Page 11 of Roadrunner

“You know what’s insane? This state’s full of guys carrying who shouldn’t be, and sooner or later they’ll get caught or get killed, but in between, they do a lot of damage to people who never did anything wrong. I’d rather carry every day and never need it than have a time come that I don’t and it matters. Right now, if someone tried something in this diner, they’d have to be a better shot than me.” He said it without much weight to it. “I haven’t met many who are.”

I wasn’t scared of him carrying a gun. I wasn’t at ease with it either. It was just new to me, and I didn’t have much besides theory to go on.

“Say some guy at the counter starts something,” I said. “Gets into it with the cook over how much sauce is on his Reuben. Cook won’t back down. Guy climbs over the counter and starts swinging. Do you pull it?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Doesn’t call for it.”

“So what do you do? Anything?”

“Go pull him off the cook.”

“What if he turns on you?”

He laughed. “Then we fight.”

“You wouldn’t—”

“No,” he said. “I wouldn’t pull it over a fistfight.”

“Then when?”

“When it’s the difference between me, or someone I love, living or dying.”

It was a clean enough answer. I ran the numbers on my own future, the way you’d total a receipt.

Gun-toting biker. Handsome. Drinks in moderation. Good kisser. Shows up when he says he will. Careful with money. Would put himself between me and something bad. Wants to wait until I’m twenty-one.

Or.

Some guy from campus in a popped collar, three drinks past charming, who’d forget my name by morning and wouldn’t notice if I walked out of a party alone at two a.m., let alone follow me to make sure I got home.

It wasn’t close.

“My twenty-first birthday, huh?” I asked.

He nodded. Once. “That’s the plan.”

I put my hand out across the table. “You’ve got a deal, Mister.”

CHAPTER SIX

Alex

Then

I was three chapters into reminding myself why a college education mattered when the windows of my third-story apartment started to rattle.

I didn’t get up to check. Feet on the coffee table, textbook open on my knees, I could pick Riley’s exhaust out of a crowd of engines from half a mile off by then.

His knock came a minute later. I closed the book and set it aside. “It’s unlocked.”

Riley filled the doorway, arms crossed, tattoos disappearing into his sleeves, glaring at me. “What did I tell you about leaving the door unlocked?”

“Everyone in this building knows we’re seeing each other,” I said. “Nobody wants to be the reason you’re pissed off. They’re scared of you. You’re intimidating.”