Then I noticed him—a man reaching right toward me. At first, I thought he was going to grab the bike, but he came at my waist instead. Panic sparked, and somewhere between adrenaline and my reflexive need not to die, I pulled my knife from the holster on my thigh.
Time slowed. His hand lingered too long, and I jabbed it with precision—not hard enough to be fatal, but enough to elicit a high-pitched, startled howl.
I wasn’t going to take any chances when I knew damn well what type of men were after us.
“What the fuck?” He stepped back, eyes still locked on me.
“That’s exactly what I was going to say. You don’t reach out and grab random women!”
His eyes widened, shock reverberating off him. “I was only trying to help you!”
I rarely felt bad for stabbing people—if anything, more people deserved a light stabbing—especially if they reached out to grab random women any chance they got. Plus, my little cry session was really working already. I felt as psycho and deadly as ever.
Five excruciatingly tense minutes later, I pulled up behind the garage. For the first time in years, I’d made it nearly the entire trip without anything catastrophic—except for a minor foot slip and an overenthusiastic helper who now has a little knife wound.
Small victories, right?
But the world wasn’t going to be kind enough to me to leave it at that—seconds passed before the kickstand gave out, the bike crashing onto its side again. The bars took the worst of the hit, but it didn’t go down gracefully.
“What the hell?” I hissed, kicking the seat once for emphasis. “This is why I hate you.”
Aiden walked up to the garage like he owned the place—which, to be fair, he kind of did—wearing a plain black T-shirt and jeans that should not have been that effective, and yet, here we were. The backward cap sat low on his dark blond hair, making him look unfairly hot.
Un-fucking-believable.
He let his gaze travel from the fallen bike, to me, and back to the bike.
Then his mouth curved into that smug, insufferable smile that made me want to set things on fire.
“Damn, Psycho.” He tilted his head, mock sympathy dripping from his voice. “Looks like the bike finally decided it was done with you, too.”
His grin carried that same spark from last night, the one that saidI know your secrets now. My stomach twisted—half from the humiliation, half from the reminder that he could, at any moment, expose the fact that I sobbed throughThe Notebookand he saw it up close.
I feel like the confession to everyone would wreck the image I had of an unhinged psycho girl—even if they would still love me, I would never hear the end of the teasing.
I inhaled sharply and counted to three, then made a mental note to actually leave Ice Weasel in a ditch next time.
Of course, Aiden would show up just in time to witness my humiliation. He picked the bike up, not even looking at me while he checked every inch of it.
“Looks like you managed to at least get it here before you laid it down. Congratulations.”
“Is it my fault that the kickstand is faulty? Or is that on the person who installed it after insisting I needed an upgraded one?”
He finally glanced up, his head dropping for a brief second before snapping back to me.
His gaze dragged up and down my body, slow and deliberate, like he was cataloging something.
I shifted on my feet, moving from one heel to the other as he stared.
“Is that my shirt?” he asked, a slight annoyance in his tone.
“Excuse me?”
He nodded, looking back down at my chest again. My eyes followed his line of sight. It took half a second too long for my brain to catch up, to understand what he meant.
I reached for the hem of my shirt, pulling it slightly to look at the design on the front.
A design I knew because I had seen it stretched across Aiden’s chest plenty of times.
