Her eyes shine wet. Her mouth wobbles. She pulls it together.
“And I’m going to take care of you,” she says.
Those words are true. She’s already saved my life.
People have leaned on me my whole life. Not one of them ever offered to hold up the other end.
I run my thumb along her cheekbone. Her skin’s impossibly soft against my calluses.
There’s a thing rising up my throat that I’ve never thought possible. I don’t try to choke it down. “Eden. I love you.”
I’ve never said it. Not to a living soul.
The second it’s out, the strangest thing happens—nothing caves in. The sky stays put. She’s still here. Turns out the words don’t cost what I always figured they would. Turns out they pay.
She doesn’t wait to respond.
“I love you too, Viper.”
I bend down and kiss her right there in the dirt and the heat, where the whole club can see. She comes up on her toes, fingers hooking into my shirt, and she’s smiling against my mouth.
A whistle cuts across the gravel.
“Took the man thirty-two years to put that many sentences together,” Joker calls from the porch, “and he spends every one of them on a preacher and a girl. I’m gutted.”
“Shut up, Joker,” I say against Eden’s mouth.
She’s laughing when I kiss her again. Her happiness moves through her and into me where we’re pressed together, and I hold her a little tighter, so I don’t lose any of it.
I never wanted anything for myself. Wanting is how you hand somebody a thing to take away.
I want this one.
I’m keeping her.
CHAPTER 8
EDEN
Viper’s biketears up the county road, and I ride pressed against his back, hands locked under his cut.
A week of this and my body speaks the language now. Lean when he leans. Hold when he brakes. Trust him with the rest. At the stop sign, his gloved hand drops to my knee and squeezes once before we roll on.
A week at the clubhouse, and the strangest part is how fast it quit being strange. My toothbrush in his cup. My textbooks are stacked on his dresser beside a knife I always glance at. A matte-black helmet, my size exactly, appeared on the dresser my second morning and has never once been discussed.
The men at the club, Viper’s brothers, treat me as if I belong. And today, I’m meeting other Old Ladies.
Viper says they’ll love me. I can’t help but be nervous.
Saber’s place is a thirty-acre ranch east of Ash Valley, a mesquite tree leaning over the yard, and a dozen bikes lined along the fence. Nose-out, every one of them.
Even at a barbecue, they park for leaving fast.
Viper backs us in at the end of the row and kills the engine. I pull the helmet off and shake my hair loose. He doesn’t look away once, like it’s a show he paid for.
“The one on Cholla Road has a porch,” I say, handing him the helmet, talking about a property we plan to visit this week.
The realtor’s printout is folded in my pants pocket—three listings circled in blue pen.