Chapter 22
?
— Austen —
He hadn’t brought it up again. That was the thing that undid me in the end.
Not the speech. Not the shower confession, not the part where he’d pointed at the front of his own jeans in the middle of the afternoon and told me his dick belonged to me.
It was that the next day he was exactly the man he’d been before he said any of it.
Professional. Considerate. Absolutely maddening.
He’d set the place on fire on Tuesday and then just let it burn, quietly, in the corner of every room I was in, and gone back to being decent at me.
The truth was, I’d driven to Velvet on Tuesday with my thighs pressed together.
And when I’d gone to bed that night, I’d lain there imagining him throwing me over his shoulder and making good on Fewin’s suggestion.
The man had ruined me. Not in a bad way.
No man had ever set me on fire like Handful did.
Even fully clothed, from the other side of a bar, with his hands exactly where I could see them, he turned me on.
He’d told me whenever I was ready, I just had to say the word.
I was losing. I’d known it for a week. I just wasn’t sure I wanted to hold the ground.
I’d talked myself into it and out of it six times in three days while he’d been the perfect gentleman.
Fewin was off getting the glycol lines flushed before the club opened for the weekend, leaving me working through the stock while Handful sat at the end of the bar with his sleeves shoved up.
“Every road name has a story.” I lined up the bitters. “Is that club business, or am I allowed to ask?”
He leaned back on the stool and took his time, the way a man does before a story he knows won’t flatter him.
“You earn your road name while you’re prospecting.” He set the pen down. “Could be the worst moment of your life. Could be something stupid you did. Could be both at once.”
I smirked at him. “Sounds like you.”
“Younger me.” He didn’t argue the point. “We were on a run, two nights. First night I end up with this woman.” He held up a hand. “Turns out her brother’s the local sheriff. We leave fast. No big deal.
“Three weeks later, different run, different town.” He paused. “Different sheriff’s sister.”
I stopped restocking and stared at him.
“Different state,” he said. “I had no way of knowing.”
“What are the odds?”
“That’s what I said. This time the sheriff finds me before we can leave, and I—” He stopped. “I maybe didn’t handle the conversation with the level of diplomacy the situation required.”
“What did you say?”
“I may have expressed some views that no man wants to hear said about his sister. And this one happened to be wearing a badge.” He shook his head.
“He arrested me. Dutch — not president yet, his father King was still running the club — had to come bail me out, get the charges dropped. Took most of the day. Every time they brought me back to the desk I felt the sheriff needed to understand the distinction between a crime and a woman who’d had a good evening. ”
I was crying with laughter now. “While Dutch was trying to get you out?”
“He’s a reasonable man. I thought he’d appreciate the argument.” Another pause. “He did not.” He did the voice — flat, weary, done. “Prospect, you are a handful. And it stuck.”
“A handful.” I was still grinning. “Dutch nailed it.”
“He has his moments.”
“And the lesson you took from two sheriffs’ sisters in two states is that you’ve got a gift for diplomacy?”
“The lesson I took is that sheriffs have no sense of humor about their sisters.” He tipped his head, unrepentant. “I stand by my position.”
But I wasn’t looking at his face anymore.
I was looking at his forearm.
I knew those tattoos. I’d traced every one of them in the dark with my fingers and my tongue, back when they were mine to trace — the pin-up girls, retro, cartoonish, the ones I’d rolled my eyes at the first night and known by heart by the fifth.
I knew them cold. Which is the only reason I caught it, because nobody who didn’t have them memorized ever would.
There was a name on one. Small. Worked into the little banner the nearest pin-up held over her head, where there had been nothing before. Austen.
I looked up his arm. There — curled along the bottom of the next one, like it had been part of the ink from the start. Austen. And the one above, tucked in the corner. Every one I could see. My name.
“When?”
He followed my eyes down to his arm and went still, caught, a man who’d left a door open he’d meant to keep shut.
“Had Ice do them the day of the party. Planned to show you that night.”
“Ice?”
“Iron Skulls MC. Only man I’d let ink me.”
He’d had my name on his skin going into Dutch’s birthday. I knew what it meant. A name in ink isn’t a gesture — it’s a statement of fact. Permanent, public, no taking it back.
He’d been wearing long sleeves at Dutch’s party. I remembered it now because it had struck me as odd — Handful runs warm, always has, and it was a summer evening. I’d clocked it and moved on. Hadn’t thought about it again until this second.
And on the sidewalk outside Velvet, when I’d told him we were done — he’d had my name on him then too. He could have shown me. He hadn’t.
I tried to think back over the last few weeks.
Had he been covering them here? I genuinely couldn’t say.
I’d spent weeks working very hard at not looking at Handful directly for too long — Indira had done her level best to push us together, and the best defense I’d found was to simply not let my eyes stay on him.
It was possible he’d been in long sleeves the whole time.
It was possible he hadn’t. I had no idea.
“I had them covered at the party because I wanted you to be the first to see them.” He looked at his arm, then back at me.
“After we stood on that sidewalk, I stopped covering them. Every brother has seen these. They all know I am yours.” He held my eyes.
“I’m not ashamed of any of my ink. I was proud of these ladies before. ”
He looked at them like they were new to him.
“Nobody ever asks why I’ve got so many. The first one was my idea of the perfect woman, so I had Ice put her on my arm.
