THREE
Reese
"How do I look?" I asked, turning in a circle for Knightley who just blew a couple bubbles in response. "Well, too bad. This is as good as it is going to get," I declared before I grabbed my bag, stuffing a book inside even though I promised myself I wouldn't take it out. Okay. So maybe I grabbed my e-reader too. What can I say, I like being prepared. In grabbing those two things though, I nearly locked myself out because I forgot to grab my keys. And my phone, well, I was pretty sure that was buried in my bed still like it had been all day.
Such was my life.
Books, in case of a social emergency were somehow more important than a way to call the police in an actual emergency. Heck, the most likely reason I would find myself in an actual emergency situation would likely be because I stepped into traffic without looking because I was too absorbed in some fictional argument or sex scene to remember to do such a thing.
But, yeah, I did what I promised myself I would do; I went to She's Bean Around. Even though every bit of me was saying a book, a cup of tea and super fuzzy pajamas sounded way better.
I was trying.
Why, I wasn't sure.
Maybe it just so I could tell my family when they asked me with those worried eyes of theirs, that I had, in fact, been out in the real world with the overrated real people that week. Or month. Or, let's face it, year.
The inside was packed, but not in the way that it was at seven-thirty in the morning when I usually dropped by before heading off to the library. This wasn't a line-out-the-door situation, people just getting their fix on their way to work. This was people just hanging out. Regulars constantly pestered Jazzy and Gala - and, yes, those are their real names, in case you were wondering, even though they totally sounded like they came out of some epic YA dystopia - to take over the empty place next door, to expand so there was more seating room. But they just didn't seem too inclined to do so. Maybe they liked the kinda hipster, indie vibe the place had with being so small, or maybe the idea of taking on more rent was intimidating. Who knew.
But anyway, yeah, it was busy.
When I walked in, there wasn't a single open space at a table as I made my way to the counter to the sounds of a song that seemed vaguely familiar, like maybe I had heard it on the radio at the grocery store or something at some point.
I got my large black coffee with a shot of blueberry and, just to experiment and step out of my humdrum comfort zone, a shot of white chocolate as well, and turned back around to see one open spot.
Next to a giant, really good looking dark-haired, gray-eyed, tattoo-covered biker. And, well, in my town, that meant one thing. A Henchmen.
So, alright, maybe I read some MC books. Maybe I drooled over monosyllabic, Neanderthalish, leather clad, ink-covered, curse-riddled bikers. It was all fun and non-threatening when it was pressed between the pages of a book. It was not quite the same thing to be face-to-face with bikers.
True, I knew Cash. He lived next to my mom, and had been nothing but sweet to her as well as me when I crossed his path. But this guy did not have that same laid-back, flirtatious, brotherly kinda charm that Cash did.
No. This guy was, well, intimidating. Granted, I was maybe a bit easy to intimidate, but still. He had a darkness that hung around him like a cloud. Most girls dug that. They were drawn in by the dangerous guys. Bad boys would never go out of style.
But, I really just preferred standing than sitting next to him.
Call it a personal preference.
I spent the next half hour or forty minutes mentally pep-talking myself into staying and not taking out my book. Even if I had no one to talk to, and I didn't want to stare at the guy on stage because that was creepy. Instead, I shot casual glances at his hands which seemed to strum the guitar almost absent-mindedly. Then at the guitar itself which was a neat cherry wood, somewhat dinged up in a loving way. And I listened too. His voice was actually kind of soothing, smooth and mellow, something you could listen to before bed to calm you down for sleep.
It was nice.
It might have been the only reason I was able to hang as long as I did.
So when the music stopped, and he thanked everyone for having him, I was about ready to dig through the giant purse I had to carry to accommodate the aforementioned books I brought along with me to find my car keys.
I had gone out.
That was the plan, right?
I didn't say that I had to talk to anyone.
I just needed to show my face, let the chips fall where they may.
They fell.
And I was done for the night.
And week.
And month.
And, heck, maybe even the whole year.
"Thank God you're here," a deep, smooth, very serious-sounding voice said at my side, making me jump, and almost spill my half-full coffee down my hand. The blueberry and white chocolate were alright, if a bit too sweet, which was making it take extra long to get through it.
