Chapter 4
FOUR
ROOK
She slept with her back against my chest, one arm folded under her pillow, the other resting on top of mine where it lay across her waist. I'd been awake for twenty minutes. Hadn't moved and I hadn't wanted to.
Her apartment was above the truck stop, a set of stairs behind the kitchen that led up to a few small rooms her grandparents had built when Lane's was new.
Low ceiling, timber walls, a bed that took up most of the bedroom.
The sheets smelled like her, warm skin and something faintly sweet I couldn't place, and the early light was coming through the curtains and falling across her shoulders and the curve of her spine and I lay there memorizing every detail because some part of me still didn't believe this was real.
Five months of sitting at her counter. Five months of watching her from the far end, wanting her in a way that rewired every rational circuit I had, and now she was asleep in my arms and the warmth of her body against mine was so good it bordered on pain.
I let my hand move. Slowly, barely a touch, my palm tracing the shape of her.
The dip of her waist, the flare of her hip, the soft skin of her stomach where my hand settled and stayed.
She was warm, generous, her body all curves, and softness.
Everywhere I touched felt like something I'd been imagining for months and finding the reality of it better than anything I'd built in the dark.
She stirred. Shifted back against me, her hips pressing into mine, and the sound she made, low, half asleep, lit up every nerve I had.
I pressed my mouth to the back of her neck.
Breathed her in. Felt her wake up slowly, her body coming alive against mine, her hand finding my hand on her stomach and lacing her fingers through mine.
"Morning," she said. Her voice was rough with sleep.
"Morning."
"How long have you been awake?"
"A while."
"Doing what?"
"Lying here. Trying to figure out how I got this lucky."
She laughed. Soft, warm, vibrating through her back into my chest. She rolled over to face me and her eyes were clear, sleep-warm, looking at me in a way I hadn't earned and couldn't look away from.
Her hair was everywhere, tangled across the pillow, and her face was bare of anything except the morning light.
I looked at her and thought, very clearly, I am so into her that this is somehow going to be trouble.
I kissed her. Because I could, because she was here, because five months of wanting had turned into someone I was allowed to touch and I wasn't wasting another single second of it.
Her mouth opened under mine, easy, unhurried, the kiss of two people who'd made it through the first time and found each other on the other side.
Her hand came up to my jaw, her fingers tracing the edge of it, and I pulled her closer, my arm around her waist, her body pressed warm against mine under the sheets.
We could have stayed there. I wanted to stay there, in that bed, in that light, with her hand on my face, her mouth on mine, and nothing else in the world. But the world was still there, and it was coming for her whether we stayed in bed or not.
I went downstairs to open the stop for her while she showered.
I made coffee, turned on the lights, unlocked the front door.
The lot was empty, just my bike and the early morning highway.
I stood behind her counter and poured two mugs and the ordinariness of it, the domestic quiet of making coffee while she got ready upstairs, put a fissure in something I'd kept locked for a long time.
I'd been alone since the discharge. Eight years.
Occasional women, nothing that lasted, nothing that got close enough to matter.
I'd built my life around the club, around the work, around being the man who saw everything and felt nothing.
I'd been good at it because feeling nothing was easier than feeling the thing I'd felt when the institution I'd given everything to ruined my good name and showed me the door.
Now I was making coffee in a truck stop kitchen and waiting for a woman to come downstairs, and the feeling wasn't nothing anymore.
It was everything, concentrated into a point so sharp I could cut myself on it, and I was standing behind a counter holding it in both hands like a man who'd found something explosive and couldn't put it down.
The morning passed. Lexie's shift, me at the counter, the rhythm we'd built over the past five days holding steady.
Truckers came and went. Billy showed up at noon, ate pie, talked too much.
The normalcy of it felt thin, a surface over something deeper, and I kept my eyes on the lot the whole time, the highway, and the angles of approach because the Jackals hadn't come in five days and that didn't mean they'd given up.
