Page 11 of Diesel’s Desire

Her arms tighten around herself. “You still notice things you shouldn’t.”

“Never claimed to be smart.”

That gets something out of her—not quite a laugh, but close, a breath of air through her nose that might’ve been one in a different life, a life where she didn’t leave and I didn’t turn into somebody who needed a devil mask and a stolen van to feel something close to alive.

“Sasha’s happy,” Penny says, changing the subject so fast I almost stumble trying to follow it. “That’s good. She deserves that.”

“She does.”

“Jenson too, I guess.” She glances toward the lights, the noise, the party neither of us is currently part of. “Didn’t expect to like him. Kept waiting for a reason not to.”

I snort. “Find one?”

“Not yet.” Her eyes come back to me, steady now, her expression turning assessing. “Working on it, though. Habit of mine.”

“I remember.”

We stand there a while longer, close enough now that I can see her blue-gray eyes. They wrecked me at seventeen and still do at thirty-five. Neither of us moves. Neither of us says the thing that’s actually sitting in the air between us, while crickets call down by the creek.

Somewhere back at the party, somebody laughs loud enough to carry, and it breaks whatever spell’s been holding us both still out here in the dark.

Penny takes a step back first. Just one, but it’s enough to put air between us again, enough to remind me exactly where all the years and a badge and a criminal record I don’t officially have but everyone knows about anyway leave us standing.

“I should get back,” she says. “Morris is probably looking for me.”

“Probably.”

She doesn’t move yet, though. Not for a second longer than she needs to, like some part of her’s waiting to see if I’ll say something to stop her.

I don’t. I’ve got nothing to offer her that isn’t seventeen years too late and missing a ring I lost in a ditch two weeks ago, and I can’t offer her a damn thing I couldn’t offer before.

“Diesel,” she says, testing the name in her mouth like she’s trying it on for size, and it doesn’t sound right coming from her, doesn’t sound like it fits, and something in my chest cracks a little wider at hearing my club name in the voice that used to whisper my real one against my collarbone in the dark.

Then she turns back toward the lights. Bluebell watches from her pen as I stand there letting Penny go. Even the fucking horse looks disappointed in me.

8

PENNY

By the time I reach the lights, I still haven’t caught my breath. In, out, slow. Doesn’t work. Hasn’t worked since I turned around out there and found him watching me the way he used to watch me across a crowded gym at seventeen, like I was the only thing worth looking at in the whole county.

I don’t know why I followed him.

That’s a lie. I know exactly why I followed him, and it has everything to do with that girl’s hand curling into his shirt and the ugly little twist that put in my chest, sharp enough to steal my breath before I even understood what I was feeling. I’ve known for years how many women hang around that clubhouse, how easy and available they make themselves for men like him. I never let myself picture it beyond the fact of it. Never made myself wonder what they look like. Never tortured myself with whether they favor me, or whether he went looking for the exact opposite just to prove he could.

Tonight I know. Blonde. A rounder face. Like mine was when I was a teenager. Light-colored eyes.

And I hate how much it mattered.

The conversation we just had accomplished exactly nothing except make it painfully, humiliatingly clear that I am not, in fact, over Evan Cole. I’ve built a life without him. That ought to count for more than one look across a wedding reception.

I press two fingers to my sternum, the way he did earlier, without meaning to, and then drop my hand fast when I catch myself doing it.

Get it together, Penny.

I nearly walk straight into Sasha coming around the corner of the cake table, both of us laughing at the near-collision before either of us says a word. Up close, I see her cheeks are still flushed from crying, from dancing, from being twenty years old and freshly married to a man who looks at her like he can’t believe his luck.

“Officer Carpenter.” She says it like a joke between us, a little formal flourish, and grins.