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CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Finn
After dinner, Lexy got another call from her sister, moving outside to talk to her as I cleaned up the baking ingredients, and put on the coffee as I waited for the cookies to finish in the oven.
I reached up for mugs, and my gaze found her watching me through the window.
Caught, she looked a little flushed, but offered me a shy smile before looking away.
And, fuck, I didn’t have a name for that feeling that moved through me then. Like a thawing. Like light was breaking through a long, cold darkness. Like spring after an endless winter.
Whatever it was, I wanted more of it.
I had a sneaking suspicion that to get more of it, I would need to keep getting more of her.
Luckily enough, despite her more antisocial ways, she seemed perfectly content right where she was. With me.
I hadn’t seen any withdrawal from her, any sign that she was uncomfortable, that she needed space.
And I’d been looking.
Maybe she, like me, just felt the rightness of this. The ease. The potential for something really fucking good.
She was making her way back inside as I pulled the chocolate chip cookies out, plump and just barely brown around the edges. My mom taught me to take them out as soon as there was a hint of gold around the edges if I wanted them to stay chewy as they cooled.
“Oh, God. That smells stupidly good,” she said, coming up under my arm to lean over the stove and take a big sniff of them.
“No, let them cool,” I said, slapping her hand out of the way.
“Okay, Mom,” she grumbled, shooting me small eyes.
“They will fall apart if they don’t get a chance to cool for a minute,” I told her as I passed her a mug of coffee.
My phone beeped on the counter, and I reached for it absentmindedly.
“Damn,” I grumbled, looking at the text.
“What’s the matter?” she asked, watching me.
“I have to go to the club,” I told her. “My cousins got in earlier than expected.”
“Cousins?”
“Club cousins. Rune and Croft, they’re twins. We thought we had a few weeks still, but they came back early. They’re on their way to the club, and we gotta give them a big welcome home kinda thing,” I said.
“Oh,” she said, trying not to look and sound disappointed. She failed miserably.
And there was that feeling again.
“Know they’re not your scene, but you wanna come party for a bit?” I asked.
“Really? But I’m not in the club.”
“My female cousins will be there. And a bunch of the club women.”
“Club women,” she repeated. “Is that the new PC way of saying clubwhores?” she asked.
“No, actually. We tend to call them ‘club girls’ now. But I meant more like… the girlfriends and wives of the active brothers,” I told her, trying not to sound as uncomfortable as I said those words, knowing how they were going to come across.
Like I was calling her my girlfriend.
“Okay,” she said, nodding for emphasis. “I mean, if you’d rather go alone, that’s okay. I can entertain myself here.”
“Another night of Forensic Files?” I teased.
“Don’t knock it,” she said, giving me small eyes.
“I’d rather have you with me,” I told her, watching as this hard-ass woman’s eyes went all gooey. Fuck if it wasn’t one of the best things I’d seen in a long time.
“Yeah?” she asked, and it was maybe the most vulnerable I’d seen her be. “Okay,” she went on, banking that vulnerability down. “Now, what does one wear to a biker party?” she asked. “Aside from a bikini,” she clarified.
“Anything casual. Everyone is gonna be different. Some of my cousins look for any chance to dress up. Others are allergic to dresses or skirts. Some might come from work, so will be all corporate-looking. It doesn’t matter what you wear.”
“Okay,” she said, giving me a smile. “Well, I’m gonna go get dressed then. But I expect all of those cookies to be there when I get back,” she warned, glancing at them longingly for a second.
“Made ‘em for you,” I reminded her.
“Right. Like I didn’t see you eating that raw batter,” she said, clucking her tongue at me as she passed on her way into the bathroom.
I passed a few minutes later, seeing makeup spread all over my counter as she raised a mascara wand to her eye.
That was another sight I could get used to.
Seeing her there in the bathroom, getting ready, looking completely fucking comfortable being there.
“Hey,” she said a moment later, coming in the bedroom doorway with a lash curler held to her other eye. “I was thinking,” she started, watching me pull my jeans up my legs.
“About?”
“Could you maybe… invite Perish?” she asked. “I mean, I know he is technically still on parole. But if he is going to prospect anyway, and you know, he’s been really helpful…”