It meant they were deciding what to do next.
They decided that they were finally done with waiting that same afternoon.
Lexie had gone out to the dumpsters behind the building and I was at the counter, watching the front. The back door opened. Not her footsteps coming back, different, heavier. A voice I didn't recognize. Then her voice, tight, but controlled
I was moving before I'd finished the thought, I knew there was something wrong. I locked up the place again and then moved through the kitchen, past the storage shelves, and out the back door.
Two of them. Jackals, patched guys, standing in the alley between the dumpsters and the wall. One had his arms folded, leaning against the brick. The other was closer to Lexie, a foot away, talking to her. She was standing her ground, her shoulders squared, her face showing nothing.
They saw me. The one talking to Lexie looked over her shoulder and smiled. He'd been waiting for me to show up.
"There he is," he said. Casual, easy, like we were old friends.
"The Angel. You know, sweetheart, we were wondering when your boyfriend would show up.
" He looked at me. "She's been real brave.
Held out longer than we expected. But we figured you'd get here eventually.
Your club always does stick their noses in. "
I didn't speak. I was reading the situation like I do everything, fast, and automatic.
Two men, no visible weapons, bikes in the lot around the corner.
This wasn't an assault. This was a message, and I was going to bide my time. Escalating it now, plays my hand too early, and I’m not going to give them the satisfaction.
"Here's the thing," he said, turning back to Lexie.
"We don't care about him. We don't care about his club.
This stop is on our route, and it's going to stay on our route, and having an Angel babysitting you, doesn't change the math.
It just makes the math more interesting.
" He stepped closer to her. Close enough that I moved forward, close enough that my hands went loose at my sides and something in my face made the one by the wall push off the brick and straighten up.
"Tell your boyfriend," the Jackal said, his eyes on Lexie, "that the next time we come through, we're not going to be this friendly.
And if he brings his brothers, we'll bring ours.
And sweetheart, you really don't want that. Because when that happens, this place burns. We aren’t interested in just breaking a window next time. "
They left. Walked around the corner, engines kicked over, and they were gone.
Lexie stood in the alley with her arms rigid at her sides and her face white underneath the composure. She looked at me and I saw the fear, bright and real, but it wasn't fear just for herself.
"You need to go."
"Lexie."
"You heard him. They don't care that you're here. All you're doing is making it worse. They're going to come back with more men and more fire and this place, everything my grandparents built, everything I have, is going to burn because you're sitting at my counter playing bodyguard."
"That's not what's happening."
"Then what is happening?" Her voice cracked. The composure splitting, the thing underneath it pushing through. "Because from where I'm standing, I had a problem I was surviving, and now I have a war, and the war is because of you."
She was wrong, she knew she was wrong, and she was saying it anyway because the fear was talking now, the same fear that had kept her from calling the sheriff, the same fear that’d made her lie about the window in the first place.
But mostly, it was the fear of losing the only thing she had, the truck stop.
I looked at her. She was shaking, furious, terrified, but still magnificent. Fighting me the same way she'd fought the Jackals, and with every wall she had thrown up between herself and the possibility that someone else's presence in her life might be the thing that saved it.
"You're not getting rid of me," I said. Quiet.
"You can push, you can fight, you can tell me to leave every hour on the hour, and I will be here tomorrow morning and the morning after that.
Because I didn't come here to play bodyguard, Lexie.
I came here because I am in love with you and I have been for months.
I won't stand by while the Jackals threaten to burn down your life.
That's not who I am. I’d hope you know that by now. "
She stared at me. The fight went out of her face. What replaced it was worse. Raw, open, and scared in a way she'd never let me see before.
"They'll hurt you," she said. Barely a whisper. "They'll burn this place and they'll hurt you and I can't be the reason for that either. I can't."
"You're not the reason. They are. And they're going to find out what happens when they threaten something that is being protected by the Forsaken Angels. But that's tomorrow. Right now I'm here, and you're here, and nothing is on fire."