Before we even spoke I motioned to him, hoping he'd understand that voices down here at night carried. I didn't want Danny or Andy to show up down here and catch us talking. They weren't as stubborn about club members as Dad was, but with Dad in the hospital they took respecting him to a new level. I knew it would just blow up.
We walked until the building was a dark shape behind us and the only light came from the sky, then I stopped and sat down in the grass and he lowered himself beside me, favoring his hip as he settled.
"So…" I sighed, not able to say much more.
The crickets filled the silence and the breeze moved through the meadow grass around us. I tried to hold it together the way I'd been holding it together for weeks. I looked up at the house, now just a faint glow in the distance and remembered what Andrew told me earlier. If Dad didn't pull through we had to sell all of this. The property tax alone would be too much for Mom to handle, and neither of them wanted to move back here and run it.
With Tony… I couldn't bring myself to think it right now, but tears filled my eyes anyway before Garret had a chance to say what he wanted to talk to me about. But the thought of Mom being all alone out here wrecked me. What would she do if Dad died?
"Talk to me, Sara," he said after a while, and he scooted closer, pulling me against his chest.
"I'm going to lose him, Garret." I wiped my face with the back of my hand but the tears kept coming. "The doctors won't say it outright but I can see it in their faces every time we visit. He's not going to wake up, and even if he does, he won't be the same."
I sucked in a breath and kept going. "And my mom's falling apart. I'm trying to keep the diner running and hold everything together for everyone, but I don't know how much longer I can do it."
He tightened his arm around me and let me lean harder into him. It felt good to be with him again, though I was still cautiously guarded. "Your dad is the toughest man I've ever known. If anyone can fight through this, it's Peter."
"Yes but standing up to bikers isn't the same as fighting brain damage from a stroke." I pressed my hands over my eyes. "What's Mom gonna do without him? She's never been alone. They've been together since they were nineteen."
"She's got you," he said. "And she's got Daniel and Andrew. She's not alone."
"We can't stay here forever. Danny and Andy have the racing season, and I've got—" I stopped myself before I said too much. Kip was my life now, a secret I couldn't let get out around here. "I've got a life to get back to eventually." My head hung but I felt him stiffen. I hated that I was keeping secrets from him, I really did, but what was I supposed to do? Tony had all but threatened to kill my parents. What would he do to Kip? And he'd tell Garret straightaway too, just to rub it in.
He was quiet for a second, and when he spoke the tone had shifted. "Sara, I need to ask you something and I need you to be honest with me."
I lifted my head and looked at him. "Okay."
"Is something going on between you and Tony?"
The question felt like salt in a wound. I pulled back from him. "What? No. God, no. Why would you even ask me that?"
"Because every time he's in the room, you look terrified," Garret said. "And he's been riding my ass about staying away from you, which doesn't make sense unless he's got some kind of stake in the situation."
He paused. "So I'm asking you straight. Is there something going on?"
"There is nothing going on between me and Tony," I told him, and I held his stare so he could see I meant it, all the while praying he didn't read my mind and know I was hiding something much worse than a secret relationship with Tony. "Nothing."
"Then why are you afraid of him?"
My mouth opened and the truth sat right there on my tongue, ready to spill out into the dark and change everything. I wanted to say the words and let someone else carry the weight of what I'd been hiding for four years. But Tony's threat was louder in my head than my own voice, and the memory of his hand around my throat in my dad's shop was burned into my mind with a permanence that no amount of time would fade.
"I'm not afraid of him," I said, and even I could hear the lie in it. I was terrified of him.
"Sara—"
"Just drop it, okay? For me…" He studied my face in the dark and I could see him deciding whether to push harder or let it go. Garret wasn't a stupid man by any means, probably the smartest man in that whole club. I knew he could see right through me, so I let him. The fear was too real to shrink away from, but if he saw it, maybe he'd back off and not push. Tony was terrifying.
"You need to tell me if someone is threatening you," he said.
"Nobody's threatening me." I put my hand on his chest, partly to reassure him and partly because I needed something solid to hold onto. "I'm just tired and scared about my dad and I don't want any more trouble. That's all."
His hand came up and covered mine where it rested against his chest. The warmth of his palm spread through my fingers and up my arm, and the space between us shrank to nothing. His eyes dropped to my mouth and stayed there, and I felt the pull in my stomach that I'd been fighting.
He leaned in slowly, giving me every chance to stop him, but I didn't. His lips met mine and the kiss was cautious and gentle, giving way to hunger we both felt for each other.
I kissed him back and let my hand slide up from his chest to the side of his neck, and his arm tightened around me. The kiss changed the second I opened my mouth to him. It went from careful to consuming as his tongue swept against mine, his hand tightening in my hair until my scalp tingled. I whimpered into his mouth and pulled him closer, needing his body against mine.
He was hard. I could feel him straining through his jeans, and I rocked my hips against him without thinking. My body had spent four years starving for this man and it wasn't interested in patience anymore.
