Chapter One #2
Kya doesn’t notice. None of them do. They’re too busy in their own little domestic war zone to catch the way one name can still knock me off center after all these years.
But I feel it.
I always feel it.
Mac’s mouth twitches around the edge of her glass. “He’s not dead, Kya. He’ll probably hear it all on his own in about thirty seconds.”
Brooke perks up a little. “He’s coming?”
“Whip called him,” Logan says, finally dropping into the armchair nearest Mac like he’s been granted permission to sit. “Said he was still at the garage.”
Dom snorts. “Translation, Uncle Whip wanted him to haul something heavy.”
“That’s literally why God made Jimmy,” Carter mutters. “To move furniture and scare people.”
I laugh softly, but the sound comes out thinner than I want it to.
Because now I know he’s coming. And that shouldn’t matter.
It shouldn’t.
I’m twenty-three years old, not sixteen anymore.
I’ve lived enough life since then to know better than to let one man still have this kind of hold on me without even trying.
I’ve gone on dates. I’ve had men flirt with me.
I’ve been kissed and wanted and looked at in ways that should’ve finally shaken this stupid, embarrassing, ancient crush loose.
They didn’t.
Because none of them were Jimmy.
And Jimmy has never had to do anything extraordinary to ruin me. He doesn’t have to flirt. He doesn’t have to lead me on. He doesn’t have to say sweet things or touch me too long or make promises he doesn’t intend to keep.
He just has to walk into a room.
That’s enough.
It has been enough for years.
“Allie,” Brooke says, drawing my attention back to her. “Can you see if there’s more ranch in the fridge?”
“Sure.”
“And if there’s curly fries hidden in there, I’d like to formally accuse Carter of a hate crime.”
Carter drops his head back against the couch cushion. “Jesus Christ.”
I grin and head for the kitchen before anybody can rope me into another food-related tribunal.
The fridge is full in the way it only ever is when the whole club’s orbit starts landing in one place at once.
Containers stacked on containers, leftovers with Sharpie labels, too many condiments, fruit trays, sandwich meat, two different coffee creamers nobody’s claiming, and enough drinks to hydrate a small army.
I grab the ranch, snag another bottle of water for myself, and find the last container of cut pineapple shoved behind a carton of eggs.
Kya’s gonna kill somebody over that later.
I’m still smiling to myself when the back door opens.
I feel him before I see him.
The scrape of boots against the tile. The low murmur of a male voice answering somebody from outside. The heavier tread that I know as well as I know my own.
My fingers tighten around the ranch bottle.
And then Jimmy walks into the kitchen like he hasn’t spent the last decade making me feel sixteen and breathless and stupid every time he gets too close.
He fills the doorway in a way that should be illegal.
He’s bigger than he used to be, broader through the shoulders and chest, all hard lines and quiet strength packed into worn jeans, a fitted black T-shirt, and his cut hanging open over the top of it.
Ink snakes down both forearms, dark against tanned skin, disappearing under the sleeves and reappearing over the backs of his hands.
His beard is trimmed close, his dark hair a little too long on top like he’s overdue for a cut and doesn’t care enough to fix it yet, and his expression is somewhere between mildly annoyed and deeply amused, which means he’s probably already heard at least half the insanity from the common room.
He looks older now.
Not old.
Just…more.
Harder. Rougher. More settled into himself.
And somehow even more impossible than he was when I was a teenager staring at him across bonfires and cookouts and club nights, trying to pretend he didn’t make my whole body go warm and weird.
He glances up.
Our eyes meet.
And there it is. That same stupid, awful, humiliating reaction.
My stomach flips. My chest tightens. My pulse trips over itself like it’s never learned a damn thing in all these years.
I hate this. I hate him. I hate me most of all.
His gaze lingers for maybe half a second before it drops to the ranch in my hand and then the pineapple container tucked against my hip.
One corner of his mouth lifts. “Planning to survive the apocalypse in here?”
I should say something normal.
Something easy. Something that doesn’t sound like I’ve secretly been in love with him for years while he remains completely, infuriatingly unaffected.
Instead, what comes out is, “Depends. Are you eating everything again?”
His brows go up slightly, like he wasn’t expecting me to have a comeback ready. Then he huffs a laugh.
That sound does stupid things to me too.
“Unfair accusation,” he says, stepping fully into the kitchen.
Unfair my ass.
Jimmy eats like he’s trying to personally keep every grocery store in the county in business, and if he doesn’t get to the leftovers first, Logan usually does. There is no safe food in this building unless one of the women threatens violence over it.
I set the ranch on the counter and try very hard not to notice how close he is when he reaches past me for a bottle of water out of the fridge door.
I fail.
He smells like clean soap, leather, outside air, and something that’s just…him. Familiar enough to be dangerous. Familiar enough to make my chest ache with the weight of years.
“Your timing’s great,” I say, because talking is better than silently combusting.
“Oh yeah?” He twists the cap off the bottle and leans one shoulder against the counter. “Who’s winning?”
“The women.”
“That was never in question.”
I smile before I can stop it.
He notices.
Of course he notices. Jimmy notices everything.
From the common room, Kya’s voice carries clear as day. “If that man ate my pineapple too, I’m gonna make him sleep outside.”
Jimmy glances toward the doorway and deadpans, “Sounds tense.”
I snort.
Then he looks back at me, and something in his expression softens just a little. Not flirtation. Not heat. Just familiarity. Ease.
Like this is nothing. Like I’m nothing he has to think too hard about.