Chapter 2 #2
I locked up the office and drove home on autopilot, the route so familiar I didn’t need to think. My apartment was quiet and dark when I arrived, the silence exactly what I needed after a day of emotional engagement.
The first thing I did was pour myself a glass of wine. The second was kick off my shoes and collapse on the couch, letting my head fall back against the cushions.
By the end of the day, there was nothing left. That was why Holden mattered so much.
He was the one person I didn’t have to perform for. The one place I could fall apart without worrying about how it would affect someone else’s healing. With him, I got to just be—messy and complicated and sometimes not okay.
The front door opened twenty minutes later, and there he was. Still in his riding gear, helmet in hand, that little furrow between his eyebrows that meant he’d been thinking too hard.
“Hey.” He set down the helmet and crossed to the couch, dropping beside me. “You look wiped.”
“I am wiped.” I let my head fall against his shoulder. “Tell me about your day. I need to think about something other than other people’s problems.”
“Nothing exciting. Finalized the prospect assignments with Dutch, ran through communications protocols with Glitch, made Danny practice tire changes until he could do it blindfolded.” He wrapped an arm around me, pulling me closer. “How bad was yours?”
“Scale of one to ten? Solid seven.” I closed my eyes. “I had a hard one today. Someone who’s really struggling, and I had to do some safety planning. She’ll be okay, I think, but…”
“But it’s hard.”
“It’s hard,” I agreed. “Some days I wonder why I chose this career. Why I voluntarily sign up to sit with people’s darkest moments.”
“Because you’re good at it.” His voice was matter-of-fact, no flattery. “Because you actually help people. That woman you saw today—she walked in scared and walked out with a plan.”
“Is it enough?”
“It’s more than most people get.” He pressed a kiss to my hair. “And tomorrow, you’ll go back and do it again, because that’s who you are. You don’t give up on people.”
I turned my face into his chest, breathing in the leather and motor oil. “When did you get so insightful?”
“I’ve had years to observe your methods. Some of it was bound to rub off.”
We sat like that for a while, neither of us speaking. The silence wasn’t uncomfortable—it was the kind of quiet that comes from knowing someone so well you don’t need words to fill the space.
“The run is in six days,” Holden said eventually. “I’ll be gone overnight, maybe two nights if we hit any delays.”
“I know.”
“I need you to know that I’ve planned for everything. Every possible scenario. I’m not taking any unnecessary risks.”
I pulled back to look at him. His blue eyes were serious, the way they got before a run. “Holden, I trust you. I’ve always trusted you.”
“Still, I need to say it.” He cupped my face in his hands. “I need you to know that coming home to you is the most important thing. More important than the shipment, more important than the club. You’re my priority, Bea. Always.”
“That’s not how your club works.”
“That’s how I work.” He kissed me softly. “The club gets what it needs from me. But you come first. You have my heart, Bea.”
It should have been cheesy. Should have made me roll my eyes and make some joke about romance novel dialogue. Instead, I recognized it for what it was — the particular vulnerability of loving someone you could lose.
This was the thing about loving someone who rode out and might not ride back. You paid attention. You didn’t waste the quiet moments.
“I love you,” I said, because it was the only thing that mattered. “I love you, and I’ll be here when you get back. We’ll have dinner and watch terrible TV, and you’ll tell me about every mile of that boring road you’ve memorized.”
He smiled — a real one, not the controlled version he gave the brothers. “Promise?”
“Promise.”
He was still looking at me — that careful, intent look he got when he was memorizing something.
I kissed him first. Not the soft kind. I shifted onto his lap and felt his hands go to my waist — automatic, sure. He pulled me closer without hesitation.
“Come on,” I said against his mouth.
He didn’t need to be asked twice.
The bedroom was dark except for the streetlight through the curtains.
He sat on the edge of the bed and I stood in front of him and took off my shirt.
Let him look. Six months and he still looked at me like that, like he was taking inventory, like I was something worth studying. That hadn’t gone away.
“Your turn,” I said.
He pulled off his shirt. I pushed him back against the mattress and climbed over him, and he made a small surprised sound.
I kissed his jaw, his throat, his chest. He had his hands on my hips and I could feel him holding back — waiting to see what I wanted. That was one of the things I loved about him. Always paying attention, always reading me.
Tonight I wanted to do the reading.
I worked my way down his body and took my time with him. I felt the moment he stopped holding back — the catch in his breath, the way his hands loosened in my hair. I took it all in, just like he did — especially the sound he made when he’d gotten past careful and into real.
Eventually he pulled me up and turned us over. I felt him tug at my jeans, then his own — and I let him. He kissed down my stomach with that same thorough attention he gave everything — deliberate, unhurried — and I stopped thinking. When I came apart I wasn’t quiet about it. Didn’t try to be.
He came back up to me and I pulled him over me. When he pushed inside I made a sound I wasn’t expecting and felt him go still.
“Good?” he murmured.
“Very good.” I pulled him down. “Don’t stop.”
He moved slowly at first, his forehead against mine, his weight exactly right.
I wrapped my legs around him and exhaled against his neck and let it all come loose.
Everything I’d been holding quietly all day — the I’m fine I’d given Indira, the steady voice I kept giving him — came undone all at once, and what was left was just this.
I memorized his hands. The smell of him. The small sounds he made against my hair when he’d stopped holding back. I memorized all of it deliberately, the way I did when I knew a moment mattered.
The second time I came, it rolled through me slowly. He finished a moment after, forehead against mine.
Afterward I didn’t move. Just lay there with his arm across my waist and let myself have it.
He was asleep before I was. I could tell by the weight of his arm, the way his breathing slowed and deepened. I lay still and listened to it.
Four years I’d held the line. Good reasons, real reasons — I’d believed in them every time I’d said no. But lying here now, his arm across my waist, I kept waiting for it to feel complicated. To feel like the thing I’d always told myself it couldn’t be.
It didn’t. It felt right.