~oOo~
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After they placed theirorder, Siena sent Geneva off to find a table in the little seating area while she waited for their drinks. She smiled, waiting to see how their names would show up on their cups. Siena had ended up with everything from Sarah to Santa; Geneva was usually Eva but every now and then got something totally weird. Once, the barista had written ‘GENERATOR’ on Geneva’s hot white chocolate.
This time, both names were correct. That was almost weirder than anything else.
When she carried Geneva’s iced chai latte and her Americano over, Siena saw that Geneva’s attention was focused on the front door. Out of the instinctual curiosity you felt when you noticed somebody else’s attention focused, she looked that way herself.
The new neighbor was pulling a cart from the row of them near the front door.
He was with another man, also big, dark-haired, and bearded, but the new guy looked white. They both wore black leather biker vests. Cuts, or kuttes, or however that was spelled.
She’d known new neighbor was a biker; the big black Harley he’d had on the trailer had made that crystal clear. But it appeared he was, in fact, abiker. Her stray thought about whether he was in the new MC in town, the Bulls, also seemed like an answered question.
When they both turned and headed into the store, she saw the same patch on their backs. Yep. The Brazen Bulls MC.
Finishing her walk to the table, Siena set their drinks down.
“Cooper’s here,” Geneva said as she took her first sip. Her tone was matter-of-fact, without any of the rawness it had carried most of the day.
“I saw. I guess it makes sense. You remember when we moved in—a Target or Walmart run is unavoidable.”
“I wish they’d gone to Walmart.”
“Yeah, me too. Do you want to bail on shopping for now?”
“I go back to school on Tuesday. Tomorrow I want to finish my orcs.”
“Okay, well, let’s take our time with our drinks. Probably he’s not going to want anything in the women’s clothes section, so we’ll be okay over there. We’ll just keep a lookout.” After another sip of her Americano, she added, “Though he does live next door, so avoiding him forever will be tricky.”
“I don’t want to avoid him forever. I’m just mad. He was mean, and it surprised me, because he was nice until you came out.” Her eyes flashed up to Siena’s. “I don’t want to fight about it again.”
“I don’t want to fight, either, Gen. No fighting. But I would like to talk about it, if you do.” At home, they’d both been too upset to talk in a way that got anything settled. Siena had lectured, and Geneva had sulked. Which was how they fought, really.
Geneva sighed in teenager and pushed her drink away. “You already told me I was dumb for going in his house.”
“Not dumb. Naïve.”
Now she eye-rolled in teenager. Geneva seemed to have gotten in touch with her typical-teen side today. “Naïve is just a polite way to say dumb.”
Siena laughed. “Okay, maybe. But it wasn’tprudentto go into a house of a man you don’t know.”
“He. Was. Nice. Until you came and yelled at him, and then he was mean.”
Taking a long sip of her coffee, Siena used the time to compose her response. “I’m sorry I came in there so hot. Like I said earlier, a whole lot of terrible scenarios were scrambling my brain, and I was worried.” Geneva opened her mouth to respond to that, but Siena held up her hand. “But I came in too hot. Now I need you to think about those scenarios, and why it wasn’t unreasonable for me to be worried.”
“Because you think he’s a rapist or something.”
“No. Because neither you or Iknowwhat he is.” Well, now they knew he was an outlaw biker. Siena was neither a snoot nor a prude, and, beyond a longstanding crush on Elliot Stabler, she wasn’t a huge lover of cops, but ‘outlaw biker’ probably belonged in the con column.
Also: it had just occurred to Siena that she was going to have to give The Talk to her kid sister while sitting in a Target Starbucks. Not the birds-and-bees talk; that had happened long ago. The Big Talk.
Shit.
Well, no point in dodging it; today she had an object lesson that had not resulted in Geneva physically hurt, so it was the perfect time, if not the perfect location.
“You have to be safe, Gennie—Geneva. Unfortunately, for women, that means assuming the worst about men until you know differently.”