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Ulitza, who’d been in his arms, faced fully away from me, still sniffling, finally turned to study me.
I felt my heart melt.
“I don’t feel like I know you well enough to ask this, but is her mom around here? Does she work for the circus, too?” I asked.
“She did,” Simi’s voice chimed in. “And Kristoff is too nice to tell anyone that she’s a twat and left about six months after Itza was born because she couldn’t hack being a mom and working in a circus. Now she’s moved to our competition, Worth Circus Brothers, and does the trapeze there.”
Kristoff sighed. “She’s not our favorite person. Can you tell?”
“I can tell,” I drawled. “I’m sorry to hear that, man. My mom did much the same, though I was a lot older at the time, but it didn’t make it any easier on my dad.”
Just as I said that, I turned and took Simi in completely.
Her leather pants were tight. So fuckin’ tight that I wanted to peel her right back out of them.
The t-shirt from earlier was tied at the waist, and her top button was undone, revealing the smooth skin of her belly.
The finishing touch was the cutest biker boots I’d ever seen.
My mouth instantly watered.
“Um.” I paused when I finally caught up to my brain. “Wow.”
Her mouth kicked up. “I was about to ask if you liked my biker attire. I guess I don’t need to do that now.”
“No.” Kristoff laughed as he walked to his truck. “You don’t.”
No, she definitely didn’t.
“All right, children!” Keene called to his sisters. “Shitter’s empty. Who else needs it?”
There were two sisters that raced toward it, Tony and Crim.
Crim got there first and slammed the door in Tony’s face.
Tony stomped her foot like a child would who didn’t get their way.
I turned back to my bike and mounted it. “You’re good, right?”
Simi walked up to the side of my bike and stared at it, her eyes searching.
“Here,” I said, pushing her pegs down. “Keep your feet on either side, right on these. If you get tired, you can lean back into the seat pad, but not much is really gonna help. I hate to say this, but you’ll probably be uncomfortable since this is your first ride.”
As in... her very first.
I’d learned that morning that not only had she never been on a long trip on a motorcycle, she’d never been on a motorcycle, period. Short trip or long trip.
“I really, to the bottom of my heart, don’t care,” she told me as she swung over behind me. “I just…being with them…I’m not ready yet.”
I completely understood.
They were a lot for me, and I wasn’t family, nor did I have any memory loss.
I knew eventually, with time, it would be something that would get better. But damn. To have six people all up in your business ninety-nine percent of the time.
“How about I look into an RV or motorhome when we get to the next place we’re going that’s a bigger city? With the baby…” I left that hanging.
Her arms went to put the helmet on her head, but she stopped. “You’d buy an RV for me?”
It was looking like I’d do absolutely anything for her, even drive halfway across the country, quit my job and upend my life. Buying an RV would very well be the easiest thing I’d done in the last week.
“Absolutely,” I said.
She wrapped her arms around me, buried her face into my back, and gave me a squeeze. “Let’s go before they all decide to pull out and clog everything up.”
“Alrighty then,” I said as I started it up.
She lifted her face and said, “Don’t forget to wear your helmet, son.”
I’d had a rule since I was sixteen put in place for me by my dad. Wear a helmet.
If Val hadn’t had one, there was no guilt-tripping in the world that would make me take her.
It was something my dad had drilled into me from my first ride with him to the last day.
“Wear your helmet, son,” had been his way of saying, “I love you.”
“Son?” I teased loudly over the din of the motor.
“Well.” She giggled. “I’m not quite sure why that came out of my mouth the way it did. So I’m just gonna roll with it.”
I squeezed her thigh as I let off the clutch, and then we were off.
My nervousness at carrying her after such a bad accident was nothing compared to the way I felt with her wrapped around me as we hit the open road.
Riding had always been a freeing feeling for me.
Something that I experienced but sadly didn’t get anywhere near as much as I liked.
I’d even contemplated joining one of my buddy’s motorcycle clubs right after I’d gotten out of the military, but something had held me back.
It wasn’t six months later that we found out that my dad was well on his way to dying, and staying with him was something that I’d needed to do.
