Page 4 of Fallen Flame

“There it is,” Thorn smirked.

“There what is?” I asked.

“You laughed.”

“I did not.”

“You absolutely did.”

I hid my smile behind my coffee mug.

The second she’d stepped toward me in the hallway, my brain had stopped working. She’d been close enough that I could smell the vanilla from the Dairy Bar lingering in her hair. Her hand had rested against my chest for all of two seconds. Two seconds.

That was all it’d taken for my pulse to decide it wanted absolutely nothing to do with common sense.

Then she’d smiled. That damn smile.

Bright.

Playful.

Completely unaware of what it did to me.

Walking away had taken every ounce of self-control I had. Not because I wasn’t attracted to her, but because I was. More than I wanted to admit.

Which was exactly why I couldn’t blur the lines. She’d been through enough already, and the club had given her a room to protect her, not for me to fall into her bed.

Dad had looked me straight in the eye after Wrecker had told me she was my responsibility. “Make sure she’s okay.”

That wasn’t a suggestion. It was a responsibility. I wasn’t about to complicate that because my hormones decided to wake up.

“You’ve got that look,” Arlo said.

“What look?”

“The one where you’re thinking too much.”

“I don’t overthink.”

Both of them laughed.

Thorn had to set the glass down because he was shaking his head. “You don’t overthink?” he repeated.

“No. I just like to know how things are going to go, so I need to think about them.” It made perfect sense.

Arlo blinked two times and shook his head. “Case closed.”

I frowned into my coffee.

Morning sunlight crept through the clubhouse windows, stretching across the hardwood floor.

Someone down the hall flushed a toilet. A door opened and closed. The clubhouse was slowly waking up.

Arlo drummed his fingers against his mug. “So...”

I groaned. “There’s another thing you need to bug me about?”

“There is.”