by A. M. Myers
“I guess you’ll just have to find out for yourself.”
He grins, his gaze falling down my body before quickly returning to my face and a slight blush stains his cheeks. Well, hell. Who would have guessed I could make the biker blush? “I’m really looking forward to that.”
“Okay,” I breathe, my cheeks heating and my nipples pebbling as I turn to look out of the window in an effort to cool down. “I think it’s time to change the subject.”
“I’ve got a question for you.”
I turn back to him. “What?”
“It’s an important one,” he teases and I nod as he pins me with a serious look. “Name your top three favorite movies.”
“Okay,” I say as I start counting them out on my fingers. “Selena, Titanic, and Hope Floats.”
He scoffs. “How about a recent movie?”
“I liked Guardians of the Galaxy,” I tell him.
“Babe, Guardians of the Galaxy came out a while ago.”
My mind goes blank and my eyes widen as I stare at him, my heart beating out of control in my chest. Oh, God… I was so happy and caught up in our conversation that I completely forgot about the fact that I know nothing about the last five years and the fact that I’m hiding that from him. Jesus. What a fucking mess! His gaze flicks between the road and me, demanding an answer. Swallowing my fear, I turn away from him and shrug.
“I haven’t been to the movies in a while.”
“Hey,” he whispers and as I turn back to him, he reaches across the truck and nudges me under the chin, forcing me to meet his gaze. “What did I do?”
I shake my head. “Nothing.”
“Come on, Juliette. I may be a “dumb guy” but I’m not an idiot. Tell me what I said to make you so upset so I can fix it.”
This man is going to be the death of me.
“Nothing,” I assure him, grabbing his hand and holding it between mine. I hope he believes me because the last thing I want to do is ruin this by telling him the truth. “I promise.”
He studies me for a moment before nodding. “You want to keep playing? I think it’s your turn for a question.”
“Actually, I think I get two now since you stole an extra one.”
“Lay ‘em on me, baby,” he replies with a smile and I push away my past once again to focus on us. In a few hours, he’ll be dropping me off at a hotel and then who knows if I’ll ever see him again. I don’t want to spend the last few hours I have with him stressing about everything I left behind. Not when I have him.
Chapter Twelve
Juliette
“What kind of girls do you usually go after?” I ask, fighting back a smile as he turns to me, his brows creeping up into his hairline. What started off as twenty questions has just turned into hours of conversation and the rest of the drive has gone by in the blink of an eye. He scoffs and shakes his head as he glances across the cab.
“The wrong ones.”
I arch a brow. “What does that mean?”
“Someone recently suggested that I sabotage myself.” As he peeks over at me again, he looks so damn vulnerable that my chest aches.
“Is it true?”
He shrugs. “They might have been on to something.”
“Why do you think you do that?” I ask, studying his face as he scowls. It breaks my heart to think about him stopping himself from being happy because of some kind of pain in his past. After a second, he glances over at me and forces a grin to his face.
“Well, if I knew that…”
“No,” I interrupt. “Don’t do that. If you don’t want to tell me, that’s fine but don’t lie to me.”
“The way you call me out on my bullshit should be infuriating but I just can’t seem to care with you…” He shrugs as his words fall away and I grin at him as I tilt my head to the side.
“It’s a gift.”
He laughs before his face turns serious. “I don’t talk about this kind of stuff with anyone but I feel like I can tell you anything.”
“You can,” I whisper, reaching across the cab to grab his hand. He glances down and smiles as his gaze flicks back to the road. It’s quiet for a few seconds before he sucks in a breath.
“A couple of years after I joined the club, I met Molly; she was putting herself through college by working at a bar downtown and I was smitten from the first moment I laid eyes on her. I asked her out and to my surprise, she said yes. It didn’t take long for me to fall in love with her. Everything between us was so good, you know? And after dating for nine months, I decided I was going to propose to her.”
Oh, no.
The pain in his eyes hits me right in the chest and I squeeze his hand.
“I went out and spent weeks finding the perfect ring and finally I stumbled across it in an antique shop. On the night I was going to pop the question, I came home and found a note on the kitchen table and all her stuff was gone.”
Guilt swarms me as I think about the note I left Gavin only yesterday. “What did the note say?”
“Just that she couldn’t do this anymore. That’s the thing that haunts me the most - I have no idea what I did wrong, no idea how to not make that same mistake again.”
“So you ruin things before anyone else can,” I whisper and he glances over at me with a curt nod.
“Yeah, sounds stupid, huh?”
I shake my head. “No, it doesn’t sound stupid. Have you ever thought that you didn’t do anything wrong at all?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, maybe she left because of something that was wrong with her, something she needed to figure out.”
“You sound like you speak from experience,” he says and I shrug. “It’s only fair to ask what kind of guys you usually go for since you asked me.”
“Honestly?” I ask, thankful that he opened up to me a little bit. He nods.
“That would be preferable.”
Heat creeps up my cheeks as I pull my hand away from his. My heart thunders in my chest as I take a deep breath and meet his gaze. “I usually go for guys… like you.”
