But Clyde had decided to take a job at the prison for the stable hours and health plan.
I couldn’t blame her.
Even if I was a little resentful to be stuck with Marshall, the asshole who’d just informed me that I had to get out because he had to go meet up with his buddy.
The thing was, there wasn’t even some company I could bitch to, some way to get him to be reliable when he said he could drive someone somewhere.
He was freelance.
And I was screwed.
Boiling with rage, I piled some of my stuff on my lap so I could scoot back out the door. I piled my stuff on the curb and reached inside to grab the rest.
“Oh, don’t trouble yourself,” I grumbled as I yanked my foldable wagon out of his backseat. “I got this,” I added, accidentally elbowing him in the back of the head as I finally got the wagon out of the backseat—since his trunk was full of an obnoxious subwoofer that would probably have made my teeth knock together for the whole drive when he turned on his shitty music and forced me to endure it for the whole drive, along with his chain-smoking.
He said nothing at all, just sped away from the curb as soon as I slammed the door.
Stranded on the side of the road, with tons of stuff to drag the miles back to my place, on the day with the worst heat we’d had so far this summer.
The rage got me through re-packing my cart, but by the time I was just heading out of the main area of town, that rage was quickly becoming something else entirely as the sun pelted down on me, making each step feel like a chore.
It was right then, at a low moment, frustration, exhaustion, and heat fatigue making stupid, insufferable tears swim in my vision, that I heard it.
The rumbling of a bike.
There was no reason to assume it was him. There were several guys in his little club. And there were other average people in town who just so happened to drive motorcycles as well.
But something in me tensed as the sound got closer, then rumbled slower as it got close. Then, finally, stopped at my side and cut off.
“Go away,” I grumbled, hearing a little hitch in my voice as I said it, keeping my head down because the last thing I needed was for him to see me being all ridiculous over an, objectively, small inconvenience.
“What’s going on?” Crow asked, a hint of concern clear in his voice. He had no right to be concerned, damn him. He barely knew me. We hadn’t seen each other in almost a month. Twenty-seven days, to be precise. Because, yes, apparently, I was counting them.
“Nothing,” I insisted.
“Been living on your own too long, baby. Your bullshitting skills aren’t up to par,” he told me, making my head snap over before I remembered why I was keeping my face averted. But one look at me had his brows drawing together. “Hey, what is it?” he asked, voice softer.
“Nothing. Just people being unreliable. Nothing. I’m going back home.”
“Morgaine,” he said, and the firmness in his voice had no right to be as appealing as it was.
“What?”
“What happened?”
“I was supposed to be going to a pottery studio to get some of my stuff fired. But the ride-share guy informed me after I got all my crap into the backseat of his car that he had to bail on me. So now I have to take all this back home and try again another day. With that same asshole, I imagine, since no one else does it in this town anymore.”
“I’ll take you,” he offered, and my stupid heart swelled a bit in my chest. Not just because it meant I got to stay on schedule, which meant I didn’t have to inconvenience the studio owner, or my clients who were waiting on their pieces. But because he would offer. Even after I left him with a raging hard-on and no relief the last time he’d seen me.
“No.”
“I’m just gonna go trade the bike in for the SUV. I’ll be five minutes.”
“I said no,” I insisted. But even I had to admit that my objection was pretty weak.
Besides, it was too late. He was already turning over the bike and driving off back to his clubhouse.
I waited until he was out of sight to start walking again.
Objectively, I knew he was not the kind of guy to take no for an answer with this sort of thing. But I also did not want to be the kind of woman who waited at the side of the road for a guy to come rescue her.
Stubborn?
Yes.
But I never claimed to be anything else.
It was less than five minutes later that I heard the SUV coming up beside me.