Page 212 of Smooth Sailing

I blinked slowly, not following his change of subject. “Sorry?”

“Your parking spot come with the property, or you rent it?”

“It comes with.”

“Just one?”

“No,” I breathed. “There are two. And, um, a big storage room. I mean, not humungous, but it fits my Christmas tree and other stuff. Though, I don’t have a lot of other stuff, so it’s mostly empty.”

“Mm,” he hummed.

“Why did you ask that?”

“’Cause, I move in, I gotta have somewhere to park my truck so I don’t have to get in a fuckin’ oven whenever I use it.”

My body went completely still.

“Now, this is the way I see it,” he went on.

Suddenly, even if a second prior I would have told you I could take no more, I could not wait to find out the way he saw it.

“I’m all ears,” I practically panted.

He smiled at me, rolled to his back, pulling me on top.

He then gathered my hair at my neck and held it there in both hands, resting his forearms on my bare back.

“I go home. I figure shit out. Won’t take long, but it’s gotta be done. You come up for a weekend, meet the brothers, their women, the kids. I show you Denver. If you fall in love, sweet. If you don’t, I talk to my brother Snap. He owns a ton of properties. Rentals. He buys ’em, fixes ’em up, rents ’em out. He’d help me do that to my pad. I rent it out, I got income.”

“I—”

“I move in with you when I move down here.”

When I move down here.

I melted into his body.

He kept speaking.

“Already seems we do okay with that, I mean living together, but we’re new. Might just be first blush of all we got going. Lots going down, we haven’t really gotten to real, day-to-day life shit. We conquer that and we’re good, we’re golden. We don’t, I move out, we get to know each other the normal way, I move back in when we’re ready. We got a plan?”

My voice was hoarse when I asked, “What about the Club?”

“I don’t need a lot, so I got a good amount saved, though gonna have to use some of it to fix up my place. I won’t feel good takin’ my cut if I’m not doin’ my bit for them, but I’ll have to have that discussion with them. Although all MCs have rules and regs, a hierarchy, none of them are about puttin’ a man in chains. Or not any I know of. Though, what I know right down to my gut is my Club will not stand in the way of me having you.”

“Maybe we should talk about Denver,” I forced out.

“Denver is a great city. You’re gonna like it. But it doesn’t have your dad, Nicole, Larry, Charlie, Bernie, Mel, Annie. A job you love. And?—”

“And Phoenix doesn’t have Big Petey, or Dutch, Jagger, Roscoe, this Tack guy, and all the rest of them.”

All of what his mother wanted him to have.

He rolled us again, so he was mostly on top, and he got right in my face.

“Here’s the bottom-line deal,” he announced.

I held my breath.

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