My head whipped to the side to find none other than the guy who had been on stage standing beside me.
And now that I got a good look at him, yeah, I maybe should have let myself discreetly stare at him while he was otherwise engaged.
He was worth staring at.
Total eye-candy with his longish blond hair, his full blond beard, his light blue eyes that one might actually call the color of ocean glass seeing as they had the slightest hints of turquoise and seafoam green in them as well. He was tall. And I was tall, so that meant he was definitely around six-two, towering over me. I would say what his clothes looked like, except that my eyes couldn't seem to move any lower than his face.
Yes, he was that good-looking.
The kind of good-looking where you didn't want to look away in case you missed a second of it.
"What?" I heard myself kind of whisper hiss at him, my brows drawn together, wondering if maybe he was confusing me for someone else.
"Thank God you're here," he repeated, lips tipping up suddenly, his brilliant eyes dancing. "I don't think that wall could hold itself up without you."
Caught off-guard, a strange, choked laugh escaped me as a smile pulled at my lips.
That was a good line; I had to give him that.
And there were things that flashed into my head to respond with.
For example - Oh, you know, I'm like Atlas. Except instead of the world, I carry coffeeshop walls on my back lest they fall, and we have a hoard of caffeine-deprived zombies walking the streets.
But did I say any of the dozen or so clever, or at the very least coherent things that crossed my mind?
Nope.
Instead, I made some humiliating choking-on-my-own-spit sound accompanied by something like "Ah."
It was a really refined moment, for sure.
Luckily - or unluckily given my sudden inability to make my tongue and voice box work together in harmony - he was unbothered by my response, smiling more, and holding out his hand.
"I'm Cyrus."
Well, this part at least I knew how to maneuver. Introductions and goodbyes were easy. It was all that pesky unnecessary stuff in between that I sucked at.
My hand reached out to be taken in his, finding his skin warm and calloused, something that was oddly appealing, feeling those hardened patches against my much softer palm. His fingers curled in slightly, giving me a small shake.
"Reese, I'm," I supplied, idiotically. Remember what I said about being good at introductions? I apparently spoke too soon about that. "I'm Reese," I corrected, shaking my head, wondering why this couldn't be the precise moment that some alien spaceship came to Earth looking for human women to take up, and be stored in their pods? Was that too much to ask? Sure, maybe I'd be used as a sex slave to some blue alien dude, but, hey, I was pretty sure that'd be more enjoyable than doing the small-talk thing with some random hot guy.
"This is the part where I'm supposed to pull out some cheesy 'come here often' line. But A) that's cheesy. And B) you seemed to know Jazz and Gala, so it's a moot point. How about instead, I kick my buddy Sugar there out of his chair," he suggested, "and we can sit and talk."
His arm was raised, indicating a spot behind him, and my eyes followed to find... oh no.
The dark-haired, grey-eyed biker.
Fiddling with this man's guitar.
My eyes shot back to Cyrus, looking down past his lovely face for the first time to see, yep, black jeans, a white tee, and a Henchmen cut. I didn't even have to see the back to know it said Henchmen on it.
Okay then.
Great.
Wonderful.
I was chatting with an outlaw biker who - if local legend was to be believed, and it was - ran guns. Meaning, he sold illegal guns. For a living. Like you see on TV shows. Or, in my case, read about in books.
How does one extract themselves from such a sticky situation?
See, normally I didn't get into one like this.
Because, well, I had two big brothers. And those big brothers each used to run the local Third Street gang. Which meant that everyone around who was anybody in the criminal underbelly that was Navesink Bank, knew that my sister and I were off-limits. To date, to flirt with, to even talk to, unless the situation called for a friendly hello or an offer of assistance in a bad situation. I once had Reign, Mr. Tall Dark and Dangerous, the president of The Henchmen MC, pull over in the pouring rain to help me change my tire.
"Your fuckin' brother would skin my ass if I didn't stop and help," he said by way of accepting my apology when I gave it.
