For the second day in a row, I pulled up outside Meyah’s house and turned off my engine, hooking my helmet onto the handlebars before I climbed off and onto the curb.
I’d thought about her a lot last night.
Things had changed.
I wasn’t sure when or even how things had suddenly become so different, but it was like there was a shift in the universe. Meyah made a choice, a strong and important one. It was the point she chose to have a voice and to speak it out loud. Every one of us faces that breaking point in life where we have to stop and say enough is enough. It’s a defining moment in our lives where we can choose to keep living the way we are or fight back—fight for something better, something we deserve, something that up until now we have let win.
And now she had, I wanted to encourage it. I didn’t want her to pull back into herself because the fire I saw in her eyes yesterday made me want to throw myself into the flames. It was spectacular and beautiful. She was proud and unashamed, and all I wanted to do was fuel that inside her.
For so long I’d fought the growing magnetism between us. Even trying to mute it with other girls, trying to tell myself that I had too many problems, that I’d only drag her down at the point of her life where she should be flying.
But honestly, I was fucking exhausted.
The more I thought about this fight I’d been through to find Romeo and Phee, I was becoming aware that I was wasting fucking time. I imagined how different things could have been if that drunk driver had just gone through that intersection three or four seconds later and hadn’t plowed through my mom and dad. But that’s not what happened, and in reality, it could happen to almost anyone at any time.
It’s something out of our control.
What I can control, though, is how I spend the time I have. For all I know, it could be minutes, hours, a few days, a couple of years. Who knew? I didn’t want to waste time anymore. I wanted to live every damn day, and I wanted to live it with the people who meant the most to me.
Just touching her yesterday had set me off like a fucking firecracker. The feel of her body, the noises she made, a simple brush of my skin against hers was enough to tell me I hadn’t imagined the chemistry that electrified the air between us, pulling us closer when she was nearby. I didn’t want to go the rest of my life without ever feeling that again.
So here I was, walking toward her front porch keeping a straight face when the front door slowly breezed open, and Meyah stood there with a devious smile and her eyebrow raised. “You leave something here?”
I scoffed. “Yeah, but she better go and put some jeans on if she intends on coming with me.”
She stood a little taller gasping far too dramatically and pointing to herself. “Moi?” The playfulness was both sexy and cute, but I didn’t have time, I just wanted to ride, and I wanted to ride with her. I think we could both do with the fresh air and open road.
“Do you wanna go for a ride?” I asked, rolling my eyes when she still didn’t move.
I could tell she was surprised, her eyes growing wide as she looked out past where I was standing at the bottom of the porch to where my bike sat glistening in the afternoon sun. She chewed her lip nervously before a smirk danced across her lips. “A ride, huh?”
I folded my arms across my chest shaking my head in amusement. “You know what I fucking mean, smart ass.”
She chewed her lip. “My mom would murder the both of us. I already had to listen to twenty minutes of ‘reasons I, in no way, shape, or form, would be dating a biker. Ever,’ last night after you left.”
“Come on,” I insisted, acting like I hadn’t even heard her, taking a few steps backward, indicating I might leave without her.
I could see her thinking it over, her eyes looking upward moving from one side to the other as she debated with herself. Her nose crinkled for a moment making her look like a little rabbit before giving way to an impish smile. “Well, I’ve punched a kid in the face and broken my mother’s most prized possession, so why not add biker bitch to the list of juvenile delinquency.”
I smirked. “That’s what I was hoping you’d say.”
Having her arms wrapped around me, and the roar of my Harley beneath us as we were flying down the open road, was like some crazy ass fucking dream I felt like I’d had a million times. Even with her face hidden and pressed against my back, I could still feel how broad her smile was, and the excited way she clutched to me tighter when I twisted the throttle and opened my baby up just a little more.
This was probably a horrible idea. I most likely should have never gone around to her house this afternoon. I should have just left it the hell alone and bugged Leo with fifty questions about how she was. But I didn’t do either. It was like fighting against a fucking magnet. I couldn’t resist the pull. I needed to see her more than my lungs required their next breath of air.
Meyah urgently tapped my stomach, and I instantly began shifting down gears until I was going slow enough to pull to the side of the road. When I finally made it to a stop, I looked over my shoulder to check that she was okay and found her smiling back at me, her eyes bright and sparkling.
“Can you go back to the bridge back there,” she called over the low rumble of the motor.
There was no fucking way I was going to say no to that face, responding with a sharp nod and checking the road before pulling a U-turn and heading back a couple of hundred feet to where there was a small bridge over a slow running river. Pulling my ride into a small gravel area just off to the side, I kicked the stand down and switched off the motor.
Meyah eagerly placed her hand on my shoulder and hefted herself off the back like she’d been doing it for fucking years. I guess she’d been around the club enough to see the old ladies climb on and off the back of their men’s bikes, that she’d studied the technique down to a tee.
I lifted my sunglass onto the top of my head and tugged my bandana down around my neck to free my mouth. I only ever carried one helmet with me—something that I might reconsider very soon—so I’d given it to Meyah and chosen to protect her first.
She placed the helmet on the back of my bike before rushing over to the edge of the gravel and looking over the edge which was covered in trees and brush down to the stream below. Climbing off my ride, not wanting to miss the excitement that was bubbling all around her, I followed behind her.
“When I was younger, I used to ride horses here,” she explained as her eyes roamed the obvious horse trail that ran alongside the river. “Sulphur Creek trails were like my favorite place to be. I had a heap of friends who I would come out here with every other weekend. Sometimes we’d even camp up at the trail entrance so we could get up early and ride all day.”