Page 12

They left, and Havoc stood in my doorway and watched the Charger all the way down Main.

When he turned around, he was himself again. Well, almost.

“You okay?”

“Yes.”

It was a lie. My heart was slamming against my chest. He’d scared me worse than the driver had, and under the fear I was so turned on I had to hold on to the register.

Dinner sat on his stove that night and went cold.

It was late. I’d showered and put his T-shirt on, and he still hadn’t come in. The light was on in the shop out back. I walked across the yard barefoot.

He wasn’t working. He stood at his bench with his back to the bike and an open bottle of beer in his hand.

“Thought you’d be in bed by now,” he said.

“Is she right about you?”

That turned his head. “What about me?”

“You’ll sit on my dryer till this is over, and then you’ll go back to acting like I’m not in the room.” My voice shook, and I let it. “I’ve had a week of it, Havoc. You look at me like you want to eat me alive, and then you walk off without doing anything about it. I can’t do another week. So tell me I’m imagining it. Go on.”

He put the bottle down.

“You’re not imagining it.”

That was all I needed to hear. I crossed the shop and kissed him.

I had to go up on my toes and pull his head down by the back of his neck. For one second he was stone. Then he made a sound deep in his chest and his arms came around me, and he kissed me back so hard my feet left the floor. His mouth was hot and rough. His stubble scraped my chin. He had one hand in my wet hair and the other spread across my back, holding me against him, and I could feel how hard he was through his jeans.

Then he caught my wrists, set me back on my feet and held me off.

He was breathing like he’d run a mile.

“I can’t.”

It was the worst moment of my grown life. I stood in his shop in his shirt with my mouth still wet, and I wanted the floor to open.

“Okay,” I said. “Okay. I’m sorry. I just thought…” Then he cut me off mid-sentence.

“Nine years ago I gave my sister my word I’d never touch you.”

I stopped trying to pull my wrists free.

“What?”

“You were nineteen. Brynn caught me looking at you at a cookout.” His voice was hoarse. “She made me swear. I could have anybody but you, her best friend. She didn’t want to lose you if we didn’t work out.”

“That’s why you sewed your own patches on with fishing line, to avoid coming to me like the rest of the club does?”

“Yeah. I’ve wanted you for nine years. Every damn day of those nine years.”

It took me a second to breathe. All that time I’d stood behind my counter thinking he couldn’t stand to be near me, and actually, he’d been keeping a promise. My best friend had asked him for it, and she’d never said a word to me.

“Well, I didn’t promise her a damn thing,” I said.

His eyes went dark.