Rushing In

by Alice Winters

  I nod, agreeing, but it almost sounds like he’s talking from personal experience. “I know. And it’s hard for them to see that even if we do.”

  “Yeah…” He takes a deep breath. “Let’s go downtown and see if either of the shops had employees that went into the alleyway that morning.”

  “Good idea.”

  We speak to the owners of two shops who border the alleyway, but neither had noticed Jamal and neither had taken trash out. They both said they do it at night and hadn’t gone into the alleyway for anything else. It seems like we’re no closer to finding out what happened to Jamal, but I feel like the key will be getting Jamal to trust us. We need to prove that we can protect him, even if he wants to be the only one protecting himself.

  Chapter Six

  I step in front of my cat Inks and turn around. “How do I look?”

  Inks ignores me as he licks his paw that looks like it was dipped in black ink. Besides his two front paws, he’s completely white. When he notices me looking at him, he meows and stands up to stretch. Then he jumps off the dining table chair and rubs his white hair all over my dark pants, leaving little white cat hairs coating them. I suppose that’s his way of saying that they’re good enough.

  I pick him up and carry him over to the couch to wait. Thankfully, I don’t have to wait long before Bradley pulls up on his motorcycle. I kiss Inks on the head, set him on the couch, and head toward the door.

  As I walk out, I have this weird grin on my face that I can’t seem to erase. But then Bradley pulls his helmet off and gives me a smile which makes me grin even harder.

  “Hey, sorry I’m a little late, they needed to go over more things with me before they’d let me drive off,” Bradley says as he gets off his bike and puts it on its stand.

  “No problem at all! I was just playing with my cat, who already thinks I ditch him too much,” I joke.

  “I think he’s watching us,” he says as he points to the cat who is sitting inside the blinds he managed to mangle to the point where they no longer go up anymore.

  “He’s proud of his work,” I say.

  Bradley chuckles. “I can see that. He’s cute. Did you give birth to him too?”

  I try to show no amount of amusement on my face as I say, “No, I didn’t.”

  He starts laughing as he shakes his head. “Just thought I’d ask.”

  “I’m glad we got that out there.”

  He unhooks a second helmet from the back and walks over to me. He looks sexy in his dark, almost black jeans and a gray button-up with a red jacket over it. “Ready?”

  “I am,” I say.

  He sets the helmet on my head, which puts him very close to me. His fingers brush my neck as he adjusts the chin strap and hooks it. “One time, I hooked the skin of my cousin’s neck with the buckle. You should have heard her scream. I’ll try not to do that to you,” he says with a grin.

  “That’s mighty kind of you,” I say.

  “But just know that if you sass me, it’s an option.”

  “So instead of fighting me with your knowledge of how to restrain someone, you’re going to snap my neck skin into a buckle?”

  He grins at me and from this close of a distance I notice he smells really good. “Exactly.” He steps back, like he’s assessing me. “You look very nice,” he says as he turns away and heads for his bike.

  That weird smile is back on my face as I’m filled with far too much happiness. “You too!” I say.

  He glances at me and smiles back. “Thanks.”

  He turns the bike around and gets on before looking at me as I hover. It’s at this moment that I realize just how close to him I’ll have to sit. And I’m excited. This was the greatest plan I think I’ve ever had. I may not be able to flirt well, but I can cling onto him just fine.

  “Get on,” he says.

  I swing my leg over and sit down behind him. It’s not a huge bike, so I’m pressed right up against him and loving every moment of it. My groin is against his ass, and my hands are awkwardly hovering as I try to decide what to do with them. And it’s amazing.

  “All good?” he asks.

  More than good. “Yes!”

  “Great,” he says as he accelerates, and I put my feet on the rests. He pulls out of the driveway and turns right, and I immediately forget about how fun it is to be pressed up against his back.

  The wind whips by me, the ground flies past, and I am positive I’m going to fall off and die. This is how I will die. Trying to get the attention of the hot guy at work who probably would have liked me just about the same if he’d picked me up in his car. Maybe more since I wouldn’t have been embarrassing myself.

