CHAPTER 1
SHELBY
Every morning,I tell myself not to look at the door.
Every morning at seven-fifteen, I look.
Three weeks, and the biker hasn’t missed a single day.
He leaves twenty dollars on a four-dollar coffee, and he’s never said anything to me.
The patch on his leather vest has a crown and a skull. I should be afraid of a man who wears death on his back.
I’m not.
And that’s the part that keeps me up at night.
The bell above the door rings.
I’m already reaching for the coffee pot before I turn around. Black, no sugar, booth by the window. I have the mug down and poured before he sits.
His blue eyes follow my hand the whole way.
Not my chest, not my ass, not the strip of stomach my t-shirt rides up to show when I reach for the syrup. My hand, pouring four-dollar coffee in a diner that smells like bacon grease.
No thank you. No good morning. He picks up the mug, drinks, and watches me.
And I can’t get past that he doesn’t pretend he’s not looking. He holds my gaze until I’m the one who turns away.
I always turn away.
Tiffany bumps my hip with hers on her way past. “Your boyfriend is really hot.”
“He’s not my boyfriend.”
She grabs the ketchup bottles and heads for the back. “He’s the Prez of the Hellborn Kings. So, if he’s not your boyfriend, he’s your problem.” She shuffles through the kitchen door. “Either way, good luck with that.”
I don’t tell her that in my experience, boyfriend and problem have always been the same word.
The breakfast rush fills the counter, and I lose myself in it. Refills. Orders. The fryer sizzles behind the kitchen window.
I stay busy. My feet keep moving. This is the version of myself I came to Ash Valley to build—a girl with a job and a routine and nobody waiting at home to ask where she’s been.
Three weeks of freedom. Eighteen years in the system as a foster child, six years with Kyle, and then one move to a town I picked because the name sounded like it had already burned down and had nothing left to lose.
I fit right in.
By nine, the rush clears.
And he’s there. My silent biker. His mug is empty, and those blue eyes are pinned to whatever is outside the window in the hot Arizona sun.
He’s in his early thirties. The t-shirt under his leather vest fits like a second skin—biceps straining the sleeves and shoulders broad enough to block the booth behind him. He’s muscular and big, the kind of big that makes the booth look small and the coffee mug look like a toy in his hand.
The diner is almost empty now. Two truckers sit at the counter nursing their third cups of coffee. Tiffany is in the back, restocking.
It’s him and me.
I grab the pot and cross the floor. He slides his mug forward without looking up, and his fingers brush mine. Skin against skin for half a second, his knuckles against the inside of my wrist.