HARLEY
CHAPTER EIGHT
I sit there, knowing it's time to go. I realize we have still only held small talk. I don’t even know what she does for work. I know she had come from Lincoln to help Atlas with Aria when Asher deploys, but we haven’t gotten past that.
“Early morning tomorrow?” I ask, looking over at her. She looks so content, her legs curled and a blanket draped over her.
“What shop?” I ask, already thinking of all the ways I might be able to lay eyes on her tomorrow.
“I help run the bookstore off of main street.” A wild smile spreads across her face.
She loved her books when she was younger.
“Miss Philch loves her bookstore, but she doesn’t want to be in the shop as much as she used to be.
Her daughter had her first grandbaby, around the same time Atlas had Aria, and that's how I got the job.”
That fits her perfectly.
“So it’s not a job you dread heading off to in the morning?” I tease.
She lets out a laugh. “Not at all. I love when it’s just me. I get to read when it's slow.”
I love that for her, and I'm glad she has it.
The coffee bean roastery is across town, so there’s really no room for the “I just so happened to be in the area” excuse. I’ll have to get creative, I guess. Leaning over, I grab her hand and kiss her knuckles.
I don’t want to go, but I've been here since before 8 AM, and I don’t want to intrude. Plus, a lot has happened in that time frame, and she might want to decompress alone.
I get to my feet, and she gets up, closing the distance between us, and throws her arms around my torso.
I wrap my arms around her, inhaling her scent and leaning down to kiss her on the top of her head.
When we were fifteen and sixteen, we didn’t have moments like this.
We were just lusty teens. We made out and pawed at each other.
Wrote notes back and forth, shared lunch, and I used to bring her favorite candy bar and wrap the notes around it.
I smile, thinking back to how easy it used to be to make her smile, before she had to experience so much grief and torment. My heart hurts for the amount of unease she’s probably experienced through the years.
“Don’t forget to turn your notifications on for the camera app,” I remind her.
She nods her head and pulls her phone out. I realize I’m holding my breath to see if she has a reaction when she checks it. No reaction comes, and I let my breath out, assuming that means no messages have come through.
“Done,” she says with a smile, looking back up at me and slipping her phone in her back pocket.
I lean down and kiss her one more time, a deep kiss that makes her arch into me. “Please lock the door when I leave,” I say around her lips.
She nods her head. “Of course, I promise.” And I pull it open, stepping outside into the cold.
I look back and give her the smoothest smile I can.
“Sleep tight, pretty girl,” I say, and close the door.
Hearing it lock, I descend the steps and get back on my bike.
Loosening the clip from how I’d fitted it for Ember earlier, I slip it over my head and buckle it.
I see the curtains move just a little bit, bright blue eyes peeking out, and I blow her a kiss before starting my bike and backing out of the driveway.
I ride home, tons of thoughts filling my head. Ember, Dean, the overlook. I pull into my garage before pressing the button to close the garage door. I walk up the two steps, pushing the door open into my kitchen. I lock it up and grab a beer from the fridge.
I head into the living room, sit in my recliner, and get ready to relax.
It’s not until this moment that I realize I never got Ember’s phone number.
Last night she was drunk, and went right to bed when I dropped her off.
I was so anxious from the report on Dean that I was up and at her door by 8 AM.
We had spent the day together, so I didn’t need it.
I pull out my phone and type her name into Facebook.
A few accounts pop up, and I finally land on the one with those familiar blue eyes and that strawberry blonde hair I love so much.
I press the “Add Friend” button. I scroll down her facebook page, noticing she must not use it very often, because there isn’t much on here.
A new photo every few months, a shared post from someone else’s page—otherwise it’s pretty bare.
I hope she’ll at least approve my request, maybe even message me from the messenger app, but then I remember that Dean is famous for going through her social media accounts.
Most likely why she doesn’t update it very often.
I can’t say I blame her, honestly. I let out a breath and click my phone off.
I’ve been home for just under twenty minutes, and she lives about fifteen minutes away, so it has only been about forty minutes since I left her.
I get up and toss my empty beer bottle into the trash and head into my office.
Clicking my laptop on, I pull up the app for the cameras we’d installed outside her house.
