Page 31 of Jacob

Her face flushed. She had to look away. She snatched her water, finding her throat dry. He saw too much with those soul-piercing eyes. She gulped down the water as her gaze fixated on the arrangement. She couldn’t keep it.

Fuck. But everyone had already seen it. She attempted to return it. Plenty of people could attest to it if he wanted to go around and ask about it. If she took it apart, he’d never know.

No.

No.

She shouldn’t. She can’t.Leave it.

“I gotta go,” she said, slipping out of the booth.

His brows drew together.

“Thanks for lunch,” she said and waved as she turned, passing their waitress on the way out. It took every bit of strength she had to leave the lollipops behind.

She had watermelon waiting for her in the car. With root beer and blue raspberry backups. She could do this. She had to study. She didn’t have time for this. She had more important things to focus on—like her future, not her past.

Chapter 17

Jacob

She didn’t even wait for the check. She just left. Well, fled was more like it.

Scrubbing his hand over his beard before he brought it to the back of his neck, Jacob watched her go. With a shake of his head, he took out his wallet and didn’t look at the bill. Instead, he slapped two twenties on the table, well aware he’d grossly over tipped, and swiped the lollipop bouquet off the table. She wanted the arrangement. He saw it in her eyes, in the way she looked at it, but she wouldn’t take it because she was fucking loyal—loyal to a tweaker fucking prospect screwing club ass. He didn’t deserve Sparrow.

“Oh, you just bring it—” the waitress started to tell him where to take the bill to pay. He held up a hand, interrupting her. He didn’t care. He suspected the look on his face did more to stop her speaking than the gesture with his hand. Either way, it got the job done.

There may have been a time, probably when he first got his prospect patch, or in his early member days, when walking through a parking lot carrying a bouquet of lollipops might have made him self-conscious. Clomping his boots as he all but stomped across the lot, he felt the eyes on him. He’d only had his club colors the last three years and prospected for two, but in that time, he’d grown accustomed to people staring at him.

The cut, the beard, the wallet chain, dark hair to his shoulders, and a pissed off look on his face—it tended to draw attention. Right now, he didn’t give a rat’s ass. He needed to figure out Sparrow, and why she would turn down something she really wanted—lollipops.

One of Rooster’s—their ginger-haired pot-bellied Road Captain—specialties was finding motels that were still back in the Stone Age. They had a computer system, but it was older than Jacob. They didn’t even have a keycard system. So, Jacob stood there like a jackass, jiggling the friggin’ key to the room he shared with Dash because the lock stuck sometimes, trying not to drop the damn arrangement.

“You shouldn’t have.” His sponsor’s hand came down over his shoulder with a slap just before he yanked him back.

The lollipops bobbled. Panicked, Jacob fumbled, trying to keep them from dropping to the concrete. Once stabilized, he turned, noting the white bandage peeking from the frayed and faded collar of Dash’s T-shirt.

“Thought you were sitting for six hours,” Jacob grumbled as he stepped aside, stuffing the useless key into his pocket. He pinched the cigarette he’d smoked to the filter between his fingers and flicked it to the ground before he crushed it with the tip of his boot.

Dash cracked his neck as he slid the key in the lock. “Mooky works quick. Like him. Solid recruit.” He nodded as he wiggled, pushed, and with a final kick, the door swung open. Turning to the younger biker, he waggled his brows. “Looks like I got the touch,” he said with a smug grin.

Rolling his eyes, Jacob shoved past him to enter their room. He tossed the arrangement onto the dresser and flopped onto his bed face down.

“Date didn’t go well?” the elder biker asked as the door clunked, closing behind him.

Answering the rhetorical question wasn’t high on the younger biker’s priority list. He had better things to do—figure out what to do with lollipops. That was highest on his agenda. Second was…

Crinkling caught his attention. Planting his palms on either side of the pillow on the mattress, he pressed and lifted his chest, jerking his head to see Dash holding a tiny ball of sugar on a stick freshly unwrapped about to pop it in his mouth.

“Did you just…” He didn’t feel the need to finish the sentence because there was a hole in the arrangement. A gaping, blaring gap in the display meant for Sparrow.

The candy clinked against his sponsor’s teeth, mocking Jacob, as Dash rolled it around in his mouth. “You can’t possibly eat all of them. You’ll get cavities.” The smirking man sealed his lips around the white stick protruding from his mouth as he plunked his thick body down on the lone chair in the room. The amused dare danced in his eyes while he reached to twirl the end of the lollipop.

The fantasy of the small ball of sugar lodging itself in Dash’s windpipe, causing him to fall to the ground while Jacob watched him claw at his throat, turn purple, and choke to death played in his mind. Extreme? Yes. Didn’t change the fact that his club brother just destroyed Sparrow’s gift. “I planned on giving that back to her,” he explained as he scooted down the edge of the bed, planting his boots back on the floor.

Apparently, no matter where he went, his mother’s shrill cry to keep his boots off the bed echoed through his brain regardless of his age. The groan coming from him could have been from that, or from the reminder of just how much the bed sucked. Resting his forearms on his wide-spread thighs, he studied his friend enjoying the lollipop.

Dash stared right back at him, grinning like a cat who ate the canary. “Sometimes, the answer is no and you just gotta let your brother appreciate the candy.”

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