Page 9

Diletta

I ’ve been watching over the man in my bed for a few hours. Gunner. My stalker.

I realize how insane this all is. We’ve reached that line that you can’t turn back from. I’m this man’s obsession and I know so little about him. I know where his MC is located, I rationalized that with myself when I found him outside. I could always call them to come and pick him up—that’s if motorcycle clubs had listed contact numbers. He was a stranger… but he wasn’t a complete stranger. I wasn’t sure why, but there was something familiar about him which unsettled me.

Nevertheless, I brought him into my house and fixed him. I’m sitting right beside him, concerned as hell. This isn’t any level of healthy. It wouldn’t make sense to anyone on the outside looking in. I’m not sure that it even makes sense to me. My concerns over the way I’ve reacted to all of this reached a pinnacle tonight. I might be able to make peace with my own weirdness and lack of sanity, but it might also get me murdered.

Not currently, since right now, Gunner is literally at my mercy. He’s fast asleep, running a low-grade fever. I hope that it’s from the stomach bug he mentioned and not the gunshot.

I took his IV line out as soon as the drip was finished.

How many men have I seen stitched back together over my lifetime before I ever became a nurse? I bet a few people wondered why I was surprisingly adept at just about everything, long before I should have been.

I lean forward in the wooden kitchen chair that I’ve dragged to the bedside. I brush my knuckles over his forehead. It’s hot, but not cook-his-brain hot.

I still have no idea what he was thinking, coming here, standing out there in the rain. If he was going to ask me to patch him up, he could have bloody well knocked. Why did I put him back together? It’s my bleeding heart. The urge to care for him, to fix him, was so strong. I made an instant decision.

The most problematic part is that I don’t regret it.

I was just going to get him warm and get a patch on him and send him on his way and let his club deal with him. I didn’t. Maybe that’s the most problematic bit.

In my defense, what was I supposed to do? The second I cut his shirt off and saw the scars, I nearly went into cardiac arrest. My heart hasn’t stopped hurting since.

I study his face now, in the early hours of morning. Dawn is still a few hours away.

Gunner. The name doesn’t suit him. It’s so… token. This man isn’t average. He doesn’t look peaceful in sleep. His face is still hard and fierce. He’s not the kind of man who is ever going to be beautiful unless you know him. I doubt that there’s anyone on this earth who he’d let get close enough to do that.

He let me see his scars tonight. Not that he had much of a choice.

What hell has he lived? Is that why he’s always watched me and never approached me except for in that store, when he thought that man was harassing me? He called me an angel. Was he afraid of sullying me somehow?

My hand hovers above his chest before I know what I’m doing. It feels like an invasion, slipping the sheet down. I inspect the bandage. It’ll need to be changed when he wakes up. I don’t stop. I place my hand over his heart and count out heartbeats. Medical purposes, of course.

His skin feels hotter from under the sheets. I don’t touch more of his scarred, twisted skin than that, and quickly remove my palm after what I figure is a minute. His heart rate is strong and steady. Mine is thundering. Unsteady. I can barely breathe. I feel like I’ve just done something unforgiveable, but then, I’m not the stalker.

His heart. My heart. How many hearts has he stopped? How many people lost loved ones because of him? He doesn’t just have the aura of a dangerous man. He has the scent of a killer. I know what those men look like. How they’re different from others.

That aside, I can’t hate this man. He reminds me, in a way, of my father or his men.

You’d think that there wouldn’t be a woman on earth who could love a man like my father, but my mother truly did. She married him knowing who he was. She wasn’t forced. She chose him and his life of her own free will.

I can’t help myself. I pull up the sheet and bring my hand to Gunner’s forehead again. There are scars on his face that I didn’t see before. I wasn’t close enough. One along his hairline at his forehead. A smaller one by his left ear. A few along his jawline, probably hidden by the way he tilts his face when he’s awake. One larger, raised one that I find in his hair when I run my hand through the soft, long strands in the center where it’s not shaved.

I trace the ink along the shaved skull.

It feels too intimate. Again, so wrong.

I tuck my hands in my lap to stop myself from touching him. If the situation was reversed, I wouldn’t like being out and having his hands on me without my consent.

Nothing he’s done was with your consent. You don’t seem to have a problem with that.

