Page 8 of Diesel’s Desire

She hasn’t seen me yet—too busy saying something to Morris’s wife, laughing at whatever it is, easy and light in a way that makes my chest hurt worse than the silence would have—but then her gaze drifts, scanning the crowd the way a cop’s does even off duty, cataloguing exits and faces without meaning to.

And she finds me.

I feel the exact second her eyes land on mine across thirty feet of string lights and folding chairs and every single person standing between us. Something happens to her face. She doesn’t gasp, doesn’t stumble, doesn’t do any of the dramatic shit I might’ve imagined if I’d let myself imagine this moment more than once or twice at three in the morning with a bottle for company. She just goes pale. Color draining out from under whatever makeup she’s wearing, fast enough that even from here I can see it happen.

But she doesn’t look away.

Doesn’t duck behind Morris, doesn’t find something urgent to say to his wife, doesn’t do a single thing to break that line between us though I’m half expecting her to run.

Brave girl.

My girl, some stupid, seventeen-year-old part of me thinks, before the rest of me catches up and shuts that down hard.

She’s not mine. Hasn’t been since she packed that car and left. She’s a cop now. I’m still everything she couldn’t live with. I know all of that, and it doesn’t stop me wanting to walk straight across the lot to her.

Gunner says something beside me. I don’t hear a word of it.

Across the lot, Penny swallows, throat working, and finally—finally—looks away first, turning toward Morris as somebody steps between us.

I bring the beer to my mouth and realize my hand’s shaking bad enough that the bottle rattles against my teeth.

“Diesel.” Ace, quieter now, closer. “You want me to walk you somewhere else for a minute?”

“I’m fine.”

“You look like you just saw a ghost.”

I almost laugh at that, except there’s nothing funny about it. I’ve faced armed men with a steadier hand than this.

“Worse,” I say. “I saw exactly what I remember.”

6

PENNY

Someone hands me a flute of champagne before I’ve even found a place to stand, and I drink half of it in one go, which is not what a responsible adult does at a wedding that hasn’t even properly started yet. My heart’s doing something ridiculous in my chest, apparently auditioning for a hummingbird.

Evan.

I used to think the boy I dated in high school was the prettiest thing I’d ever laid eyes on, all lanky arms and a smile that hadn’t figured out yet how dangerous it was. The man standing across that lot is not that boy. Dark hair, still. Stubble, still, though there’s silver salting through it now that wasn’t there before. Those same blue eyes, fixed on me from thirty feet away. More ink than I remember, climbing up out of his collar, wrapping around his knuckles where his hand grips that beer bottle like he means to strangle it.

He’s broader. Harder. His shirt pulls tight across his shoulders, and I hate—hate—that my body doesn’t seem to have gotten the memo about who he is now. About the badge that’s usually on my hip and the fact that everything about him is a felony waiting to happen.

I finish the champagne. Grab another.

This is going to be a very long night.

The chairs fill in fast once Ruth starts herding people with the authority of someone who’s done this before, and I end up two rows back on the aisle, close enough to see everything, which might be a mistake, because everything includes Evan standing up front beside Jenson in a black button-up that fits him like it was sewn on, one hand resting easy at his side, the other lifting toward his chest before he catches himself.

I file that away. Cop habit. Notice everything, question nothing out loud.

The music starts—something acoustic, guitar and a low hum of strings I don’t recognize—and the first ones down the aisle are kids, three of them, maybe four to eight years old, scattering flower petals with a chaotic enthusiasm that makes half the crowd laugh. One little girl in a tiny leather vest throws her whole handful at once and then has to be steered by an older kid to keep walking.

Carol comes next, dabbing at her eyes already even though the bride hasn’t shown yet. Ruth follows a step behind her, steadier, though her chin wobbles when she passes the front row.

Then a younger woman I don’t know, brunette, pretty in a soft kind of way, glancing sideways as she walks, at a man seated on the other side of the aisle with pin-straight black hair.

And then Sasha.