Then I thought of another, and he put her on too.
Then another. Somewhere in there I ended up with a whole armful of perfect women.
Closest a man like me ever figured he’d get to the real thing. ”
He touched a little banner with my name in it.
“Then you walked into Velvet, and every one of them turned into a rough draft. First woman I ever wanted in daylight instead of the dark.” He held my eyes.
“You are the woman I want, Austen. The only one. That is not going to change.” He picked the pen back up.
“I knew you needed time to get used to the idea, so I gave it to you. But patience has never been my strong suit. I’ve never once had to wait on a woman in my life and I won’t pretend I’m finding it easy.
I’m holding the line.” He looked back at his paperwork. “Just say the word.”
And that was when I saw the other thing, because once you start really looking at a man it’s hard to stop.
There was a new patch on his cut. Sergeant-at-Arms.
“Sergeant-at-Arms.” I looked over at him. “When did that happen?”
“Sunday.” He didn’t make anything of it.
“Me and Dutch had words a few weeks back. Well, Dutch talked, I listened. He was right. Course he was right, he’s Prez.
Dutch made a few things clear. I did what was expected of me.
There was a big contract I let walk right out the door back when everything went sideways.
They came back a few weeks ago and asked for me by name. Dutch made it official after church.”
That was a lot.
Tuesday he’d told me he thought about me every morning in the shower. Today I’d found out my name was on his skin before I ever walked into that party, that every brother in the club had known for weeks that he was taken, and that Dutch had just handed him an officer position.
Entirely too much information for a Friday afternoon in a strip club.
I needed air. I made some excuse about Velvet and left him there.
?
Derek clocked my state the second I came through Velvet’s door, because Derek clocks everything, it’s his entire job.
He waited until the rush thinned. Then he set a glass of water on the bar in front of me and leaned on it. “We need to talk,” he said.
“Are you resigning? Because I’ll need a stronger drink before you finish the sentence.”
“Sit down, Austen.”
I held both hands up. “Okay. Okay.” I glanced down the bar at Jamie, who gave me a small nod.
“Months back I told you men like him run three modes,” Derek said. “Charm, apology, charm again. I was wrong.”
I opened my mouth.
“I know. I don’t say it often.” He picked up a cloth. “But I’ve talked to Fewin. I like him, God help me, and so does Jamie. Between the three of us we’ve built a fairly complete picture of what’s been happening.” He didn’t look at me.
“You were happy with him, Austen. Not professional-happy, not running-a-room-happy. You came in here every day looking like you’d already had a good day and the shift was extra.” He let that sit. “I haven’t seen that since.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re existing. There’s a difference and you know it.
Maybe it was the sex, maybe it was something else — I don’t, nor do I want to know exactly what he did but he made you happy, and that’s quite hard to find.
” He folded the cloth once, set it down.
“I’m not telling you to forgive him. But there’s a difference between careful and scared.
” He glanced up. “What if he’s the one, Austen? ”
“You know what, Derek. You’re right.”
He looked at me in shock.
“I had reasons,” I said. “Good ones. I watched him turn back into the man I’d met first the second I left his side, and I wasn’t going to spend the rest of my life wondering where his hands were every time I did.” I waved a hand. “Anyway.”
“Life’s too short, boss.” Jamie called from down the bar.
I looked at him. “What?”
“Life’s too short, boss.” He reached for a coupe and started building a Sidecar.
I grimaced at the boss. That had clearly come from Fewin. “Thank you, Jamie.”
“Better to have loved and lost,” he went on, without a trace of shame, “than never loved at all.”
I stared at him. Then I looked at Derek, who was watching with amusement. “What is with you two tonight?”
They exchanged a look.
“Intervention,” Jamie said without hesitation as he finished the Sidecar. “Turns out we like your biker. Fewin’s told us plenty — six weeks working next to you and never once pushing, when we all know he could have. That’s not the man Derek warned you off.”
I thought about saying something dry and deflecting - something about how Handful was not my biker - but then I thought about the sheriff’s sister stories, my name inked on his skin, Handful knocking one out in the shower every morning.
I thought about the weeks of Handful being the perfect goddamn gentleman.
And I thought about all the weeks before that.
Jamie and Derek were both watching me.
“Yeah,” I said, after a while. Slowly. “I like him too.” Jamie started to grin. “A lot. But—”
“No,” Jamie said.
“I wasn’t—”
“No, no, no, no.” He set the drink he was making down and turned to face me fully.
“No buts. You like him. He likes you. Austen, we watched it happen right here — months of that man parked on the end stool with a paperback, looking at you like you’d personally hung the moon and the stars every time you walked past. And by Fewin’s account he’s only got worse since.
A pathetic look on a biker, frankly. One life.
Live it.” He glanced at Derek. Derek gave the smallest possible nod.
Jamie turned back. “We can close up. Go get your biker.”
I looked at them both. The bar. The door.
“Yeah,” I said. “You’re right. Both of you.”
Both of them whooped. Jamie slid the Sidecar down the bar; Derek caught it and took a sip. Jamie came around and slapped his hand.
“Result,” Jamie said, turning back to me. “Now go. We’ve got this. Go get your biker.”
Six weeks he’d waited.
I’m right here, Austen. Every day. Whenever you’re ready. You just say the word.
I grinned. I had a word for him.
Come.