Maria

 

“Later, Miss Maria,” Cory said as he was on his way out of the shop. He waved as he walked past my desk and hurried through the front door.

 

I looked up and caught his long brown hair and the back of his The Twisted Ghosts kutte as he pushed through the door and disappeared. I was surprised Brawn had actually taken my advice. He had actually taken me seriously. It was one thing that he’d given me so many things to do and allowed me to do those on my own with little to no supervision, but for him to have actually taken one of my suggestions and implemented it himself – that was huge to me. It meant a lot.

 

I looked back toward the doorway to the workshop. I knew he was back there working, just as he always was. I glanced up at the clock above the door. It said it was about six o’clock. It was late enough for me to lock the door and close up for the day, so I did. I shut down my computer and walked around my desk to lock the door. I shut off the lights in the front and dropped the blinds in the windows.

 

Our office was located in an old warehouse space downtown. We had a corner lot. My side of the building faced out onto one street. The shop door in front of the workshop faced another. He rarely opened the shop door, as he didn’t really want anyone watching him work, at any point.

 

I tucked my laptop in the laptop bag I carried home with us every night and walked through the doorway into the workshop with it. Of course, he was still sanding the piece he’d been using to train Cory.

 

“Hey, what’s up?” he said distractedly while he was working.

 

“Nothing, just closing up for the night,” I said.

 

“Yeah? Is it that time already?” he asked me.

 

“Yep.”

 

“Damn.”

 

He didn’t stop working while he talked to me. In fact, that was all he said, and he kept working afterwards. I set the laptop bag on the floor next to the table we called our break room and walked over to where he was working. I put my hand on his and he stopped sanding, almost immediately.

 

He looked up at me, and our eyes met. I was reminded of how he’d tried to talk to me before about that night in the hotel, the night we’d slept together. I wished I knew what to say about that night, but I had no clue. I hadn’t sorted out my feelings. They were so complicated. There was so much I wanted to say, so much I wanted to do.

 

I still wanted to go into nursing. I had wanted to for so long that I wasn’t sure if I still did or if I just felt that way almost out of habit. At the same time, we were building something here that had a good chance of lasting. It was turning into a pretty serious enterprise, and it took both of us to make it run. I couldn’t just leave Brawn high and dry like that, by running out on him at the first opportunity.

 

Then, he said it. He told me what I had been wanting to hear since the first day we opened.

 

“You should go ahead and start looking into nursing school.”

 

I just blinked. I wasn’t really sure if he’d actually said it, or if I just imagined that he had.

 

“That is, if you still want to go,” he continued.

 

“Are you serious right now?” I asked him.

 

“Absolutely.”

 

“What about the shop?”

 

He laughed and shook his head. “You and work. Sometimes I wonder which one of us is really the workaholic here. I think you’re just better at hiding it.”

 

“Maybe, but that’s another reason you keep me hanging around. Or that’s what I like to believe anyway,” I said.

 

“Well, don’t worry about work. You can work your schedule around school,” he said.

 

“Are you really serious right now?” I asked again. I could barely contain my excitement. It was all I could not to jump on him.

 

“I’m absolutely serious, Maria. One of the goals of opening this shop was to use the money from it to get you into nursing school so you could finally pursue your dream of becoming a nurse. And it’s time for us to make that happen,” he said.

 

“But I don’t want to leave you high and dry without any help,” I argued. I laced my fingers into his and stepped closer. I ran a hand through his hair.

 

“You won’t. I trust that you’ll figure something out to make it work. You’re a damn genius when it comes to working smarter instead of harder,” he said, continuing to sing my praises.

 

“I mean, if you say so.”

 

“I do. I’ve got some money put back for you, just for school,” he said.

 

“Aside from what you’ve been paying me?” I asked.

 

“Yeah. Why do you think I’ve been working so hard? I mean, part of it was just for the fun of it, because you know me and work, but a lot of it has been because I promised to help you, and I want to be able to do that. Your pay was never really supposed to be school money, not the way I was thinking anyway.”

 

Tears were welling up in my eyes. “Just shush, Brawn,” I said. I threw my arms around his neck and hugged him.

 

After a moment, he slowly put his arms around my waist and held me to him.

 

“Thank you so much,” I cried. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.” I pulled back and kissed him.

 

Our lips locked together and pressed against each other. I broke the kiss and hugged him even tighter. I was so thrilled, I didn’t know what to do. I had never expected anyone beyond my father to do so much for me.

 

“I’ll start looking immediately,” I told him.

 

“Good, and let me know what you come up with.” He looked like he was about to go back to work as we pulled apart from each other.

