Page 22 of Property of Thrasher (Kings of Anarchy MC: South Carolina #1)

MELODY

I didn’t sleep much after he left me. It wasn’t the kind of awake that comes from caffeine or noise. It was the quiet awake, the kind where your body obeys the dark but your mind keeps the lights on.

Every time I rolled over, the sheet rasped against my skin and I remembered the couch at his place, the slow orbit of his hands on my back, the way his mouth had turned careful when my breath hitched. Gentle but firm.

He was both, and that confused me.

Back home, “firm” meant a door that shut from the outside and a key you didn’t possess to escape. It meant rules shaped by someone else’s palm. It meant being told the right kind of love didn’t need your consent, it was destined and expected to be accepted without question.

With Thrasher, firm was blunt talk and a hand that steadied, not a hand that pinned.

He drew lines like a man who trusted himself to hold them.

He’d told me exactly what he didn’t do —“I don’t let women I fuck sleep over” —like a warning sign posted at the edge of a cliff. No apology, just the statement.

And still, on that couch, when my head found his chest and my eyes started to fall shut, his arm tightened instead of lifting me off.

He’d taken me home after giving me, giving us a little time together.

Because that’s how he did it. Because rules were how he kept himself from being someone he didn’t want to be.

I somehow respected this even though I didn’t like being away from him. All of this was new to me of course I wanted to be around him more.

And then there was his daughter. Elaina.

Twenty-three. A few years older than me.

That fact sat in me like a little stone: not jagged, not smooth, just weighty.

I tried it on from different angles. If I met Elaina, would she see a kid?

Would she see a threat? Would she see a girl who could have been in the desk beside her in biology, passing notes about a teacher’s coffee breath while learning about frogs?

I didn’t even know what I saw when I looked in the mirror half the time.

A woman. A girl. A body with new knowledge and old fear.

A person somewhere between what I ran from and what I ran toward.

I could list a hundred reasons this would never work.

The age gap, the club was his focus how did I fit in, the way my past had teeth, the way his present had brothers and business I didn’t need to get tangled up in.

And still, when I closed my eyes, what I saw wasn’t red flags so much as a night road curving through trees, the world going quiet under the bike, the kind of quiet that made room for breath.

Maybe it wouldn’t work and I’d end up with one more lesson written on my skin.

Maybe it would be the best thing in my whole, small life.

I didn’t have to decide at three in the morning, wrapped in a thin hotel blanket with the hallway ice machine coughing every hour. I only had to keep listening to myself.

I didn’t text him the next day. I told myself it was because I wanted proof that I wasn’t already bending my shape to fit his life. Because I needed to know I could want something without sprinting toward it until I skinned my knees.

So I did what any stubborn woman should do: put my hair in a knot, clocked in, and let the laundry room fill up my hands.

Whites first, sheets, then towels. It was all so I could chase the small satisfaction of stacks that matched.

The washers clunked and spun like tired drums. Steam slicked the back of my neck.

When I fed a sheet through the press and it came out crisp and obedient, I thought of other kinds of heat, the warm press of his mouth, the way he’d asked, “Okay?” even once he already knew my answer.

Lyric passed by in the hall with a half case of bottled water under one arm and shot me a look that was half question, half grin. I lifted one shoulder in reply. She didn’t stop; we both had jobs and we both understood not every conversation fits into a ten-minute break by the ice machine.

Later, she’d corner me and I’d tell her something true without telling her everything. For now, I smoothed another pillowcase and tried not to jump when a bike revved somewhere out front.

Not every tailpipe belonged to him. Not every sound was for me.

By midafternoon, I’d recentered myself a dozen times.

It was like learning a new posture: shoulders back, chin level, heart where it belonged in my chest. I caught the new girls whispering near the linen cart—something about “the one with the braid” and “Tiny’s girl’s cousin.

” I didn’t turn to show them my face. Let them guess.

Let them make up a story. I already had enough real ones.

I thought one of them was the girl from the party.

The one I called a bitch. I wasn’t a hundred percent sure, but it was a hunch.

At six I clocked out and took a long shower. Even with the uneven water pressure I stood there until the spray went from warm to scald to a sudden yelp of cold, and I made a rule for myself: if he wanted me, he could find me.

If he didn’t…well, then I’d still have the memories. I didn’t need to be consumed by him. I could read. I could sleep. I could be my own company.

My phone stayed quiet until I plugged it into the charger and turned out the light.

Then it lit up once with a spam email and went dead-eyed again.

I lay on my back and stared at the hairline crack in the ceiling above the smoke detector.

In the quiet, my mind tried to make me small, the way it always did when I gave it too much space.

I counted backwards from a hundred by sevens because a teacher once said it helped, and by the time I got to fifty-one I was too annoyed to spiral.

The next morning, I lasted until almost noon without touching my phone.

The hotel was slow—midweek lull—and the kitchen sent up a tray of coffee carafes we didn’t ask for because someone downstairs had brewed too much.

I poured myself a cup that tasted like overtime and held it under my nose until the steam disappeared.

The desire to call him sat on my tongue like a word you know in one language but can’t say in another, almost there but not completely.

Finally, I put the cup down, ducked into the laundry room, shut the door, scrolled to his name, and pressed “call” before I could decide not to.

He picked up on the first ring. “Melody.”

My name sounded steady in his mouth, like a thing that didn’t wobble when he said it. “Hey,” I managed with a steady tone, “You busy?”

“No.” A beat. “I’ll be right over.”

There was no noise in the pause where most men would plant a question. He hung up like the next words were waiting to happen in person.

I put my cup in the sink, wiped my hands on my pants nervously, and tried not to fuss with my hair.

The braid unspooled the minute I tugged the tie loose, so I smoothed it, split it, and started over.

My fingers knew the pattern by now—right over center, left over center—until the end lay like a rope against my shoulder.

Boots for the ride, not the squeaky black non-slips I wore for work.

I checked that I had my keycard, my phone, my ID.

The tiny voice in my head that wanted to creep in and tell me I was too eager, too weak, that he would crush me was silenced by the loud thundering of my pulse quickening in my brain. I left home behind to have a life on my terms.

I wasn’t about to be held back by fear of rejection or anything for that matter now.

I stepped out into the heat. He was there already, backing the bike into a sliver of shadow, sunglasses on, the line of his mouth unreadable. He didn’t make a show of waiting. He just looked like a man who was ready to go.

“You good?” he asked.

“Yeah.” My voice came out steadier than I felt. “You?”

He slid off the sunglasses and hooked them on his collar. Something eased in my chest at being able to see his eyes. “I am now.” In a swift move, he reached out, tucked a finger through my belt loop and yanked me to him. When I was close enough our breaths mingled, he smirked, “kiss me, baby.”

I didn’t know what came over me. Because I didn’t hesitate. I pressed my lips to his and instantly he took over. His hand on my belt loop moved to my backside and pressed me even closer. Only when I felt my legs turning to mush did he break the kiss. I was immediately lost without the contact.

He held out my helmet. I took it, did the strap without looking, and climbed on behind him.

I’d started to learn his cues—the way his shoulders set before a turn, the way he shifted his hips when he wanted me closer or wanted my weight to stay put.

The first block, I was a polite passenger, hands light at his sides.

By the second, my palms had flattened over his abdomen, not because I had to but because that’s where they wanted to be.

We cut east first, the sun high enough to make the road bright, then took a series of turns that made no sense if you didn’t already know where you were going.

He threaded us past a field gone to seed, down a ribbon of asphalt that dissolved to gravel and back to blacktop again, through a low dip where water pooled after rain.

South Carolina summer had given the air that thick, green smell, like something living that would still be here after we were gone.