So, yeah, I never really found myself in a situation where I needed to tell a big, scary, gun-running biker guy that bad boys were only my forte fictionally. In real life, well, they didn't need to know about real life. You know, where I hadn't had a date in the better part of a year. And that I hadn't had sex in nearly twice as long.
The thing was, this guy, while big, was not scary.
But he's definitely a gun-runner, I reminded myself.
"Angel?" he prompted when I just stared at him. Like a freak.
"Yeah?"
"Well, that's what I wanted to hear," he declared, even though my 'yeah' was definitely more of a question than an acceptance of his offer. But before I could untie my tongue enough to tell him thanks but no thanks, his hand was reaching down, taking mine, sliding his fingers between, and pulling me along with him. And while he did this, he was swinging our joined hands. Like little kids.
"Who's this?" a deep voice asked, shocking me out of my thoughts about his seemingly charming, boyish nature. I looked over to see we were suddenly stopped beside the table with the biker I hadn't wanted to sit beside earlier.
"This is my friend," Cyrus supplied. "And she and I are going to sit here while you get lost," he declared, making my eyes go a bit big, shocked more than I maybe should have been by that level of rudeness.
But, I mean, they were bikers. And he said it lightly like maybe it was more 'bro code' than anything else.
"Oh, but maybe your friend would be interested in talking to both of us," the other guy suggested, giving me a smile that was absolutely perfectly cultivated for panty melting.
It wasn't exactly ineffective either.
What can I say, I had been starved for masculine attention for so long. This was all my own fault, of course. Bringing a book with you everywhere you went was pretty much a sign on the forehead that said 'eff off' or something. Also, I dunno. I had always had this thing. This invisible thing. As in, I seemed to kind of, well, be it. Maybe it had something to do with my big brothers making me off limits. Maybe, too, it had something to do with Kenzi commanding so much attention, leaving everyone else in her shadow.
But, truly, I think it was just me.
I was standoffish, shy, desperate to be unnoticed.
It was practically like I conjured it.
So men didn't chat me up.
They didn't rake their eyes up and down me like Cyrus' friend was doing.
They didn't invite me to sit with them.
Nothing.
So getting attention from two guys in the same night, at the same moment, was almost disorienting. My head felt like it was spinning.
"This is Suga," Cyrus said, dropping the end in imitation of the slight accent the man himself had. "Yes, as in 'how you get so fly.'"
"I don't know what that means," I admitted, brows drawing together.
To that, Sugar chuckled as he moved to stand, slapping a hand on the back of Cyrus' shoulder. "I think this one might be immune to your charms, Cy. But I'll leave you to fuck it up; then I will swoop in. Baby girl, it was nice to meet you."
With that, he was gone, moving to the counter to, presumably, flirt with Jazzy or Gala, both the kind of women who were receptive to such a thing, and were good at flirting right back.
It was admirable, really.
I was envious some days.
Cyrus' hand gave mine a squeeze before releasing it so he could sit down, making me quickly move to do the same so I wasn't standing there like a weirdo.
I put my coffee on the table, then moved to put my purse off the back of the chair, wincing a little when the long cross-body strap let the whole thing slam down on the floor, and make me maybe want to dig inside and check to make sure I hadn't messed up a cover or something.
I resisted the urge, and looked up to find Cyrus giving me a bemused smile. "Bricks?"
"Books," I corrected, grabbing my coffee between both hands, feeling completely inept to do this coffee chat thing.
"You a big reader?"
"I'm a librarian, so it's..."
"Get the fuck out of here," he said, smiling bigger.
"Don't," I said before I could stop myself.
"Don't what?"
Shoot.
Okay.
There was no way to back out of that one, was there?
"Pull that cheesy librarian line thing."
"You mean the sexy librarian thing?" he asked, and yep. It happened.
Darn it.
My face heated, and I knew I was a godawful shade of red right about then. Blushing, yeah, that was one of my things. My sister and brothers had always gotten a kick out of how embarrassment did it to me, and used it viciously against me as we grew up.
"Fuuuck, and she blushes too?" he asked, sitting back in his chair, clutching a hand to his heart. "It's just too much."
