"I'll set the table," he offered, piling on the apology.
Maybe I should have taken the opportunity to have a serious talk, to do the lecture thing.
But I was just too tired.
I remembered to text Colson back when I was pulling up to work at ten-forty-five that evening.- Sorry. I hope I'm not waking you up. Totally forgot to text you. This is my number. It's Eva, by the way.-- Yeah, got that, babe. I don't go giving my number out all the time. Have a good night at work.Was that a little flutter across my chest?
It sure felt like it.
I forgot what it was like to talk to another adult. And have them talk back. And make sense. And care about how my shift went.
It was nice.
Maybe even too nice.
It was something a woman could get used to.
And that was dangerous.
Because nothing could happen between Colson and me.THREEColsonThings seemed to quiet down next door.
And I was a complete asshole for being disappointed.
Of course, I wanted Eva's life to be easier. I thought I had my hands full with Jelena. I couldn't imagine needing not only to care for a headstrong teen, but also an ailing mother who was slowly losing her grip on reality.
She deserved a break.
But it also meant I had no reason to run into her again.
Christ, I even caught myself trying to get up earlier than usual to casually drink my coffee on the porch the next day as though that was the most normal thing in the world while I had never done so before, hoping to catch sight of her on her way in from work.
Thank God I realized how pathetic I was being before she got there, and took my ass back inside.
We did, however, have a casual text conversation, that was choppy because of our mismatched schedules.
I just found myself craving more.
While I tried to convince myself that having more was not an option.
So, with Jelena off at school, I took myself over to the clubhouse, ready to jump into the investigation about the supply chain, inwardly hoping it was just some fluke, not something sinister like everyone else seemed to be figuring it was.
"'Sup, Colson?" Brooks greeted me, rising up from a crouch, hands soapy. I was pretty sure my bike had been cleaned more over the past week than it had in the rest of its life.
"Who's hanging around?" I asked, jerking my chin toward the clubhouse.
"Edison, Roan, Laz, Pagan, and West right now," he told me.
"And Sugar and Virgin," Tyler, the other non-related prospect, piped in, materializing out of nowhere.
I couldn't get a feel for the kid.
I couldn't tell you why.
I guess we just hadn't clicked.
He was around the same age as Brooks, but shorter, slighter, and so pale that he was almost translucent—his blue veins prominent in his neck and wrists, though he was steadily covering them up with bright blue and gray tattoos.
Reign had liked his history in some form of martial arts or another, that he came from a rough area, that he was just reckless enough to be a good one-percenter, but with enough respect not to drag the club's name down.
And everyone else seemed to treat him with the same sort of teasing disregard as the other prospects.
"No Reign?" I asked, surprised. Sure, over the years, he stepped back, stayed home with his woman more when he wasn't needed at the clubhouse, letting those under him pick up any slack.
But this was something he'd been pretty serious about at church.
"Nah. Haven't seen 'im," Tyler said, shrugging, putting my helmet on the seat of one of the other bikes so he could soak mine with the hose.
"I'm supposed to give you some shit about how it better be clean enough to eat off of," I told them, waving at the bike. "But I really don't give a shit," I added before moving off into the clubhouse.
"We already compiled the list Reign wanted," Sugar told me when I came in, waving toward the notebook on the coffee table. "We need him to look over it before we go taking road trips."
"So there's nothing to do?" I asked, feeling useless.
I felt somewhat useless in the club a lot of the time. I didn't do the long runs to do drops because I didn't want to leave Jelena. And Reign didn't ask for that very reason. I pulled guard shifts on nights when Jelly had a sleepover with her aunt or uncle or, more and more often lately, one of her friends. But I wasn't there every single week like some of the other guys were.
It was hard not to feel inferior at times, not to feel guilty for taking the same share that everyone else took even though I clearly did less work. I had a lot of pride. And I believed in hard work.