“Oh,” he replies as a slow smile stretches across his face. “Is this one of those things where you say guys like me aren’t good for you and you need to pick someone better?”
I shrug, avoiding his eyes as I fiddle with my hands. “In the past, guys like you haven’t been good for me but…”
“But what?”
I shake my head. “Nothing.”
“Oh, come on, Juliette. I’ve been nothing but honest with you about everything.” He meets my eyes with a challenge and I sigh.
“My past is… complicated but being with you today… I don’t know. It feels like I’ve known you so much longer than that and I don’t know the right thing to say or do.”
He reaches across the truck and grabs my hand. “Just be honest. You’re not the only one feeling something so it doesn’t matter how crazy it seems to the rest of the world if it makes sense to us.”
“You feel different. This,” I say, motioning between the two of us with my hand. “This feels different to anything else I’ve ever felt but then I remind myself that it hasn’t even been twenty-four hours since I first laid eyes on you and I have to wonder if I’m losing my mind.”
“If you are, then so am I.”
Our eyes meet and I suck in a breath as warmth rushes through me and butterflies flap around in my belly. My heart pounds and my skin aches to feel his hand creep up my arm. The truck vibrates as we hit the rumble bars on the side of the road and he rips his gaze from mine to turn back to the road but he doesn’t release my hand. City lights dance in front of us as he pulls into Baton Rouge and I smile, a feeling of peace settling within me. After rolling my window down, I lean back in my seat and let the sounds and smells of my city greet me. A different kind of warmth radiates from my chest and I sigh like I’ve just been wrapped up in a warm blanket. Every cell in my body knows that I’m home.
“Home sweet home,” Sawyer says. I open my eyes
and find him already staring at me so I flash him a grin as I nod and squeeze his hand.
“It feels amazing to be back.”
He smiles. “Where are you staying?”
“Oh.” I release his hand and pull my phone out of my pocket before turning it on. It comes to life and as soon as it’s ready, I pull up the internet where I was searching for a hotel at a gas station along the way. It looks… not the nicest but I only have a limited amount of money if I want to keep where I am a secret for now so it’ll have to do. Grabbing his phone off the stand, I enter the address into the GPS and set it back down. He studies the map for a second before turning as instructed by the automated voice.
“I don’t want to be too forward,” he says as we drive down quiet streets. “But given our last conversation, I’m just going to go for it. I’d really like to see you again… like, as soon as possible.”
I smile, feeling giddy as I nod. “Yeah, I’d really like that, too.”
“Get over here,” he commands, grabbing my hand again and yanking me across the bench seat until I’m tucked into his side. My heart pounds and my belly flips as he throws his arm over my shoulder and I cuddle into his side. God, this feels so damn right. We cuddle together in a comfortable silence as we drive to the hotel and the closer we get to the ETA on the GPS, the more my chest aches. It sounds crazy but I don’t want to leave him.
“Um…” he mutters as the GPS declares that we’ve reached our destination. The motel stretches out in front of us and I do my best not to recoil. The photos online didn’t look great but I thought I could make it work. Now, I’m not so sure. Small groups of people hang around outside, smoking, drinking, and talking as music pumps through an open door. A breeze blows trash across the parking lot and up on the second floor, two people are going at it pressed up against the window while a group of guys whoop and holler from below. “No.”
“No, what?” I ask, peeking up at him and he flashes me a stern look.
“There’s no way in hell I’m leaving you here.”
I glance back up at the hotel and suck in a breath, dread weighing me down. Staying here isn’t exactly an idea that I’m fond of but with only nine hundred dollars left, the forty-five dollar a night price tag is enticing.
“I’ll be okay,” I assure him, sounding a whole lot more confident than I feel. He shakes his head and pulls me tighter into his side.
“Over my dead fucking body.”
“Sawyer,” I prompt, laying my hand on his leg. “I can take care of myself.”
He shakes his head, glancing down at me like I’m crazy. “There’s no damn scenario where I leave you here alone. Absolutely not. You can come stay at my house.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Why not?” he growls as he surveys the parking lot. I swear, the more I look at it, the worse it gets and my stomach rolls. Why can’t I go stay with him? Well, there’s the fact that I just met him… and I haven’t been completely honest with him… “I’m not going to take no for an answer.”
“Sawyer,” I breathe.
“Come stay with me,” he urges, his voice softer this time. “I need to know you’re safe and we already decided we want to spend more time together.”
I sigh and squeeze my eyes shut.
God… am I really going to do this?
“I’m not sleeping in the same bed as you.”
“I have a spare bedroom,” he replies, relief in his voice as he flips the truck around and starts driving away from the hotel.
“I didn’t say yes, yet!”
He scoffs, his gaze meeting mine for a second before he turns back to the road. “I told you I wasn’t taking no for an answer. I wasn’t playin’ around.”
“Oh, no, sir! I am a grown ass woman, you don’t make decisions for me,” I snap and he blinks in surprise before nodding.
“Okay. I’m sorry.” He pulls the truck over to the side of the road and turns to me as he cups my cheek in his hand. “Will you please come stay with me?”
