“Are you okay?” I turned to find Lance standing in the doorway. I was by the open window, breathing deeply despite the chill outside.
“Yeah, I’m fine.” I didn’t turn around. I didn’t want him to see the look on my face.
“What’s wrong with you? I can tell there’s something wrong. What is it?” He touched my shoulder, but I stubbornly kept my face turned away.
“Nothing, I’m telling you. I don’t know. I felt a little sick to my stomach for a minute there. I thought I’d get some air, to see if it passed.”
“Has it?”
No. “Yeah, a little.”
“Are you worried about what’s gonna happen?”
“Why should I worry? You’re in charge. You’ve got it all figured out, right?” I tried to make my voice light. Why did I care so darned much? Why was it bothering me so much?
“Yeah, I do. I wish you believed in me.”
I turned around. “It’s not that. Don’t think it’s that, please.” I couldn’t help the tears that sprang to my eyes when I looked at him. My chin trembled.
“What is it, then?”
“I’ve never been through anything like this before.” I left it at that. It was enough for him to know I was worried about everything happening around us—me, spending time with a motorcycle club. Wanting Gigi to be safe. Wanting to get back to everything I left behind, my life, my job. He didn’t need to know I was worried about the way I worried over him. I couldn’t tell him how I questioned my feelings. Why did I care so much? That was what bothered me the most.
He seemed to accept my pathetic excuse, though. “I know. It’s tough when you first find out there’s a world you didn’t know about. I felt that way when I first joined the club.” He sat on his desk, facing the window. I turned, leaning against the wall.
“When did you join?”
“I was still a teenager, still in high school. Miserable, of course. I needed something else in my life. I was on my own, working nights, trying to get through school so I could graduate.”
“No more foster care?”
“Nah, I ran. They never found me. I don’t think they looked too hard—lots of kids drop outta the system without being found again.” He shrugged, and I wondered about all those kids. How many of them ended up like he did? How many ended up like Rae, or the junkies Lance told me about in the drug den? When looked at that way, Lance hadn’t turned out so badly.
“When I first started showing up here, looking for someplace to belong, it was so exciting. They were a family. I needed a family. And they are my family—I would do anything for them, they would do anything for me. I would probably be dead if it weren’t for them.”
“Don’t say that.”
“It’s true. I couldn’t keep going to school and working at the same time. I bounced from one friend’s house to another, sleeping on their parents’ couches. I didn’t have a home of my own, or any security. I could’ve ended up on the streets. I didn’t because the club took me in. Look at me now. President of the club with enough money to retire on, and I’m only thirty years old.”
He gave me a small smile. “But it was hard, at first,” he continued. “I didn’t know how bad life could get. I thought I knew—with a foster family like mine, a mother like mine, I thought I knew the worst. No. It gets worse than that, even. I don’t wanna talk about it. But let’s just say I don’t think there’s anything that could shock me anymore.”
I reached out to him. His words should have repulsed me. Instead, they made me want to comfort him. I wanted to hold him and make him forget all the bad things he’d ever seen. I wanted to make life good for him. I wanted to be the good thing he always seemed to miss out on.
He took my hands, pulling me to him. Our faces were very close. “I always wanted a woman like you in my life,” he admitted. “I wanted somebody who didn’t know the things I know, who had something going on for themselves. You’re the closest thing I ever came to having that. Thank you for today.”
“You don’t have to thank me,” I said, blushing.
“I do. You don’t know what you did for me.”
“I was there. I know what I did.” I grinned, and he chuckled.
“Not what I mean.”
“I know,” I whispered, running my hands up his arms until I linked them behind his neck. I had to be near him. He was like a magnet, attracting me. I pulled him closer, just close enough for our lips to brush against each other.