Page 22 of My Protective Biker

I text back. Yeah. Tell her I'm fine. Home when she's ready.

His response is immediate. You good?

I look at the bathroom door, still closed, the shower still running.

Ask me in an hour.

He doesn't respond to that, which means he knows exactly what I'm talking about.

I set the phone down and stare at Carina's coffee going cold on the table.

Think about the way she looked at me last night when she was treating the wound. Focused and calm and entirely present. Think about the way she kissed me on my bathroom floor, desperate and hungry and real. Think about waking up with her in my bed and how right it felt to have her there.

Think about the fact that I'm forty-two years old and I've spent the last twenty years being exactly what everyone else needed and I'm just now realizing I'm allowed to need something too.

The shower shuts off.

I sit up straighter despite the pull in my shoulder. Hear the silence from the bathroom, then small sounds. Movement. The cabinet opening and closing. Her getting dressed maybe, or drying her hair, or standing there staring at herself in the mirror trying to figure out what to do.

I wait.

The coffee in front of me is completely cold now.

I don't pour it out. Just leave it there like maybe she'll still want it, like maybe she'll come out of that bathroom and sit across from me and tell me she's staying.

More silence from the bathroom. The house is so quiet I can hear my own breathing.

I think about what I'll do if she says no. Respect her choice, like I told her I would. Not make it harder. Let her go back to her clinic, to her rental house and her life that doesn't include gunshot wounds at four in the morning.

And then I think about what I'll do if she says yes.

Build something real with her. Bring her to the clubhouse tonight and claim her in front of the club. Integrate her into my life and Zoe's life and stop being alone. Figure out if twenty years of isolation can end, if I can actually let someone in after being closed off for this long.

I want to find out. That's what I keep coming back to.

I want her to choose this. Choose me. Choose the danger and the violence and the complications because underneath all of that is something real, something worth keeping.

But wanting it doesn't mean I get it.

The bathroom door is still closed. I check the time. Nine o'clock.

She's been in there for fifteen minutes and I have no idea what that means. No idea if she's crying or thinking or trying to figure out how to tell me this is too much.

All I can do is sit here and wait and hope that three days is enough time to build something worth the risk.

Hope that when she walks out of that bathroom, she looks at me and says yes.

I stare at the closed door and wait to find out which version of the future I'm getting.

Chapter 7 — Carina

I stand under the hot water with my hands braced against the tile and try to make sense of what I'm feeling.

The steam fills the small bathroom and the heat soaks into my muscles and I'm going over the last twelve hours in my head.

Tate's call at three-thirty in the morning, my hands shaking as I grabbed my medical bag.

The drive here with my heart beating so hard I could feel it in my throat. Walking into Roan's living room and seeing him on the couch with blood soaking through the bandaging on his shoulder.