Pretty sure there was no way to actually respond to that, my gaze fell to my cup, seeing where Jazzy had scrawled my name all fancy on the side. I envied that. I had chicken scratch writing; my mind was always moving too fast for my hand to catch up.
Then, suddenly, the vibe around us seemed to shift, and I felt the table wobble slightly as Cyrus' arms crossed on it. Curious, my gaze went upward to see him watching me with those hypnotic eyes of his. The smile had fallen. His gaze was thoughtful.
"What?" I asked when I couldn't take it anymore.
His head shook a little. "I've known a lot of women," he started oddly.
"I don't doubt that," I blurted out unexpectedly. Geez. That sounded really suggestive too. What was wrong with me? "Sorry, that was..." I trailed off at the sound of his chuckle, though, finding the sound somehow moved through my skin and into my veins, flowing all through me in a way I wasn't sure I had ever felt before.
"No, that was honest," he said, brushing off my apology. "I have a sister. I have female friends. And I have women I date, women I fuck, women I try to date and fuck," he admitted, going on even as my cheeks must have been beet red all the way to my hairline.
Okay, so I wasn't some prude or some goody-goody.
I wasn't much for cursing, but that was just a habit that lasted from when I was a kid, and my mother telling me not to use those kinds of words. It just kind of... stuck.
That being said, my sister, mom, brothers, extended family, they all had vocabularies that would make a sailor blush.
And, well, I do like me a good smutty book. They even used the 'f' word quite frequently to talk about sex.
It never bothered me.
But sitting across a very small table looking at a very attractive man using that word, yeah, it was oddly arousing. And, well, the idea that any of that might be evident in my face was incredibly embarrassing.
"Okay," I murmured when he stopped there.
"Christ," he said, shaking his head at himself. At my shocking back at the almost violent sound of his voice, he sighed. "I don't like this, but you're not the kind of woman I can fuck."
Oh.
Ouch.
Okay, so I didn't exactly have some inflated opinion of myself. I understood that I wasn't the kind of woman a man saw and immediately thought of taking home. That just wasn't the look I had or the vibe I gave off.
But I had feelings. I had an ego as much as anyone else. And that sentence instantly bruised the hell out of it.
"No, don't," he said, looking crestfallen himself. "I didn't mean it like that, angel," he said. And, darn if that endearment didn't do something fluttery to my heart and, um, somewhere much lower. Why? I had no idea. But that was what happened. "I just meant... I'm, what would be a good word here?"
"A slut," Gala chimed in as she passed, not even pausing, just giving her two cents, as was her nature.
"She's not wrong," he admitted, not missing a beat. "I'm not a relationship guy, a settling down guy. I fuck around. I don't make promises."
"Ah, okay?" I said, unsure why he was even telling me that. To rub some salt, vinegar, and nail polish remover in the wound? He was a slut who liked to get a wide variety of women, but I simply wasn't one of those women? How heartless was he? Geez.
"The thing is, I know who I am. And the women I fuck around with know exactly what kind of man I am. And they're cool with it. You, honey, you wouldn't be cool with it. You're not the kind of woman a man fucks and fucks over and kicks to the fucking curb. That's not you. You're too fucking good for that."
Oh.
Well then.
This time, the fluttery sensation wasn't nearly as unwelcome.
"I mean, you don't even know me though," I supplied, almost a little offended that he would assume something about me, even if what he assumed was definitely spot-on.
"Reese, sweetheart, you blush like a goddamn schoolgirl when I mention fucking. You looked like you wanted to bolt when Sugar eye-fucked you. And you spent almost an hour in the back, being a complete wallflower, looking like you wanted to be anywhere but here. On top of that, you got a purse full of books, and a job that suggests you aren't out partying all the fucking time and getting laid. You're just not a fuck around girl. Tell me I'm wrong."
I took a breath, nodding slightly. "You're not wrong," I admitted.
"So, I'm going to stop flirting with you," he said, and there was no rational reason that my heart plummeted at that declaration. It was ridiculous. "You're too good to find yourself in, and then tossed out of, my bed. But," he said when I was sure I finally understood the term - though it was wholly inappropriate in this situation - the word 'crestfallen.' "That doesn't mean we can't be friends, right?"
