Page 19 of Crash’s Secret

He looks at me a beat too long, half a question loading in his face.

I smile to placate him, let him know I’m okay. But I am not okay.

He kicks the stand up and fires the engine, and the noise saves us from anything else.

The ride down the mountain takes twenty minutes. I do it with my hands resting on his hips. Light. Polite. He doesn’t reach back this time to pull my arms around his waist.

I hold on exactly as much as the ride requires, and not one bit more.

CHAPTER 7

CRASH

As soon as we pull up to the clubhouse, Cassidy is off the bike.

“Goodnight, Crash,” she says over her shoulder, walking away from me.

That’s all I get. Then the clubhouse door swings shut behind her.

I sit in the lot, wondering what the fuck just happened.

Two hours ago, that woman told me she’s always cared about me. She even used the word love. And now she will barely look at me, after what just happened? Maybe she’s embarrassed, or she regrets fucking me.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

I go up to my room and lie on the bed with my boots on. The ceiling fan turns its slow circles.

Earlier this week, I was wracked with guilt for jerking off in the shower, imagining fucking her. Tonight I did the actual thing. And it didn’t feel like betrayal. It felt right.

So I think about the night again, hunting for what went wrong.

The ridge. Her telling me she picked California to get away from me. Me telling her about my mother—a story I have never told anyone, not even Saber. Her climbing onto the seat facing me. The kiss. The sex. All of it.

I even put my cut on her without thinking twice about it. She knows what that means, more so than most women do.

I can’t find it. Whatever I did to make her angry, I don’t know what it is.

Everything I told her on that ridge was true. Every word. The women who come through my bar see a patch and a grin and a good time. Sure, some of them want more, but I never let them believe I’ll make them my Old Lady.

Cassidy is the woman who sees more than the VP title, the money, and the allure of club life.

But it’s more than that, and I might as well admit it to myself.

She’s exactly who I want. Not close. Exact. Gorgeous at a level that I don’t deserve. Kind in the bones, not for show. Loyal. Smart. She’s got dreams and the spine to chase them. And she doesn’t need my life explained, or softened, or apologized for, because she was raised in it.

My brothers are my family. They’re hers, too.

I could go down the list of every woman I’ve ever known and not build half of her.

And she’s so close, behind a door she shut on me, and I don’t know what I did. But I know I’m not lying on this bed until morning, letting her shut me out.

I’m out the door and into the hallway before I have time to talk myself out of it.

Her knob turns. The door is unlocked.

I shove the door open. “You don’t lock your door? In a clubhouse full of⁠—”

I stop.