austin isn’t a bad guy; he just isn’t the right guy for Harry. It eats at me to know he gets to touch her, see her pretty smiles, feel her nails on his flesh. Fuck him.
I am so fucking done with this shit.
I am ready to claim my fucking woman.
My brain shoves me back to that last thought to really make me think it through.
My fucking woman.
Fuck me, I really am ready.
It’s time to stop pretending she doesn’t mean everything to me. I think about how to handle this with Mint because I am done pretending that I am not absolutely fucking obsessed with this woman. My motherfucking woman.
I check to make sure she is still at home before I head her way knowing she will need to get her car at some point. My mind races over how to convince Mint that I am serious, that this is real, that I refuse to live one more second without my woman knowing she is the center of my fucking world.
I weave through the streets toward her apartment not giving a shit that I am risking seeing that turd she is seeing. Pulling into the lot, I note her spot is empty, so perhaps the turd didn’t sleep over, or maybe he already left since everything I have tracking her shows her as here.
Before I can even make it out of the parking lot to her door, she is tearing down the stairs from her apartment, so I lean back against my bike and wait.
I chuckle quietly to myself when I see her remembering she doesn’t have her car.
I had a momentary worry she called a rideshare that she would have to cancel, but her surprise dispelled that.
I soften my approach with her, choosing to let her see me, see the way I have desperately wanted to be with her.
The version of me that isn’t trying to turn her against me for fear my brother will not forgive me for having fallen for his sister.
I can tell I have thrown her a little, but she goes with it, I am not sure why—thought I hope this means she wants me.
By the time she finally tells me she needs a library, I have already crossed every fucking line, so I decide to go full bore.
I am in and ready to take on Mint. It has been nearly two years, I am still head over heels for this woman, and I have a desperate need to protect the fuck out of her.
That should act as proof that I am serious—this isn’t just a passing obsession.
Yes, yes, we both know what this really is, but you can just keep that L-word to yourself.
I bring her back to my house and she doesn’t fight me too hard about taking her to a library. She is up to something, I will find out what, but first I am getting my fucking woman back on my bike. Get her hands back around me, and her thighs pressed around my hips—where they fucking belong.
Grinning at her through my visor, I have annoyed her, but I can tell the difference between her really annoyed and this kind, the kind where she is trying to pretend she isn’t into it.
We take off down the road, I bring her to the main hub downtown, this way I can spend more time with her and maybe even get her to have lunch with me.
We find some street parking—the beauty of having a motorcycle—I do the online parking app shit, then wrap my hand around hers. “Have you been here before?”
She shakes her head, her eyes moving all around to take in the area. On our left is the college, “This is San Jose State University. Hemmy, Mouse, Mint, Grace, and Virus went to college here.”
“You?” she questions.
“Undergrad or law school?” I fire back.
“Both?” She looks at me, her hand staying in mine as I lead her down the way toward Fourth Street.
“Santa Clara University for both,” I tell her, smirking because I know she is going to roll her eyes and huff at me.
Her head twists to look at me, her eyes rolling as she gives me a little scowl. “You could have just said that.”
“Could have,” I confirm, trying to tamp down the smile I want to blast at her.
“I think you just like to be contrarian,” she mutters.
“So do you,” I remind her, shifting my hand to lace her fingers with mine.
She pulls her hand away, her body creating a little distance between us that, yeah, fuck that.
I shift closer, throwing my arm around her little shoulders that I love staring at so much because distance is no longer allowed between us.
She huffs out a breath, rolling her eyes again, but doesn’t step away.
My chest feels like it expands with pride. Austin is totally on his way out.
I point to the eight-story building at the corner of campus. “Martin Luther King Jr. Library. It is both SJSU’s library and the main hub for the San Jose City Library system. Eight floors up, one floor down.”
Her head tips back as she takes it all in. “Wow.”
“Bit bigger than OSU’s.” I wink at her.
She laughs. “Of course you know where I went to college. Well which University, I did spend some time in community college prior. Not that I do anything with my degree.”