I focus on his lips. I imagine him awake, healed, healthy. Crushing them to mine. Picking me up and throwing me down on that bed he’s in right now. Covering me with his huge, scarred body. Thrusting my hands above my head. Pinning me down. My legs around his waist, grinding against him. His big hand stroking my skin, tearing off my panties, finding me soaked for him. Me, at his mercy, but then, he’d flip me over so I’m on top. He’d let me explore his body. Kiss his scars. Show him that I’m not afraid or disgusted. Heal the other broken parts of him.

God, I’ve been far too lonely if I’m fantasizing about my stalker.

I’m disgusted with myself, but when I fix my eyes on Gunner’s face, my heart turns into a bleeding mess again. Did he really not want to sully me? That would be so fucking sad. It makes me want to comfort him. Has anyone ever done that? It’s hard to imagine that anyone ever could have, or that he’d welcome it now. Are brutal men so different from others? He’s still a person. He still has feelings.

Debatable. He could be any kind of psycho or sociopath.

Maybe. But are bad men only bad because they haven’t been loved and don’t know kindness?

Keep going with that line of thought. Sinking to new lows here too. Setting new records for stupidity.

I don’t believe that this man would ever hurt me.

Idiot.

I’m not, though. I’ve looked into the eyes of men whose job it is to kill. Some do it because they love it. I was kidnapped by a man who wanted to possess me at any cost. He was beautiful on the outside, but a true monster on the inside. There was nothing in his eyes. They were absolutely, chillingly dead.

Gunner doesn’t have eyes like that.

He’s hiding something. He wears color contacts.

I wish my brain would fuck off. Maybe he just likes blue instead of brown.

I believe he has feelings. When was the last time his happiness eclipsed his inner torment?

I curl into a ball in the chair. Either way, I’m going to send him on his way when he wakes up. I’ll take him to whatever doctor the club no doubt has on their payroll. I watch him until my eyes get grainy. I know I’m exhausted. I just need to close them, so they stop burning. Just for a second.

***

When my eyes crack open again, it’s bright in the room.

I jerk upright in the chair, immediately slamming a hand over my mouth to make sure I wasn’t drooling. I have an olive skin tone, which makes it pretty hard to see a blush on me, but I feel my face get hot.

I rub at my crooked neck, turning it this way and that, just so I don’t have to meet Gunner’s eyes.

He’s awake and I have zero doubt he was watching me, probably the way I was watching him earlier. No. Not that way. He never would have touched me, not even to brush my hair out of my face.

I grab my phone and check the time. Just after eight.

“How are you awake already? The dose of painkiller was enough to knock out a small horse.”

“That’s your first mistake.” His throat sounds rough. I can’t imagine how shitty he feels. Getting shot has to suck, and on top of that, he was already ill. “I’m rather a large horse.”

“If you make stallion jokes, I swear I’m going to undo all my hard work and strangle you,” The fact he was joking was a good sign. He still looks rough, but not at death’s door like he did last night.

The sunlight streams onto the bed. I placed it there strategically because I love the morning light. It makes his eyes shine.

“Good god. I let you sleep with contacts in.”

“I survived.”

I get out of the chair, stretching out the nasty kink in my back. “How are you feeling?”

“Like I was sick as a dog, shot, and drugged.”

“Hmm. Apt.”

A man who has a good sense of humor—and he does, even if it’s ridiculously dry, who can be self-depreciating—can he be all bad?

Just a little bad can be too much.

“I want you to go straight to the clinic. I’ll take you myself.”

He glances around the room and seems to realize what time it is, on a weekday. “You have school.”

“I called in sick in the middle of the night. Left a message on the machine. They have a sub they’ll call in. It’ll be okay. The school has procedures in place for emergencies or getting sick in the night.”

His hands are on top of the sheets. I didn’t think it was possible for a man like him to look distinctly uncomfortable, but I watch his fingers clutch the sheets. “I don’t want to fuck with your life.”

I hold my laughter for all of two seconds before it explodes out of me in a very ungracious snort. “What? You can’t be serious! You’ve stalked me for god knows how long and you came to me half dead. What did you think that was going to accomplish?” He opens his mouth, but stops. He looks like he’s really considering that. I give him a pointed look. “Let me get your clothes. I washed your pants, and I’ve got an oversized sleep t-shirt you can wear. Your poor vest though, there was nothing I could do. I wiped off the blood as best I could, but it’ll probably need to be professionally cleaned.”

