Page 13 of A Love So Hard

“That you ARE off limits?” I asked hesitantly.

He nodded. “Have been ever since I realized you were the woman I wanted on the back of my bike. Had you there once, sweetheart, been waiting to get you back on there ever since.”

I stood there stunned as he continued to cradle my face with his hands. “You mean to tell me you haven’t been with anyone since,” I couldn’t even bring myself to finish asking my question. “Even while I was gone?”

“Even while you were gone. The only satisfaction I’ve seen has been self induced.” He seemed so sincere, but I honestly wasn’t sure whether I could believe him or not.

“You can tell me the truth, you know. It’s not like we were ever really together.”

“Lucy, I understand why you would doubt me, especially since you’ve seen how things go at the clubhouse sometimes and heard lies told about me, but sweetheart, I promise you the only woman I’ve been close to all this time is your memory while working my hand.”

“Jesus,” I heard hissed out somewhere behind Double-D which set his shoulders to rigid once again as he slowly turned to see Johnny – Stiff – getting on his bike. “What a pussy,” he muttered to himself before starting up the machine and taking off with a one-finger salute.

“I’m going to kill that little prick,” Double-D vowed.

“He’s not worth it. He’s just mad that I wouldn’t talk to him when I got back and I’m out here with you.”

Double-D laughed then. “Yeah, well, if he had been truly concerned about getting you on the back of his bike he wouldn’t have been acting out that story he came back to tell you. I saw him that night.” The man before me shook his head. “I wouldn’t have touched those bitches separately, let alone together, even if you hadn’t been in the picture for me. Knowing you were a possibility there was no way I was going there. He didn’t feel the same way. That’s why I had no qualms about going after you even though I knew he had a bigger claim since he’d known you forever.” He shook his head, disgust written all over his features. “When there’s a goddess on Earth before you, you don’t bow down to the peasants. You worship the goddess and hope she blesses you with even one moment of her time.”

I knew my jaw had to be hanging low. My heart, once again, kicked into overdrive. Did he really just compare me to a goddess? Sweet lord, baby Jesus. Maybe they were just pretty words, but I couldn’t deny how they made my tummy flip in on itself. The man was something else. That’s why I couldn’t turn him down. He took two fingers and placed them under my jaw and lifted smoothly as he grinned at me. Yeah, he knew how those words had affected me. I definitely wasn’t used to playing games so I still hadn’t learned how to school my features like some people were able to do.

He moved in closer sitting with me on the porch once again so that our knees were now touching and he leaned his body into mine, making eye contact. “Will you go somewhere with me tonight?”

It took me a moment to clear the emotion that was clogging my throat, but when I finally got myself under control it was to croak out one word. “Where?”

“Well, Miss Lucy Carter, I’m planning on taking you out on a date.”

“A date?” I asked, curious, because I’d never actually been on a real date with anyone. I guess the night I ran into Double-D at a party and he spent the rest of his time there with me before taking me home had been the closest I’d ever come. I had ‘gone out’ with a boy in high school, but that’s all it had been. Us hanging out at school together, talking on the phone, and saying we were dating. We had never actually made it on out on a real date, because my dad had been firm on the no dating before I turned 16 rule and that particular boy had not wanted to wait for me. That was part of the reason I was so stunned and disbelieving of what Double-D had told me about his lengthy wait.

“Yes, a date. You know, where I come to your home, pick you up, take you to dinner, someplace special, and bring you back safe and sound.” He left it there but then grinned before he leaned in and stole a kiss. It had just been a playful peck at first, but then his the blue of his eyes turned absolutely molten and began to bleed into the black as he leaned back in and gently nipped at my bottom lip, forcing me to utter a quick, “Oh!” in surprise. That gave him exactly the opening he needed and he took it. His tongue swept in and I moaned as our tongues twined together in a crazy dance I wasn’t even sure I’d knew how to do. As with another dance we’d had though, Double-D took the lead and for him it was like second nature. For me, this new kind of dance was amazing and just as magical. All too soon he was pulling back and tucking loose strands of my hair back behind my ears.

“There,” he managed to say, though it came out a little staggered as if he was having trouble catching his breath now too. “Now, there’s no pressure. We already got the first date kiss out of the way.”

“I thought that was supposed to come last,” I managed to say to him.

His confident grin was back. “Only for idiots who are too stupid to realize they don’t have to wait.” He laughed, seemingly at himself, then. “Or idiots like me who had to wait far too long for other reasons.”

“I wish I had known,” I began, but he stopped me by once again placing a finger over my lips and tracing the seam there.

“No regrets, Lucy. It was meant to be this way. Think about it. We were already getting close, and your age was a big deal at the time. Maybe not according to the law, but to your dad and to the laws of my club it was. Besides, this way you got to finish up some schooling.”

That took me by surprise. “Did my dad tell you that?” He appeared taken aback a bit by the question and narrowed his eyes on me.

“Why would your dad tell me that?”

I gave him a duh look and then laughed when he didn’t seem to get it. “How else would you know that I finished up some schooling while I was away?”

He leaned in and kissed my cheek before standing. “Lucy, I never went one day without thinking about you while you were gone. Did you really think I was going to watch you drive away and never check up on you?” He raised an arm up in there air, which I found humorous, as it looked like he was trying to get permission to ask a teacher a question in school. Then suddenly a thud came from his extended hand and he grinned down at me as he offered up the damn newspaper I’d been out here waiting on. “Here you are, sweetheart. Now, get inside. I have shit to go take care of this morning. I’ll be back around four to pick you up.”

“Four?” I questioned. That seemed early.

He chuckled as he started walking toward the curb. “Call me greedy, but I just got you back, and I want to spend all the time with you I can before I have to bring you back and drop you at your doorstep.”

There went my heart again. Darn. I wasn’t sure I would survive a date with him much less if things went any further than that.

I may not have been sure I would survive a date with Double-D, but that wasn’t going to stop me from going and appeasing my curiosity after all this time. My grandma had tried to convince me to date some of the boys I went to school with. That had been before she got so sick she didn’t have the energy to fight me on it anymore. I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. I wasn’t so crazy as to think that the little bit of nothing I had with Double-D had been so life altering that I’d stay a lonely cat lady my whole life in his memory. Forget that, especially after having believed the story Johnny had told me about him. The thing was, I had my first real taste of heartbreak with him. I don’t know why it had hurt so badly, and I couldn’t put words to it if I tried. There was just something about him. So, I chose to focus on school, caring for my grandma, and setting goals for myself instead of possibly falling for someone else. Besides, I loved being there to care for my grandma, but I didn’t love Florida. I wanted to go home, and I didn’t want the possibility of falling in love with someone to keep me forever in a place I didn’t think of as home.

I had spent the first part of my day looking over the classified ads. There were plenty of places looking to hire Licensed Practical Nurses as well as a few oddball jobs in the medical field I might qualify for. I wasn’t super excited about any of it. When I had first applied to nursing school right out of high school I had been taking care of my grandma and was basically doing her at-home nurse’s job for her. It seemed like the thing to do at the time in order to better help my grandma since the medical community was too busy doing other things to help the aging woman. It had been my first realization that people didn’t always choose their careers based on the best the job had to offer. I always thought people in the medical profession were there because they genuinely wanted to help people. Maybe it was just a geriatric thing, but I noticed not many of them seemed to actually want to help the elderly. They were basically glorified babysitters until they died. It had been enough of a push for me to move in that direction, because I let my self-righteous indignation get the best of me.

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