  I grab tightly onto him, not because it’s fun to squeeze him, but because death is imminent.

  “Oh my god, we’re going to die,” I say.

  Bradley laughs, before quickly quieting down. “You’re not joking… I’m sorry for laughing. We’re not going to die. We’re fine.”

  “We’re going so fast! Why are we going so fast?” I ask.

  “I’ll slow down,” he says as the trees fly past. The road is so close. How do people enjoy this? If my head hit the road at this speed, helmet or not, it would murder me.

  “This was a horrible idea. Can you slow down more?” I plead.

  “Umm… sure,” he says, barely slowing down a smidge. What is wrong with him for enjoying this?

  “We’re dying.”

  “We’re not dying. My lungs might be crushed by your grip, but we’re not dying.”

  “Slower,” I urge.

  “I’m going about ten miles per hour at this point… if we slow down much more, the bike’s just going to fall over,” he says as a car driven by an elderly man passes us.

  Thank god we reach a stop sign and he has to stop. He puts his feet down to steady the bike and looks back at me with a soft smile. “How about we take your car?”

  “Nah! Why would we do that? I’m awesome. This is so much fun,” I say as the quiver in my voice gives my terror away. As if me crying about the high speed of ten miles per hour and claiming that we’re going to die hadn’t.

  He starts laughing. “Don’t lie. We’re currently in a twenty-five-mile-per-hour area and you’re nervous…”

  First off, I love how he has taken my absolute terror and decided to just state that I’m nervous. It’s clear I’m freaking out, which is not sexy in the slightest, but he’s a gentleman through and through.

  “What happens when we have to get on the highway?” he asks.

  “Oh my god,” I breathe out at the horror of the thought. “How fast were you going here?”

  “I never even got past twenty.”

  “You’re joking,” I say.

  “I’m not…”

  “This thing is a death trap. You should not ride this thing.”

  His smile widens. “Thanks for your concern. I promise I’m fine on it. So it’s up to you. Do you think you’ll get used to it if we go a little farther? Or do you want to go back to the house and get your car? That’s what I personally think we should do.”

  “Okay, yes. Car. I want to show you how awesome my car is,” I say. “Have you ever seen how amazing it is with its four wheels and roof and a floor where you can’t see the ground threatening to murder you? And seat belts. It has seat belts.”

  “Sounds magnificent. Do you want to walk or do you want to ride back?”

  I look over my shoulder and nearly die of embarrassment when I see my house about six houses down. There is no way I would ever walk back. I’d rather die on the trip home. “I will ride with you.”

  “Okay. I have to make a turn here, and it might feel a bit weird, but you’re not going to fall.”

  “I’m ready to meet my maker,” I whisper.

  He starts laughing as he makes a U-turn and starts driving again. I find that if I close my eyes, tuck my face against his shoulder and just focus on his lovely scent, it’s a little better. I also start singing “Jesus Take the Wheel” whic
h makes Bradley laugh, even though I’m horribly off key.

  When he finally stops, I notice how tightly I’m holding on to him. That’s when I realize it’s no wonder why he wanted to go back for the car, I was trying to break his ribs. Hell, sometimes love hurts. And this time, it really hurts.

  “I can’t unlock my fingers from your body,” I say.

  “It’s going to be really hard for us to drive a car like this, but I’m always up for trying something new,” he says, and the idea of him sitting on my lap as I drive around is oddly tempting.

  I finally manage to free my fingers and pull them from him. I hop off the demon machine and fall dramatically to my knees. “Earth. I never thought I’d see you again.”

  “I just want to remind you that you were the one who suggested riding it,” he says.

  “It sounded fun. I didn’t know it would be so awful,” I say.

  “I enjoyed it, if that counts for anything,” he jokes as he walks over to me and gives me his hand. I give him mine and he pulls me to my feet. “Well, now you can tell everyone you rode a motorcycle.”