He shuts his eyes and nods.

I want to put my hand to his forehead and see if he’s still feverish, but I keep my limbs to myself now that he’s awake.

How decent of you.

“Do you feel up to eating? I can get you a banana and some toast. In my experience, it sits well in a sore tummy.” I wince, face getting hot again. “Sorry. I’m a kindergarten teacher.” Flustered, I clutch my hands together. “But you know that because you’re a creeper.”

His icy blue stare hits me hard.

Yeah. A kindergarten teacher who knows how to use a gun, can kick serious ass, sets traps, and seamlessly patches someone up with some serious nursing supplies that I had on hand for a rainy day.

I leave him with that before I meltdown. It’s too early in the morning for this.

I get his clothes and leave them on the foot of the bed. By the time I have a slice of toast golden brown and sparingly buttered and a banana ready, he walks into the kitchen. He’s so large in here. Out of place. It makes my heart beat against my ribs in a frantic bid to jump out and escape. It’s his size that truly gets me.

He strokes the vest he’s holding. It’s definitely ruined. He has his head bowed, but when he looks up at me, his eyes seem a little shiny.

“Here.” I set his plate down at the table.

What am I supposed to do? Make coffee and eat a muffin across from him? Stalker. Probable killer. Biker.

I wait for the chorus of internal alarms, but they never come. My danger meter is way off. Clearly, I wouldn’t know true north if a compass smacked me straight in the face.

He moves woodenly, easing himself down carefully. He has to be hurting. Every bone in his body is probably screaming at him. He feels pain. He bleeds.

That’s not emotion, it’s sensation.

I turn around because the last thing he needs to see is the internal argument showing on my face. I don’t have a mask that I can slam in place like he does. If he saw me judging him, I swear I’d pull his move and puke all over myself. I am not that person. I don’t have it in me to be cruel unless someone is threatening my life and freedom.

Isn’t he?

Call me a dumbass, but I don’t think he is. I don’t get that vibe at all.

What if he wasn’t watching me because he was getting his rocks off about it? What if he was out there because he thought he was keeping me safe? Guarding me like he guards Penny?

I try and push that sense of unease out of my mind. There’s no way that my past could have caught up with me here. I make coffee in record slow time, spilling grounds and cream, making a huge mess. I normally drink it Italian style, my morning espresso black. But I feel I need to be as American as I can in front of this man. No one could ever tell that English isn’t my mother tongue unless they listened very carefully—and even then, they might not notice.

“Would you like some ginger tea?” I ask while the coffee’s percolating.

“Sounds vomit inducing.”

“It’s supposed to have the opposite effect, actually.”

“Just some water.” He pushes back his chair. “Let me get it. You don’t have to serve me.”

I snort laugh again. I can’t help it. “If you get out of that chair, I’m giving you a second dose of what I gave you last night. Sit still. Don’t hurt your shoulder. I’m more than capable of pouring a glass of water.”

I’m barely capable. My hands are trembling.

I have to lean in to set it down in front of him. Alright, I don’t have to, but I do it anyway. By all rights, he should smell anything but good. Blood and sickness, medicine and sleep, but he doesn’t.

There is that signature metallic scent of blood, but amazingly, there’s motor oil and gas, leather and fresh laundry. My laundry soap. He smells like I do.

My face is only a few inches away from the shell of his ear. It’s a new angle. I can see another, larger scar that some of the dark ink on his scalp obscures. Almost like he was grazed by a bullet.

My heart speeds up again knowing how close he could have been to death. Even last night, that bullet could have done far more damage if it was a few inches off. I nearly drop the water. His hand shoots out, grasps the bottom of the glass away from my fingers, and steadies it.

I stumble away, trying to distract myself at the counter. I want to think about anything but how this feels so strange, foreign, and not… wrong. Try having your stalker sleep in your bed, laundering his clothes, nursing him, and then feeding him breakfast at your table in the morning. It’s half what normal people do and half what they should never do, all of it excruciatingly real .

“I should have changed that bandage before you got dressed.”

“You don’t have to do that. Lend me your phone and I’ll call a few of my club brothers to get me.”