"Friends?"
Friends?
With him?
An outlaw biker slash guitar player slash slut?
That certainly didn't seem like someone I would be friends with. Then again, I didn't exactly really, well, have any friends. So who was I to turn down someone who wanted to be that, right?
"Yeah, friends. I figure, you probably need a buffer in social situations. And, angel, I'm a great fucking buffer."
I didn't doubt that in the least.
"You don't even know me," I insisted.
"That would be the point in becoming friends, wouldn't it? Figure out what you're into, what music you like, all that shit."
All that shit.
"Um... why?" I asked, it being the most prominent question in my mind. What man just saw a woman, then decided to be friends with them? That was weird, right?
"Why do I want to be friends?" he clarified.
"Ah, yeah. Why do you want to be friends with me?"
"Why not?"
"That's not an answer."
He chuckled at that, leaning back in his chair. "I think there must be something really interesting about you. I want to know what that is. Even if I can't fuck you. Is that so weird?"
"Um, kind of, yeah," I acknowledged, making those eyes of his light up again.
"How about this? We have a trial friendship-date."
What the hell was a friendship-date?
"Ah, what?"
"You and me. We pick a day and a place. We go there. We do something. We talk. We decide if we can stand one another. If we can't, no big deal. If we can, we pick another time and place and do another thing. You know... like friends do."
At this point, I was pretty sure the night simply could not get any weirder. But that being said, what was there to lose, right? It wouldn't be bad for me to get out a little, even if it was with someone who was so darn good-looking that it would be distracting. If nothing else, it was another thing I could maybe tell my mom and Kenz to keep them off my back, maybe leaving out the part about him being a Henchmen. Though, it was something I definitely didn't need to tell Paine or Enzo.
Could you imagine that reaction?
Ugh.
No thanks.
I'd avoid that at all costs.
I had successfully avoided any of those big brother fits my entire life.
"Come on, you know you wanna. You totally know I'm awesome."
I laughed at that, shaking my head at his cockiness. "Okay, fine. How about Monday night at The Creamery."
"Ice cream," he declared, standing suddenly. "No bullshit tapas or sushi or other non-filling crap? My kinda friend. Alright, The Creamery. Monday. Seven?"
"Seven works for me." You know, since I had absolutely no plans that day except for work and unboxing one of my indie romance boxes I knew was being delivered that day.
"Seven it is. See you then, buddy."
And with that, my new, erm, 'buddy' was gone, slapping two of his biker friends on the shoulder, and all of them heading as a group out the doors, sending a gust of winter air through the room.
A promise of snow flurries, my favorite smell.
It almost felt poignant that I smelled it right then.
But that was crazy talk.
I shook my head at myself, wondering what was wrong with me.
When I looked up, Gala was watching me with her face all scrunched up. "What the ever loving hell was that?" she asked.
I didn't have an answer for her.
Because the same question was rolling around in my head.
What the ever loving hell was that indeed.
I guess I would figure that all out on Monday. At The Creamery. With my new... friend.
Or, maybe, that would just create more questions.
I had no idea.
But I did know that when I got home, for the first time in longer than I could remember, I didn't take my book or e-reader out of my bag when I set it down inside the door. I didn't look around on Goodreads or Amazon for new releases. I didn't obsessively refresh the tracking page of my book boxe like it would magically make it from Chicago to Jersey in seconds.
No.
I didn't do any of the stuff I normally did.
Instead, I climbed into comfy clothes, got in my bed, and replayed the events of the night over and over and over and, yes, over in my head until my eyes got too heavy to keep open anymore.
Then I did the same thing all Sunday, even during cooking and traditional Sunday dinner with my family.
Luckily, they were all used to my being a bit zoned-out and in my own world.
They figured I was thinking about books.
They had no idea that what the real problem was, was that I couldn't seem to get a pair of seaglass eyes, a bright, boyish, happy smile, a gorgeous face, a soft voice, a plethora of belly-fluttering endearments out of my head.
And that I was almost jumping out of my skin with excitement - and a healthy dose of nerves - about my friendship-date the next day.
Even if a part of me was maybe not super keen on the friendship part.