  “Do not mention this to anyone at work. They all think I’m cool and awesome, and this will shatter their impression of me.”

  “I think your father has already shattered that, if I’m being honest,” he says as he sets his helmet on his bike.

  “Of course.”

  “And look, your cat is in the same spot. You literally didn’t even ride long enough for your cat to get bored of looking out the window.”

  “Felt like a year. I mean… I wish it was like an eternity, since I got to hold on to you. Is that better?” I joke.

  He laughs. “It was. A bit of a lie, though, since you didn’t hold on to me. You were trying to crush me.”

  “Well… I’m just going to blame that on you. Let’s get into a real vehicle with an appropriate amount of wheels,” I say.

  “Alright, I can handle that,” he says as he follows me to the garage where my car is waiting.

  We get inside and he gives me a huge grin.

  “What?”

  “Just curious how long you’re going to wear that helmet for.”

  I reach up and my hand hits it, which makes me start laughing. “I’m so traumatized that I’ve lost all feeling in my body! This is your fault!”

  He grins at me as he reaches out and undoes the buckle. “Are you sure you don’t want to wear it? It looks pretty sexy on you.”

  “I’m good. I don’t want any reminder of you trying to kill me,” I say as he pulls it off and sets it in the back seat.

  He chuckles as he starts buckling his seat belt, and I debate reminding him how awesome seat belts are.

  “Whoops, I’m stepping on something,” he says as he picks up the book I bought from Ace’s Wild. I’d taken it with me in case I needed to do some light reading while waiting anywhere.

  And now it’s in his hands as he stares at it.

  Well, guess I’m done with the hints.

  “Ha ha! Just getting ideas for my sex room,” I joke, since I’m not quite sure what else to say. Now he knows I have the exact same book as him, and if that isn’t a coincidence, I’m not sure what is.

  His eyebrows shoot up as he looks at me. “You have a sex room?”

  I start laughing at the look on his face. “I was thinking of either making it a cat playroom or a sex room. I haven’t decided yet.”

  “Well, as long as you don’t make it both, I think you’ll be good.”

  I chuckle as I grab the book from him. “That’s why I think I’ll be better off going the crazy cat lady route. What about you? How many sex rooms do you have?”

  “Just like eight or nine. There are so many I can’t keep track of them.”

  “I’m seeing you in a whole new light.”

  “Says the man with a BDSM book,” he says.

  “I like the pictures.”

  That has him laughing even harder. “It’s like a picture book?”

  “I don’t like reading much, so I just make inferences from what they’re doing. It’s quite interesting.”

  Since we haven’t actually left the driveway yet, I flip the book open to my favorite page. On it, the woman is hanging from the ceiling by straps around her body with a candle burning on each ass cheek.

  “Satanic butt ritual,” I conclude.

  He nods vigorously. “Has to be.”

  “I dig it,” I say.

  “I’ll make sure to get you candles for your birthday, then.”

  “Aw, thanks,” I say as I put the book back. “Just never take me near your demon bike again, and that’s the only gift I’ll ever need.”

  “Really? You wouldn’t prefer me putting burning candles on your bare ass cheeks?”

  “Ooh, kinky. Now that’s a hard choice.”

  He chuckles as my mind wanders off to me hanging from the ceiling with candles covering my body put there by an equally naked Bradley. I have never been more into something in my life. I think I might have a few Yankee candles my mom bought me that we could try it out with.

  “Whatcha thinking about?” he teasingly asks.

  “If I fed the cat,” I say.

  He starts laughing. “Not what I was going to guess, but it’s probably pretty important.”

  I smirk as I pull out onto the road and head for the pizza place he’d mentioned.

  Chapter Seven

  We chat some as we drive, and I find that it’s extremely easy to talk to Bradley. Of course, we’ve talked quite a bit these last few days, but I didn’t realize just how easy it was to carry on a conversation with him. Especially not until we were driving to the pizza place and he was reliving the terror on my face from riding the bike.

