Chapter 9 #2
The room lights up when she’s in it, and I feel myself both speed up and slow down when she’s around.
My heart, my body—everything seems to fall into place around her, and yet…
It shouldn’t. Back in the day, I would have bought her a drink, taken her to bed, and put any feelings in my rearview, but now…
Now, I don’t even know how to talk to this woman because I’m damned sure, no matter what I feel, no matter what seems real, there are some walls that are too high to climb.
She sips her coffee, and the smile she gives me makes me want to open up. Makes me want to share myself with her—what I’ve been through. What I’m feeling. But I know too well that telling her anything—forget about telling her everything—might get me kicked out of this house.
“I’ve been through a rough patch. My friends have rallied around me, though.” Shame and uncertainty make me duck my head as I grunt, “I’m going to get started.” I drop the earplugs on the kitchen table. “I’ll do my best to keep the noise down.”
She looks surprised, like she was expecting to talk more, but she nods and takes the earplugs. I start prepping the tools for the job, and she walks up to me, the earplugs in one hand and her coffee mug in the other.
“Mind if I go upstairs?”
I move aside to let her pass. When she reaches halfway up the stairs, she stops and looks back at me. “You must be incredibly special to have friends who rally around you like that,” she says. “Good people tend to stick together. And your friends seem like good people.”
I don’t respond. Don’t know what to say. I’m not sure if she’s thinking about her own situation and the lack of friends rallying around her right now, or if she really means to pay me a compliment.
I grunt again and get to work, but the longer I let her words sink in, the more they mean to me. She’s right. Morris and I go way back.
Although, the more time passes, the more I realize the true things in my life haven’t changed all that much.
Not Morris. Not my place in the MC. Not how they treat me.
It’s as if not even a day has passed. And that same vibe extends to me from Alice.
She has no reason to be kind to me. No reason to nudge me into asking Bridget out.
They are good people. Good friends. But I suspect the way they treat me is more about them than it is about me.
I shove aside all the thinking and feeling and get to work.
I’m halfway through repairing the stairs when I realize I have enough time and cash to make a handrail for the wall.
I’ll need the right length of wood, though, which means heading back to the store.
I stalk up the stairs and knock lightly on Bridget’s open bedroom door.
I can hear the girls in Mia’s room, laughing and talking.
It makes me smile. They sound so happy and free.
I can’t remember that feeling anymore, what it feels like to have no weight on my shoulders, no pressure on my chest. It’s as if I’ve been carrying my pain so long, I wouldn’t know how to put it down if I could.
“Hey,” I call out.
Bridget’s lying on her bed, her phone in hand. She’s got the earplugs in, which means she doesn’t hear me. I step into her room, waving my hand in front of me so I don’t scare the shit out of her.
“Oh. Crow.”
Hearing that word on her lips does something to me. It feels foreign and old, but so, so good. As if she’s connecting to a part of me that I didn’t think she’d ever see. She pulls out the earplugs and pats the edge of her bed. “How’s it going?”
I washed my hands downstairs, but I might have sawdust on my pants and shirt, so I don’t want to sit. But she’s watching me, waiting, so I carefully ease down on the corner of the bed.
“S’going good,” I say. “Not the comedy show that’s going on in there.
” I motion toward Mia’s room. “But good. I have enough time to put up a handrail on that wall if you’d like.
I need to hit the hardware store for the right length of wood and the brackets, but if you’re okay with it, I can put that up today too. ”
She looks surprised but nods. “That’d be great, if you have the time.”
I nod and start to get up, but she stops me.
“I’ve been texting your friend Alice. She’s invited me and Mia to a baby shower next weekend. One of your motorcycle buddies.”
I chuckle at that, and she flushes, a generous pink that creeps from her pretty throat to her cheeks.
“Is that the wrong word?”
“Nah, you’re fine,” I say.
“Well, Alice said Mia can sleep over with Zoey after the baby shower. Lia and Leo are having a baby, and Alice and Morris are hosting the party, so she said it would be great to have someone Zoey can play with. She seems excited that the girls are getting along.”
I nod. “Yeah. I’m sure it’ll be a great time.”
“Will you be there?” she asks almost shyly.
The question throws me, and I scrub a hand over my chin. “I mean… I hadn’t decided, to be honest. But I could go. It’s usually a chick thing.”
“Well, no, I mean…not if you weren’t planning on it. I just thought maybe we could go together. Or, if you’re going to be there, I’d at least see you. You know, under better circumstances. When you’re not working and when I’m not hospitalized.” Her lips twist into a sweet, sly smile.
“You want to do that?” I ask. “Hang out?”
“Mmm-hmm.” She smiles. “I’d like that.”
As much as I should want this, as much as I should be over the fucking moon that a gorgeous woman like her would want to spend time with me, the whole thing is just too complicated.
I don’t say anything for a second, just staring at her like a dumbfuck, when she looks away. “Crow, I…I Googled you.”
My mouth immediately goes dry, and something in my stomach tightens as if I’ve been punched in the gut.
She moves, kicking her legs over the side of the bed so we’re sitting side by side. “I know that might seem invasive, like I violated your privacy, but…”
“What does that mean?” I demand.
Everything she says after that is a blur.
I can’t hear her through the buzzing in my head.
I might not have known what Googling someone meant six months ago, but now, I know exactly what she’s getting at.
I’ve Googled myself plenty of times to see what prospective employers might find when they run background checks on me.
There are only two very small write-ups about what happened at the bar that night. One in the local county paper’s police blotter and a slightly bigger write-up after the trial. But my name, my picture, and the whole goddamn story is out there. And she found it.
“It’s okay,” she says, putting a hand on my shoulder. “I read the—”
I can’t listen to this. My mind is spinning, and the coffee I drank earlier turns sour in my stomach. I get up from the bed and nod at her. “Right. Yeah. I need to go.”
I head down the stairs, but Bridget follows after me. “Crow?” she calls, but I keep walking. “Logan, please, can we just talk?”
I look over the tools and materials, all the shit I need to clean up before I can leave. But Bridget’s right behind me, coming down the stairs, her gray eyes dark and her hair loose and flowing over her shoulders. “Logan, please?”
I turn to face her. I want to stay. I want to talk to her.
I want to open up to someone, but I’m not sure I know how to do that anymore.
I’m not even sure I know who I am anymore.
I’m trapped between the old me and the way I would have behaved and the new me.
The man who has to anticipate people’s reactions to him.
The old Crow didn’t give a fuck. And that was the attitude that got me into this mess.
I threw a punch and put some cocksucking meth head in his place, and in the blink of an eye, my future was gone.
Dead and buried, right in front of my eyes.
My phone buzzes in my pocket, so I pull it out, Birdie watching my every move with a sincere, pained look on her face. I swipe to read the text from Madge.
Hey sexy, your brother called. Just fyi. I gave him your number so he’d know how to reach you.
Fuckin’ Madge.
She gave this number to my brother, which means my father will have it too. I was pretty sure that New York number from this morning had to be my dad, but I still haven’t listened to the voice mail. I’m not ready for the calls to start. The questions.
I jam the phone into my pocket and head for the door. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I have to run.”
Before Bridget has a chance to say another word, I’m in Morris’s truck, driving away.