My phone is on the counter only a few inches away. It’s the longest distance as my fingers wrap around it, far more reluctant than they should be.

I try to make my face blank before I set it down beside his plate. He hasn’t touched anything yet. “Two, three, nine, seven, five, two, one.”

He puts in the passcode seamlessly. I wouldn’t be surprised if he knew it. Is he a hacker too, as well as a stalker? If he was, wouldn’t he realize that my background is false? My father might have paid someone a lot of money to set it up, but surely, there has to be something there that would tip off anyone who knew what they were looking for.

I put distance between us, leaning against the counter and sipping my coffee. I like to let it cool. It’s too hot right now and burns my tongue. I drink it anyway.

His deep voice rumbles through the kitchen. “I need a ride. Now. Archer’s… You can, but if you put a scratch on it… twenty-one eighty-two Fourteenth Street.”

He ends the call, all business, the whole thing having taken less than a minute. Whoever was on the other end was probably waiting to hear from him. I doubt he’d been alone when whatever happened to him last night went down. I can imagine him getting shot, giving the punk hell, then taking off on his bike, riding through the pouring rain even though that’s dangerous, and coming right here. Parking a few blocks away. Leaking blood and hope with every step.

I rub at the pain in my chest with my hand before I know what I’m doing. I turn and study his side profile. At least he’s eating now. He takes a bite of toast and cracks the banana.

“You should be more careful.” I have zero right to utter that statement, but there it is.

He peels the banana slowly. It’s still slightly green. No spots. Just the way I like them.

“Your life matters.”

The way he peels that fucking fruit should not be so hot, but I’m fascinated by the slow, methodical working of his massive, inked hands. I have to tear my eyes away before I start imagining them peeling me out of my clothes and working my body into a fit of ecstasy, driving me mad with as he keeps me on the edge for hours before he lets me come.

“Does it matter to you?”

Thank fuck I hadn’t taken a sip of coffee yet. I would have sprayed it across the kitchen. “I don’t know you, Gunner. I know that you think you know me, but there’s only so much you can learn from watching someone. Even on paper, that’s not who I really am.”

He removes the banana right from the peel, holding the naked fruit. Why is that so hot? I jam my thighs together to try to stop the burn from spreading higher up. I think this is supposed to work the other way around, him getting turned on watching me, but it’s the strange, methodical, preciseness of his actions.

“You asked me to stop, and I will. I shouldn’t have come here last night. Even men like me have boundaries. I broke my own rules. It won’t happen again. You’ll be safe from me.” He sets the fruit down on the edge of his plate next to the untouched toast and looks at me with those arctic blue eyes.

“Take them out,” I whisper. “Please.”

“I can’t.”

“You can. I need to look you in the eyes for this. Your real eyes. I need to see what’s there.”

“There’s nothing there. Nothing at all. I’m the same inside. You’re not going to find redemption in me. I don’t get a character arc. My story isn’t one where I climb out of some hole to become a better man. I was lost long ago. You’ve brought me an unspeakable amount of joy over the years. I want to thank you for that.”

Years. I knew it.

My legs get watery and my pulse skyrockets. At least half of it is because I’m weirded out this time, but the other half is just a plain sick thrill.

“Are you leaving?” It makes me nauseous to think about that. Never seeing him again. Not having him out there, somewhere, watching me, even when I don’t know it.

I’ve felt that prickle of my skin, where my hair has stood on end, and turned around to find no one there. I’ve felt watched a few times in the past year, Followed. I thought I was just being paranoid, but it was him. He was there, at my back. He was probably just creeping, but I can’t shake the way that makes me feel protected and safe.

It’s pathetic that I’m afraid that he’s not going to be there when I only just figured out that he was. That loneliness that’s hovered around me like a black, suffocating cloud drops down, thick and choking until I’m suffocated.

“Probably.”

Please, don’t do that. I want to see you again. It doesn’t make any sense and it’s so stupid and wrong, but I don’t want you to go.

“Where will you go?”

He shrugs. “Don’t know.”

It’s not like he’s a lost kitten or a stray puppy. I can’t just keep him. It’s not my job to mend him and make him whole. He’s more than likely right about being too fucked up. I have this stupid savior complex, and his pain is crying out to me, but it’s not my problem. I need therapy, not time to strip him bare and put my hands and lips all over his body. Every decision I’ve made since meeting this man has been one more in a series of the worst I’ve ever made in my life.

