CHAPTER SIX
Alex
Then
I was three chapters into reminding myself why a college education mattered when the windows of my third-story apartment started to rattle.
I didn’t get up to check. Feet on the coffee table, textbook open on my knees, I could pick Riley’s exhaust out of a crowd of engines from half a mile off by then.
His knock came a minute later. I closed the book and set it aside. “It’s unlocked.”
Riley filled the doorway, arms crossed, tattoos disappearing into his sleeves, glaring at me. “What did I tell you about leaving the door unlocked?”
“Everyone in this building knows we’re seeing each other,” I said. “Nobody wants to be the reason you’re pissed off. They’re scared of you. You’re intimidating.”
He shut the door and locked it himself, then crossed the room, still scowling. He tipped my chin up with one finger to kiss me. “What about the people who don’t live here? Some guy wandering around looking for a place to rob?”
“There’s two floors of people for him to rob before he gets to the third,” I reasoned. “I’m not—”
“Lock. The. Door.” He straightened and looked down his nose at me. “That’s the third time I’ve said it. I don’t want to say it again.”
I wasn’t used to locking doors. The house I grew up in sat on the side of a cliff in Monterey, California, behind a gate built to stop a tank. Locking anything had never once occurred to me. You don’t lock a museum. You just leave.
But if it mattered to him, it would matter to me too. “I’m sorry. I’ll try to remember.”
“Don’t try,” he said. “Make it a habit.”
“Okay.” I closed my eyes and puckered my lips. “I’ll make it a habit.”
He kissed me and sat down beside me. He glanced at my textbook. “You busy?”
“Studying for Intro to Human Nutrition. What are you doing?”
“Nothing, really. Just messing around.”
“Ohh,” I said, dragging it out. “So you came by because there was nothing else to do.”
“Actually, I came to ask you something.”
I put my head on his shoulder. “Ask away.”
“We’re having a get-together this weekend. I want you to come.”
I’d heard enough stories about the men in his club, and enough descriptions of each of them, that I felt like I already knew them, though I hadn’t met a single one. Right or wrong, I’d filed the club away as a part of his life I wasn’t going to be let into.
I sat up straight. “A get-together, as in the motorcycle club?”
“Who else would it be?”
“I don’t know. I guess I was starting to wonder if you were ever going to introduce me.”
“What the fuck’s that supposed to mean?”
“All I’m saying is I haven’t met any of them yet. I feel like I know them from what you’ve told me. Anyway. Yes. I’d love to go.”
“Saturday, around four,” he said. “Goes till Sunday morning. Food, drinks, music.”
“So a normal party.”
“What else would it be?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never been to a biker party.”
“It’s a pre-holiday thing,” he said, like he hadn’t heard me. “You never told me what you’re doing for the holiday. You decide?”
Thanksgiving was a few weeks off. My parents were in Greece with no plans I knew of to fly home for it.
I’d thought about going back to spend the weekend with Martina, but hadn’t committed to anything.
What I wanted and what I felt like I should want had a way of turning out to be two different things.
“I was thinking about going back to California, but I can’t decide,” I said. “Honestly, I don’t want to be away from you that long.”
“Your parents coming back?”
“Not that I know of.”
“What does Martina usually do for the holidays?”
“Spends them with me. She doesn’t really have family, just some friends here. I think that’s part of why we get along.”
“Tell her to come here instead. You two can have dinner with my family.”
“It’s all right with your parents?” My voice climbed a little. “They know about me?”
He laughed, short and dry. “My mother asked me to invite you.”
Something moved through me all at once.
Surprise, and under it something closer to nerves, and under that something that felt, absurdly, like hope.
I wiped my face with both hands. “It won’t be an imposition?”
“Not at all. It’s just the four of us. My parents, me, and my sister.”
I couldn’t stop smiling. “I’d love to come.”