My teeth sink into my bottom lip as I search his eyes for a second before nodding. “Yes.”
“See? Wasn’t that so much easier?” With a grin on his face, he turns back to the wheel and tucks me into his side before pulling back onto the road.
“Wait, before we get to your place, is it a bachelor pad? Am I going to find something disgusting when I walk in?”
He laughs. “No. My house is perfectly clean.”
“Hmm,” I hum. “I think I’ll be the judge of that.”
“I always keep it clean in case I need to take one of the girls we help there to lay low. It’s also why I have a spare bedroom with a nice bed in it.”
I smile up at him. “You went out of your way to set up a room for the girls you help?”
“Yeah. I just figure they’ve already been through so much that they should, at least, have a nice, safe place to sleep.”
I lay my head on his chest as I stare out of the windshield, unable to wipe the smile off of my face. His heart… it’s just so pure and warm and as crazy as it sounds, I’m already feeling something for him. I hesitate to call it love since we haven’t known each other for that long but it’s…something. Something powerful, all consuming almost. Something that fills me up and makes me feel happier than I can ever remember being and something that I’m terrified to lose. How is that possible? How can I be so attached to whatever these feelings are after only a day? It defies all logic and reason which is maybe why Mercedes told me to just follow my heart. But how could she have known that he and I would have such a connection?
“Here we are,” Sawyer says, cutting into my thoughts and I blink, turning to a cute little Tudor-style brick house as Sawyer pulls his truck into the driveway. There are stones leading up to an enclosed front porch and bright flowers line the base of the house on both sides as well as adorable bay windows that I just want to spend all day reading in.
“This is your house?”
He nods, a slight blush staining his cheeks. “Yeah. Do you like it?”
“I love it,” I answer, turning back to the house. It feels stately despite its small size and still manages to evoke a feeling of home in me that puts me completely at ease. Sawyer turns off the truck.
“Come on. I’ll show you around.”
He takes my hand and threads his fingers through mine as he opens his door and steps out, pulling me along behind him. Once I’m out of the truck, he shuts the door and leads me up the front walk as his thumb brushes the back of my hand and electricity zips up my arm. I feel lightheaded and weightless, like I’m floating along next to him and every time he glances down at me to flash me a shy smile, my heart thumps a little bit harder.
We walk up onto the porch and a piece of paper taped to the front door catches my eye at the same time that Sawyer sees it. He scowls and rips it off the wood before unfolding it. As he reads whatever it is, his face grows more irritated and I study him, my heart sinking at the look on his face.
“Everything okay?”
He glances over at me and nods as he hands me the paper. “Yeah, just an issue with… well, I guess you could call her my ex.”
“You want me to read this?” I ask, staring up at him with wide eyes and he nods. My thoughts are sluggish as I try to wrap my head around why he would give a girl he just met yesterday a note from his ex-girlfriend to read. “Why?”
“Because I like you, Juliette. And I’m not about to ruin this by not being one hundred percent up front about everything.”
Where in the world did this guy come from? And why the hell did just the word “ex-girlfriend” make me feel all kinds of jealous and possessive? I stare at him for a second, trying to work through my confusing thoughts and emotions, before turning to the note in my hand and sucking in a breath as I unfold it.
Moose,
I’ve been trying to reach you for a couple days to apologize about our last phone call. I didn’t mean anything that I said and I want to talk to you. Please reach out when
you get back from your trip.
T
“Um… I, uh… I don’t know what I’m supposed to say here. You don’t owe me any kind of explanation…”
“I know,” he says, squeezing my hand. “Remember earlier when I said I picked the wrong women? Well, she was one of them and I’m showing you this note because I meant what I said. I like you, Juliette, probably more than I’ve ever liked anyone and I know Tawny well enough to know that this probably won’t be the last time we hear from her but I’m telling you now, nothing is happening there and it never will again. I don’t want her.”
“Okay…” I breathe, still unsure of what to say. “I’m not… You don’t have to… We…”
He turns to me and unlaces his fingers from mine before taking my hand and pressing it to his chest. “Look, I’m not crazy, okay? I know this is happening fast and I’m sure your head is spinning just as much as mine is but more than anything I want to explore this feeling…”
My fingers flex against his chest as his heart thunders against my palm, almost matching mine in its intensity and I nod, struggling to breathe.
“Is that something you want, too?”
I nod again. “Yes.”
He flashes me a brilliant smile that lights up his entire face and his blue eyes sparkle as he stares down at me and closes the distance between us, his other hand cupping my cheek as he leans down and presses his lips to mine tentatively. My entire body comes alive and I melt against him as a soft moan slips out of me. He releases my hand but I don’t move it, gripping his shirt to pull him closer as his large arms wrap around my waist and pull me into his body and his tongue flicks against my lips. I give in, allowing him to take all of me as a hand slips into my hair and grabs a chunk of it. He doesn’t give it a tug or use it to control me like most men but just holds it almost like he’s saying that he’s got me and if we fall, we’re going down together.
Chapter Thirteen
Juliette