She didn’t pay too much attention while I installed them, so it was easy enough to get photos of the serial numbers and model numbers off the boxes.
I go through the steps of setting up a new device. I type in the numbers, and duplicate the name, so it doesn’t raise suspicion to Ember. Once I press sync, the feed in front of her house pops up.
I justify my actions by telling myself I just want to be able to keep an eye on things, in case Dean gets ballsy. I watch for a bit, nothing really happening. It’s about 7 PM now, and I see the light from the front porch turn off and the night mode click on, illuminating the night.
Twenty minutes pass, and in that time I check through my entire phone.
I scroll through new emails, responding to the ones that I need to get back to.
Just as I'm about to log off, I see the front end of a dark blue Nissan Altima come into view across the street.
I scoot closer to the screen, waiting to see who gets out.
Five minutes pass, and nothing happens. The street Ember lives on is pretty slim, but the way the car is parked ensures I can’t see the driver. The hairs on the back of my neck raise when I finally see the door swing open and light-colored tennis shoes come onto the screen.
Dean comes into view, and I'm out of my chair, bent at the waist, watching closely.
The closer he gets to her driveway, the more I want to rip him apart.
My anger is boiling over the closer he gets.
The light from the camera must have flickered on when he got close, because he stops and looks right into the camera before a smug smile stretches across his face.
With that, he turns back around and strides back to the car.
I run my hand down my face, waiting to see his next move.
I download the app onto my phone and pull the feed up.
He’s still sitting there as I race down, pulling my garage open and sliding into my black Audi.
I don’t know what I’m going to do, but I can barely control myself.
I hate knowing he’s watching her. I pull out of the garage, making sure I close it up before heading right back to Ember’s house.
I make a roughly fifteen-minute drive in under ten.
I hit every back road I can, trying to get to her faster.
When I swing a left onto her road, the Nissan pulls out, continuing down the road.
I let out a breath, feeling some of the stress release, thankful he’s not sitting outside her house anymore.
I’m just about to pull into her driveway when I make a last-minute decision to follow the car.
“Where are you headed, you fucking worm?” I say to myself with clenched teeth.
Keeping a steady distance, so as to not set off any alarms that he’s being followed, I perform a fake turn down a road, flicking my lights off, then pull back onto the road and follow him.
Just like he’d warned Ember in the texts, he’s only a few miles from her house.
He pulls into a run-down apartment complex.
He sits there for a few minutes, the phone light illuminating his face in the driver's seat.
Finally, he gets out of the car, pockets his phone, and heads up the stairs to the second floor.
I watch to see which apartment he unlocks and make a mental note.
The door closes, and a light comes on through the curtain.
My first instinct is to head back to Ember’s, but I think I'm going to camp out here for a bit, make sure this isn’t a pit stop before heading back to my girl.
Fuck. Not MY girl. Not officially at least. My windows are tinted, so I’m not concerned about anyone seeing me sitting here.
As I wait, I realize that less than two days ago I had it pretty bland.
I was ready to go all in with the coffee roastery, and I still am, but now Ember fills my head.
I don’t think it's realistic to say we love each other right now, but I do know that if she asked me to jump, I'd ask how high. I laugh to myself, because even though I say I don’t want to call this feeling love, I'm sitting outside her exes house just to be sure he’s not messing with her, and I don’t even have her number.
I watch, carefully, until I see the light go off through the window into Dean’s apartment.
I stay for another fifteen or so minutes before heading out.
It’s an extra few minutes, but I cruise by Ember’s just to take a look and make sure all is good there.
I can see a little light peeking through the curtains, but it's so faint I think it’s just a night light in the front room.
Getting back to my place, I pull into the garage and head inside. Making sure everything is locked back up, I open my app again, scrolling the feed back until I see my car roll by. I play from there, and don’t notice anything else that would raise an eyebrow.
I lay in my bed and wonder what Ember is doing. I almost give in and message her on Facebook, but I hold back. I also think about messaging Asher, because he definitely would have her number, but think better of it. I don’t know how private Ember is about relationships.
Dragging my hands down my face, I sigh before popping up and stripping to my boxers. I lay in bed, thinking about how badly I want to get her number. I feel like a teenager in the hallways, wanting to text “wyd” to my crush.