 

I grabbed his hand and pulled it from his work. “Stop, please. Let’s go home,” I told him.

 

He smiled and put down the sander. “Sure,” he said. “Let me get cleaned up real quick.”

 

“Okay.” I let go of him and he went to the sink in the back to start washing his hands.

 

I listened as the water trickled in the sink and watched as he worked the soap over his hands and half way up his muscular arms. I always wondered why he washed his arms instead of just his hands, but whatever his routines were, they worked. There was no reason to mess with them.

 

“I saw Cory leaving tonight,” I said.

 

“Yeah, he’s a good kid,” he said.

 

“So, when do I get to meet the rest of the guys in the MC? I’ve heard a lot about Mark, and I think you mentioned your prez and the VP a couple of times,” I said.

 

“Maybe soon. Cory is actually Mark’s son. Looks just like his mom, nothing like Mark.”

 

“So Mark’s got an old lady?” I asked.

 

“Hell no!” He laughed. “Mark loves women too much to settle down. Now, don’t get me wrong, he’s one hell of a gentleman, but that’s because he truly loves women. He makes the rest of us look like monks, but you’d never know it.”

 

“Damn. Okay.” That seemed like an odd bit of information. I wondered how many other kids he had out there if he loved women so much.

 

“Don’t worry about it. You’ll meet everyone soon enough,” he assured me as he turned off the water and dried his hands.

 

“Well, there’s another thing I wanted to run by you.”

 

“Okay. What’s up?” He walked over to me and put his arm around my waist.

 

“I’m thinking about taking my own advice. You know, like I told you about the apprenticeships with the guys from the club? I’m thinking about talking to the old ladies about coming in and covering for me while I’m in class,” I told him.

 

“Absolutely. That’s a great idea. That’ll get you in with them for sure.”

 

“And instead of putting them on the books, I think I should just pay them myself out of what you pay me,” I continued.

 

“Another excellent idea. That will make paperwork and everything much easier. Plus, it will give them something they all like, and that’s the whole under-the-table feel of working off the books.” He chuckled. “You gotta understand., a lot of the people associated with The Twisted Ghosts are old school. They do things the way they did back in the sixties and seventies, regardless of how legit it is or not.”

 

“I get it. I’ve kind of figured that out from what you’ve told me.”

 

“Good. You’ll fit right in, then,” he said, pulling me close for another kiss.

 

Our mouths met again, and kissing him felt so comforting. It felt like the only time I could really relax anymore. It was the one time I didn’t have to worry about how much he was working or how frantic our lives had been since we had opened the shop. I didn’t have to worry about where I stood with him outside of work, because his lips and tongue told me where I stood. I stood right next to him. I wasn’t just his partner at work. Despite the fact that we hadn’t labeled our relationship, I was his partner in life.

 

There were many ways that I supposed we had told each other how much we cared over the course of the last several months, from the physical affection to making sure we ate, making sure we were both well, making sure we slept at night.

 

I had dated men before, and I had been really close with my father, as well, until the day I walked out of his office after quitting his company and getting kicked out of the family, but I had never had someone as supportive as Brawn in my life. He didn’t just say he supported me. He actively supported me, by providing me with financial stability and a place to live, by making sure I didn’t go without, and by allowing me to call the shots and make the decisions when it came to his work, to our company.

 

It meant so much more to me than I knew how to tell him.

 

“So, when do I get to meet the girls?” I asked as I pulled back from our kiss.

 

“When do you want to meet them?” he asked.

 

“As soon as possible, because I know everyone in the MC will be happy to see both of us at the clubhouse sometime.”

 

“Have you been talking to Shift?” he asked.

 

I smiled. “Why, you feeling jealous? No, I haven’t been talking to Shift, but I know you never go by there these days, and I know you only rarely went by there.”

 

“Yeah, but there’s so much work to do,” he protested.

 

“Cry me a river, kid,” I said. “That’s your family, and trust me, you’ve got to cherish them while they are there. You’ve got to do right by them even if you feel like they aren’t always doing right themselves. I know they get up to some business you don’t agree with, but they are there for you.”

 

He sighed, and his grip on my waist relaxed a little.

 

“No, don’t get like that. You need to go see them before they get sick of your shit and back away. And something tells me it’s not pretty when an MC lets someone go. I don’t want to see that happen to you, Brawn. You’re too good for that, and you mean too much to that organization. You have too much to offer them to let it get to that point,” I said.

 

“Okay, okay. We’ll go.”

 

“When?”

 

“Soon,” he said, and he kissed me again.

 

I took him at his word, grabbed the laptop bag, and walked out of the shop arm in arm with my partner.