Page 34 of Diary of a Biker Queen

She froze. “No, he’s not. He’s my bodyguard.”

“Was your bodyguard,” I corrected.

“He’s my friend.”

I leaned back against the wall and crossed my arms over my chest. “When has being in the friend zone ever stopped anyone from developing a case of feelings?”

She shook her head. “He knows I’m pregnant with someone else’s baby. He’s been helping me.”

“Yeah, because he wants to sleep with you.”

Anger filled her expression. “Just because you want to sleep with anything that moves…”

I rolled my eyes. “Just let the man breathe. I don’t give a fuck about you making out with Dax in the back of the car. Hell, I wouldn’t care if you bounced up and down on his dick in front of me. But you and I already tortured Lynx by fucking in front of him. If I’d known he was so twisted up over you, I never would have done that. But I didn’t know ’til he went all murder spree and only came down off it once he could touch you.” I let out a long breath. “He’s a good guy. He doesn’t deserve to be fucked around. By either of us.”

Nyah swallowed. “I didn’t know.”

“Well, now you do.” The surprised expression on her pretty face softened me a little. “Listen, I’m not saying he doesn’t need you around. I’m just saying it’s hard for him to watch you with me, and with Dax, and to know you only see him as a big brother when he has never seen you as his sister. Just give him some space.”

She eventually nodded. “I’ll go and sit with Dax to watch practice.”

A bit of guilt seeped into her expression, but then I remembered the look on Lynx’s face before he’d gotten out of the car, and it had been pure torture.

Someone had to say it. And I was no stranger to being the bad guy.

12

NYAH

Dear Diary,

Exercise videos shouldn’t be R rated.

Ifound Dax waiting just outside the tunnel Luca and I had argued in. He stared out at the ice, watching the players flash by, but as soon as I moved back to his side, he put his arm around me and smiled down at me softly.

“So, Luca thinks Lynx is in love with you, huh?”

I grimaced. “You heard all that?”

“Tunnel kind of echoes straight back here. You may as well have been arguing into a megaphone.”

I groaned, hoping at least the players had been too occupied with their skates and pucks and whizzing around the ice to pay any attention to the owner of their team having an argument outside the locker rooms.

Dax kissed the top of my head. “Listen. I know you have a lot going on right now. You’re juggling a lot of plates. Luca. Lynx. The baby. Your family and the Guerras. But I’m not one of them.”

My chest tightened. “What does that mean?”

Because what it sounded like was, Nyah, you have too much fucking baggage, and I don’t want anything to do with you anymore.

Like Dax could read my mind, he twisted so he could tilt my chin up. I stared into his almost golden eyes, and all I saw was the man I’d fallen in love with, the father of my child, pulling back and walking away because I was too much effort.

I’d always been “too much.” Too loud. Too wild. Too uncontrollable. I’d always driven my mother crazy because I had never fit the mold she had tried to force me into. While my cousins and the other women in my life all seemed to fall in line easily, and were excited about marrying for money and power, and lived for exotic vacations and fancy clothes, all I’d wanted was to be free to choose. Choose where I lived, what I wore, where I went, and who I loved.

Dax had been the first person who had ever allowed me all of that.

I didn’t want to lose him. And yet I knew in my heart, I couldn’t let him pin me down either.

But Dax brushed his mouth over mine. “It means, pretty girl, you are the best thing that has ever happened to me. And every time I almost lose you, it only cements for me that you’re it.” He leaned in so our foreheads touched. “But I’ve always been free to live and make my own decisions. You haven’t. Until now. So just know I’m here. Always. We’re together. Forever. And nothing is going to change that. No matter what you do with Luca. Or with Lynx. Or with anyone else. We’re good. We’re solid.” He grinned. “We’re that ice.”