Page 120 of Wolf.e
I smile as his lips meet my cheek, my neck.
“It always was…” I tell him.
And it always will be.
Chapter 61
Brinley
Two weeks later
“Oh my god, it’s so beautiful,” I tell Gabriel with tears in my eyes as I dismount from his bike in my driveway. My father’s pickup truck sits perfectly restored, a beautiful robin’s egg blue. “It looks brand new,” I tell him, running my hand over the glimmering paint.
“It virtually is. Mike made it run like a dream too.”
“I had no idea you were so close to finishing it, you said another…wait—” I turn and face him. “This is where you’ve been at night when you said you had club business this last week? In the shop with my truck?” I ask instantly, judging the look on his face.
He nods, looking way too serious for having just surprised me.
“And you aren’t selling it. It’s too pretty to sell,” he says.
I look to the front lawn where the FOR SALE sign already sits, my only connection to my parents.
“I won’t need the money.” I wager the idea of keeping it in my mind.
“Some mean, gruff biker did fix my porch for me and won’t take a penny,” I say as I eye the beautiful new cedar wrap around that will draw in any buyer, my realtor says. Layla and I have been decorating it up with Edison lights and furniture for the last week. I move toward my big strapping, secretly caring man and wrap my arms around his cut, the leather of my own pressed against his.
“I want you to keep it. It’ll be the last piece you have of them after this house sells. No arguments,” Gabriel says.
His thoughtfulness hits me as I turn to look at it. Not a soul outside this life would believe Gabriel has this side to him, I have no idea how I’m the lucky one who gets to have it all to myself.
“Besides, you’ll look hot as fuck driving it.”
“I will, will I?” I ask, reaching up on my tiptoes to kiss him, his words igniting me like they always do.
We wait for the realtor to come for the open house and chat for a few minutes. He’s already had interested parties; he says he thinks it will sell in no time. As he sets up and we do a final sweep of the house, I feel a pang of grief wash over me for the first time. I was never really close with my parents but just letting this place go is a final, but necessary step in order to move toward my dreams.
“The realtor thinks I can get upwards of a million,” I tell Gabriel as we stand in my childhood bedroom, now staged as a sitting room.
“Good enough for your store and to keep a good savings for anything else this beautiful brain can dream up,” he says, wrapping his strong arms around my waist from behind me.
“Come on, there’s one more thing I want to show you before we head home,” Gabriel says.
Home. With him. Right where I know with every fiber of my being, I belong.
***
“Okay. Now I’m really stumped. Why am Ihere?” I ask as I watch Gabriel unlock the door beside the coffee shop twenty minutes later. It feels nice to travel around town with him and not worry about a thing. All has been quiet since the club settled and formed a truce of sorts with the Disciples of Sin. It’s given Gabriel lots of time to catch up in the shop for a few of his high profile clients—and of course, now I know, work on my dad’s truck.
It’s not very often we make middle of the day trips to the downtown area on my day off, so I know something is up. Normally, we spend my days off in his bed, with no clothes or in his shower, the kitchen, the gym…anywhere we can be together.
So, the last place I thought I’d end up was here, across the street from the job I already go to three days a week.
“This is the building we bought the first day I saw you,” he tells me with a smirk.
I look around. The street is still bustling with tourists in mid-August and people are hanging a banner over the town street, advertising a fall fair.
“Yes, but why am I here?” I laugh, looking up at him. His broad shoulders in his white T-shirt under his cut and his strong upper arms flexing. Goddamn, he is a fucking specimen of a man.