“Don’t you?” I press my lips into a firm amused smile.
“I mean, not really. Business degrees are pretty broad… but I mean I guess it has helped some, but I don’t ever plan to have my own shop or anything.
” She shrugs and feeling it under my arm is pretty fucking delightful.
I guide her in through the main entrance, her head tips back again as she takes in the open atrium. “Whoa.”
“So, what do you need here?” I grin at her. “I mean, we can visit the bathrooms to check out the shrinking/growing sinks.”
“The what?” She looks at me confused.
I chuckle. “The sinks in the bathrooms are art instillations, they grow in size if you start at the top floor and move down, or vice versa. It is about soil erosion. Then there are the special collections, the recording space… hmmm, I am forgetting a lot of stuff, but they kind of have everything here.”
“Seriously? Wow. I have never heard of a library having so much. That is really cool. Well, uhm… I actually just need a computer.” Her shoulder lifts and drops. I imagine right now she is thinking about how she can get rid of me.
“A computer.” Staring down at her I consider why. She wants to find something that she doesn’t want to show up on her computer. I lift a brow holding out my phone. Her head shakes. “I have a VPN.”
“What does that do? I mean I have heard of that, but I don’t know what it does.” She looks a little sheepish.
“A virtual personal network, it is a secure network, creating encryption between the user and the internet. It also masks your IP and location. Safer than the public ones here. It has limitations and can be discovered, but there has to be direct purpose for it to be.”
“Why would you have that?” she questions. I lift my brow and give her the ‘really?’ look. Her eyes roll. “Okay, yeah, dumb question.” I hold my phone out more to her. “What if I don’t want you to see what I look up?”
“Are we here so I don’t see? Because I do not track what you do on your phone, just where you go.” I decide to just lay it all out, give her the complete truth, “And your comings and goings on your apartment security. And your car’s location.”
Her eyes widen. “Shit. I didn’t realize it was all of that, I thought it was just my phone, but then that does explain the whole… when I left my phone at home and felt certain I had been able to dodge a tail and you still showed up at the damned grocery store across town—thing.”
I wag my brows at her. “Why didn’t you want me following you to the grocery store, hmm?”
She frowns at me, her perfectly sculpted brows pinching together and down. “I was testing the system and decided you clearly were better at it than I am, so I just learned to live with it. Which I still don’t get why my brother has you on my ass so hard.”
“Your brother?”
“Yeah, my brother, Mint. I think you know him.” She gives me a flat look to suggest she isn’t amused.
“Your brother doesn’t have me on your ass like this,” I tell her and swallow down the smirk twitching the corner of my mouth.
“So, this is all just… you?” Her brows pinch tighter, but angle more up in surprised skepticism.
I press my finger to the abbreviated space between them, still holding my phone in my hand. Fuck am I enjoying this. “Yup.”
She gives me another eye roll, but this one is her trying to hide her smile.
I knew she was super into it. My dad was right in having me abstain from seeing her.
Thankfully it only took a couple days for her to track me down and end it, but Dad was absolutely right.
It showed me—and him—that this was welcomed.
Harry likes me on her ass. I quite like it too.
“Why?” Genuine curiosity shows on her face.
I give a shrug. “Peace of mind.”
Her eyes search my face, I am sure she is weighing out what I am referring to, if it is for my peace of mind or hers and if it is for mine is it to know she is safe or the peace it gives me to lay eyes on her. Honestly? All the above.
She gives a little shrug and looks back up the atrium taking in the space. Her hand flicks out, I drop my phone into her palm, she looks down at the passcode prompt. I lean down next to her ear, letting my lips brush against her ear as I whisper the passcode, “Eight-one-nine-nine-twenty-five.”
She taps it in, her thumb hesitating over the five. “What’s the number?”
“Harry,” I tell her.
She taps the five, then twists her head up to look at me. “R and Y are doub… oh. You added the R and left the Y, hence the twenty-five and not two-five.”
I chuckle.
“Why?”
“Why did you name your cat Cauldron?” I push back.
Her head bobs. “Fair.”