He’s going and I’m not going to stop him. That’s the fact, no matter the illogical feelings I have. I won’t see him again, but I need him to hear this. It’s more important to me than anything else right now.

“Some people say that second chances aren’t real. If you start down that path of darkness, it’s always going to be dark. I don’t know what you’ve done or what you’ve lived but- but I… I hope that you know that morally black is an okay shade too. No matter where you live, even if it’s the coldest, most unhospitable place on earth, the sun is going to shine on you at some point.”

The low rumble of engines in the distance is impossible to miss. How the men from his club made it here so fast, I have no idea. The clubhouse isn’t so far, and Hart isn’t all that big, but still. Were they out already? Looking for him? Wondering if they’d find his body somewhere?

The shiver that rolls through me stings like a sliver of metal.

He hears it too. He scarfs down the toast and eats the banana, downs the water in silence, all while that roar turns into thunder. He stands barefoot. His boots are sopping. Destroyed.

I retrieve them for him anyway. He rams his feet into them, expressionless. Gathers up his vest. He doesn’t look at me. He either can’t or he won’t, but I look at him.

I drink my motherfucking fill. I etch the details of his face, frighteningly cold eyes, strong nose and strong jawline, the ink, the scars, his height, the magnetic rawness, all that pain and sadness lashed and chained to him, into memory. He’s haunted me for years as a living, breathing man and now he’ll become a ghost.

I’m going insane.

The roar of several motorcycles comes at me like a net of nightmares that I thrash around in but can’t escape.

Gunner walks to my front door, unlocks it, and steps out as the bikes pull up. There are three, and an ancient pickup truck. I don’t recognize the man driving it, but when he gets out and looks at us, he has a kind face and half a smile that seems legit. He’s younger, thirty, if that. The others are wearing open- face helmets with black bandanas around their nose and mouth so I can’t see their faces. One is dressed entirely in black. His long black hair cascades out the bottom of his helmet. Once they come to a stop, they pull down the bandanas so I can see their faces.

I recognize the guy with the dark hair and beard from the cookout. He’d been standing beside Gunner when I walked up. I’ll remember that instant that my eyes first met his, that electric shock, the way the very earth trembled under my feet, forever. I’ve never had that with another person.

“Got the old cage out to take you back,” the man beside the truck calls. He thumps the hood affectionately. Preacher can take your bike home.”

A second man gets out of the truck, another that I don’t know. He’s middle aged, has a hard face, but he doesn’t look like a rotten apple. His dark eyes are soft.

“Crow and Bullet will stay with you. We called ahead. Archer cancelled his appointments for the morning. He’s ready.

Just like that, no questions and nothing else said, Gunner walks down the steps in silence. He holds himself stiff, but not like a man who’s hurting. He walks down my sidewalk, between the flower gardens that are just about ready for turning and planting. They’re just dirt right now. Still asleep.

Say something. Call him back. If you don’t, you won’t get another chance. Offer him… anything. Cookies. Advice. A goodbye.

My throat is so dry and swollen feeling, my body dead and numb, aching and wounded, that I can’t even lift my hand. I can’t make a single sound.

Gunner opens the truck door, angles his massive body inside. He bangs it shut with that dull sound of old metal on metal. He rolls down the window, inch by painstaking inch, and says something low and soft to the guy who bends in. Probably telling him where his bike is. The guy nods, the window rolls up. The bikes are kicked back into their furious, growling thunder, and then they move out.

No one looks back.

Only then can I lift my hand. I don’t believe in either curses or benedictions, but I mouth the first words that come to my mind. “Not all who wander are lost, but you will be. If you leave, we both will be, I think.”

I step out of the crisp, sparkling morning with the bright sunlight and the world washed fresh from last night, and slam the door shut. I slip the lock into place, and then, panting, I stalk into the kitchen and become… unhinged.

I snatch up the breakfast dishes, that plate and glass that he touched, and hurl them against the wall. The shattering sounds tear at my insides.

I left home five years ago.

Why do I feel like the last link back there has suddenly been ripped away from me?

You can indeed lose something you never had.

And it burns like twisted metal impaled straight through the heart of you.