Page 21 of Jacob

Startled, Sparrow snapped out of staring at the candies, and watched Kimber take the card from between her fingers and read the three short words.

“Aww.” Her friend brought the card and her hand to her chest. “Seriously, he’s been gone like a day, and he sent you this candy arrangement thing?”

“Who?” Another waitress came over, staring at the two of them and then the lollipop bouquet. “What is that?” She gestured. “Is it yours?” she asked Sparrow.

“Who else’s would it be?” Kimber shot back, laughing. “Pipes sent it.”

The card may not have been signed, but it didn’t need to be. Without a shadow of a doubt, Sparrow knew Pipes hadn’t sent the candy. He didn’t write that note. He wasn’t that sentimental.

Forcing a smile on her face, Sparrow reached for the arrangement. “I better move these.”

“Yeah,” Kimber agreed. “The assholes we get will think it’s like a free sample display or something. Next thing you know, you won’t have any left.”

Offering a constrained chuckle, Sparrow took her lollipops and brought them to the back room. She stepped inside a few paces, letting the door close behind her, shutting out the Led Zeppelin, the other waitresses, Kimber, and the present. In the glow of the dim lightbulb of the back storage room, she placed the bouquet on a shelf.

With her index finger, she grazed a watermelon-flavored candy as she tucked the card behind the bow. The arrangement was beautiful and the idea of having to take it apart to either eat the lollipops or to hide it literally hurt her heart. Resting her head against the shelving, the weight of past and present bore down on her shoulders.

The heavy, guitar-driven sound of Led Zeppelin tore her from lamenting over her situation when the door opened. Bowie, with his fist covering his mouth, coughed, breaking her solitude. He paused under the lone lightbulb, a few steps into the room, allowing the door to close behind him.

Once he’d stopped coughing, he wiped his hands on his jeans and peered around. “Oh,” he grunted as his gaze fixed on her in the low light.

“Hey, I just had to tuck this away,” she offered, tapping the lollipop bouquet flowerpot.

His brows drew together when his gaze went to her gift, taking it in before they returned to her. “Always did like those things,” he commented in a raspy tone.

She didn’t see him as much as she once had. While he’d always had a rough voice, it seemed to have gotten more gravelly over the years. Probably the cigarettes he’d smoked. She guesstimated him to be a two-pack a day smoker.

“Yeah.” She nodded with a half-grin. “It’s my thing.”

He snorted a bit of a laugh. “Well, I better get to my thing. These books ain’t gonna do themselves.” He turned to go to the tiny room that housed a filing cabinet and a card table. They called it an office, but it didn’t even have a door.

“You know, it’d be a lot easier if you did those things during the day,” she suggested, moving away from the shelves. “With less noise, you could really concentrate on the line items.”

He scoffed a laugh as he walked. “You know how many businesses I gotta check up on, little bird? I fit it in when I can,” he called over his shoulder dismissively.

If this wasn’t her in, she didn’t know what was. “I’m going back to school,” she blurted as she trotted behind him.

The metal folding chair squeaked when his heavy body dropped into it. “That’s nice,” he said as he reached for the filing cabinet. The room was so small, he didn’t have to stand up for what he needed.

“I want to take business management, maybe some accounting,” she offered. “I used to help my dad with the books.”

Out came the calculator, pencils, red pens, and the ledger. The MC President dropped them on the table, making it shake. “Did you?”

She nodded even though he wasn’t looking at her. Instead, he focused on organizing the stack of receipts and the book. “Yeah,” she verbalized. “I want to be able to help the club.”

Like a statue, the biker halted all movement. His right hand hovered over the pens. His left held a page mid-flick.

The day had been stressful enough with her mother’s pop-in visit and the delivery of the lollipop bouquet. The only saving grace had been Pipes had been on a run. She wasn’t sure she could’ve dealt with his nonsense on top of it.

She hadn’t planned on seeing Bowie, but she wasn’t about to waste the opportunity. It’d been the plan, for years it’d been the plan. Her father started it and she’d finish it. She just needed the president’s buy-in.

Holding her breath, fighting the urge to wring her hands, she stared at him. The strands of gray at his temples had multiplied the last few years. The wrinkles at the corners of his eyes had deepened. It was as though he’d aged ten years in the last three.

It’d felt like ages when he turned toward her, resting one elbow on the table and the other on the back of the metal chair. His head tilted slightly as he regarded her. Using two fingers, he pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket. One went to his lip and he lit it.

Sparrow shifted her weight from one foot to the other as she intently watched him not respond to her. It was everything she could do not to say something or to ask him if she could be useful to the club—in a way that was different than any other woman.

Once he’d taken a drag from the cigarette, he pinched it between his fingers and blew the smoke away from her. “You focus on school,” he said profoundly. “When you finish your degree, we’ll figure something out. Okay?”

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