  “I used to think you were nice,” I tell Bradley. “I’d sit at my desk and I’d see you sitting there, and I’d be like, ‘My, he looks like a kind soul.’”

  “Were you in your nineties in this scenario? Because no one talks like that.”

  I try not to grin. “Yes, I was. Do you have a problem with my age?”

  “I’m like a… reverse cougar then,” he says, even though he’s two years older than me.

  “That is definitely a thing,” I say. “Hold on, I’m not finished with my story. So you have this kind and pleasant look on your face—”

  “That’s the look I get when I’m thinking, ‘If Davies talks about her stuffed animal collection and makes me touch the cat she stitched together using holey underwear, then I’m going to explode.”

  “Hold up. There was something… concerning in that conversation… she has a stuffed animal collection?” I ask.

  He snorts.

  “I’m joking. Tell me about this underwear cat. And was it holy as in she took it to get baptized or holey as in she wore holes in her underwear first?”

  “She liked the pattern so she stitched it into a cat.”

  “Her underwear?”

  “I didn’t ask if it was hers or if she just bought them. But I touched it.”

  “Why’d you touch it?” I ask, horror no doubt showing on my face.

  He raises his hands in a gesture that clearly states, I have no fucking clue, I’m a weak man when someone hands me their underwear, before shaking his head. “She handed it to me, and I didn’t realize what it was! My fingers betrayed me! I had to bleach my hand.”

  “None of this could have possibly happened,” I decide.

  “Oh, it did. I may stretch the truth for merely entertainment purposes on a daily basis, but she literally had an underwear cat that I touched. My hand felt so weird the entire rest of the day that I thought she gave me crabs or something. I later found out it was poison ivy I got from helping my mom pull weeds.”

  “Man, I missed out on so much of your life. It sounds like Davies molded you into a better person, though,” I say.

  “Yes, I now take nothing when it’s handed to me until I know where it came from and if anyone had it near their butthole.”

  “That makes sense.
Those are my guidelines for taking gifts,” I say as I pull into the pizza place. “Man, I’m sure we could have driven your death trap here. It’s too bad you were too scared.”

  Bradley raises an eyebrow. “I was?”

  I give him a sad look and a nod. “Yep. It wasn’t very attractive, if I’m being honest.”

  “Says the man who planned on wearing a bike helmet to the pizza place.”

  “What are you talking about? That sounds sexy.”

  He chuckles as he shakes his head. “I’m sure if anyone can pull it off, you can.”

  I try not to smile like a crazed person at his roundabout way of telling me that I’d look good even in a bike helmet. This man is not good for my heart. Maybe he’s too good for my heart. Hell if I know. I just want to grab onto him and not let go until he gets back on his bike. Then I’ll definitely let go.

  Instead of a good, witty comeback, I shut the car off and quickly get out. He follows after me as we walk through the front door and stop at the Please Wait to be Seated sign. The hostess grabs some menus and leads us after her.

  Once we sit down, we scan the menus.

  “What kind of pizza do you like?” Bradley asks.

  “I’m not very picky. You?”

  “Yeah, I’m good with most. What about pepperoni and mushroom?”

  “Sounds great.”

  “And breadsticks. Do you like breadsticks?”

  “I love breadsticks,” I say before realizing that I said it very suggestively.

  “Oh?” He raises an eyebrow. “Good to know.”

  “Yep… I’m a master flirter,” I declare.

  “I’ve picked that up. I was hoping you could give me tips.”

  “I can give you a tip alright,” I say with a wink.

  He starts laughing. “Well, that escalated quickly.”

  My laughter soon joins his as I shake my head. “You asked.”

  “I did and I don’t regret asking at all. I’m just impressed with your ability to make everyday things sound perverted.”

  “Thanks.” I glance down at the menu before catching his eyes. “Do you want a side of sausage with your pizza?”

  “I do now, especially if you’re offering.”