Total pages in book: 135
Estimated words: 137310 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 687(@200wpm)___ 549(@250wpm)___ 458(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 137310 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 687(@200wpm)___ 549(@250wpm)___ 458(@300wpm)
Di went in for a hug from her gram, Hugger gave the woman his hand, and Shannon took it but did not shake it. She patted it, and never having a grandma himself, so never feeling anything like what came through her touch, he couldn’t deny those pats felt sweet.
When the woman let him go, he slung his arm around Di’s shoulders, felt hers snake along his waist, and they walked to his bike.
It was nine thirty, eighty degrees outside, deep in September, and there’d been no weather at all since he’d been down there that would keep him off the back of his bike.
Maybe Phoenix wasn’t going to be so bad, even in the shitty months.
He stopped her at his bike and turned her to his front.
He was going to speak, but she got there before him. “I see what Dutch meant about the dark.”
“Come again?”
“You materialized out of the night like a shadow taking shape. So I see what Dutch meant. I’m impressed.”
She was teasing, but he wasn’t buying it.
So instead of replying to what she said, he asked, “How’d that go?”
It took her a beat before she shook her head, planted her face in his chest a second, pressing the rest of her to him with both arms rounding him, and then she tipped her head back.
That was something he hadn’t felt before either, or he hadn’t let it penetrate.
And, damn, it felt good to stand strong when his woman needed to lean on him.
“She’s called Mom to chat every day since the incident,” she told him. “Even when Mom was still in town. Mom’s ghosting her.”
Christ, that woman was a total bitch.
He didn’t say that.
“You think she’ll cave?” he asked.
“I don’t know. No one has ever called Mom on her shit in that grand of a fashion. We’re in uncharted territory.”
His phone at his ass vibrated, he ignored it, and kept his attention on his woman.
He did this because they hadn’t had a lot of time in, but he still knew his woman.
“You gonna wade into that?”
She bit her lip.
Just as he suspected, Di giving everything to everybody else, sometimes at the expense of herself.
She didn’t know it, but her mother played a part in Di being like that. Diana had been dancing attendance on that woman since she’d taken her first breath, it was all she knew.
It was good that Di could twist it so it could be worthwhile for people who mattered.
And it was good she had him now, so he could make sure she didn’t use herself up.
“Di—”
“Ugh,” she grunted. “I can’t. No contact means no contact. And seriously, Mom’s so good at her games, she might be doing this to Gram for the sole purpose of making me wade in.”
“Yeah,” he agreed.
“So I can’t.”
“Yeah,” he agreed a lot more firmly.
“Ugh,” she repeated.
Hugger bent to touch his lips to hers, and when he moved away, murmured, “Let’s get you home.”
“’Kay,” she mumbled.
They let go, he got on his bike, she swung on behind him, plastered herself to his back with her arms around his stomach, chin to his shoulder, and that didn’t feel as good as her leaning on him, but it still felt damn good.
They took off, and like he felt it, she probably felt his phone vibrating at his ass again.
When they stopped at a red light, he yelled over the pipes, “Grab that, will you?”
Di shifted enough to reach into his back pocket and get his phone after the call had ended.
“Dutch,” she said in his ear.
“Show it my face, then call him,” he ordered, reminding himself to give her his passcode later.
She activated his phone, pointed it at his face, and kept hold with one arm around him as he took off when the light went green.
He heard her shouted conversation with Dutch, so he already guessed what was coming before she ended the call and said loudly in his ear, “He wants you at the crash pad as soon as you can get there. He says I can come too.”
Hugger changed lanes.
Something else to be said about Phoenix, a city that was built nearly entirely on a grid system with numbered avenues (west) and streets (east) with a central road dividing the two called Central made learning the way around super fucking easy.
Twenty minutes later, he rolled up the driveway behind several other bikes, and he felt his eyes narrow on them because it wasn’t just Dutch, Jagger and Coe’s bikes and Big Petey’s trike, and one or two of them should be on Armitage, Eight and Muzzle’s bikes were there, and parked at the curb was one of the NI&S SUVs, a flashy truck, and a sleek Jaguar.
Diana swung off, he came off after her and stopped when he caught her look.
“What?” he asked.
“This is a crash pad?” she asked back, tossing her arm to the long ranch house on the side of a hill that had a fantastic view of the Valley. It also had four bedrooms, four and a half baths, a swimming pool with a waterfall into a Jacuzzi and an air hockey table.