Page 13 of Lily's Eagle

“That kiss didn’t say you don’t want it,” he says. “It said the opposite.”

“But I’m saying it. I’m saying I don’t want it,” I say and hop off the bench. “And I mean it. Let’s go.”

I turn my back on him and walk to his bike. The less we talk about this the better. Who cares if this is exactly what I wanted for the better part of my teenage years. I know that now. But it doesn’t change a thing.

It came too late, we’re not from the same world, and that’s that.

* * *

EAGLE

Women have always given me whiplash and none worse than Lily. I want her, she wants me. I want her, she doesn’t. I don’t, and she does. Story of our life together. I’ve never taken it this far. Never tried to kiss her before. I probably should’ve. Maybe I’d have a chance then.

But the rejection still hurts.

She’s being her silent, impenetrable fortress of self-assurance as she waits for me by the bike. She’s wearing my jacket now, and before I kissed her, I’d have taken that as a good sign, but now I have no idea what to make of it.

The moonlight spilling across the clearing is making her dark hair glow like old, unpolished silver. Her eyes glow silver too. And I can’t believe I fucked this up so bad. She just got assaulted and I kissed her. Who does that?

“Listen, I shouldn’t have… I’ll make sure the chief gets his,” I say as I walk up to her, but she shakes her head.

“Let’s not talk, Eagle,” she says. “That’s my problem to handle and you’re going to let me do that. And all this is hard enough without having to talk about it.”

I have no idea how to take that, but it feels like a blow to the stomach. Like rejection. Total and complete rejection. And few things have ever made me this angry.

I mount my bike, barely wait for her to get on behind me, and peel off, kicking up a cloud of dust and sharp pebbles.

In a minute, I’ll be sorry for feeling this way.

In another, I’ll be mad again.

And after I drop her off at Sanctuary and I have the rest of the night to think about all the ways I fucked this up and all the ways I should’ve done it differently, I’ll cycle through all of that a million more times.

Lily.

I can’t live without her and I can’t live with her.

And that’s never gonna change.

The wind is growing colder and colder the closer to Sanctuary we get. Normally I love riding the empty roads amid the tall, ancient trees. But tonight the redwood forest seems to be closing in on me, cutting off my air and my sanity, making me feel like I’ll never escape it.

“Just drop me off here,” she says as we reach the tall metal gate in the wall that encircles Devil’s Nightmare MC HQ. It’s already opening to let us in. “I want to walk.”

“Look, about earlier…” she silences me by laying her warm, soft fingers against my lips, sending all the blood straight to my cock, exactly the opposite of what needs to happen.

“I can’t talk,” she says. “I have to think.”

Typical. She needs her alone time. All the time. And I’ll be on pins and needles until she decides to take me off them. Just typical.

“I was out of line,” I say anyway. “After what happened to you…I shouldn’t have…”

She silences me once again with the same exact gesture. Then leans in and kisses my cheek, the touch delicate and soft like a feather’s caress, but actually more like the flap of a butterfly’s wing that causes a hurricane on the other side of the world.

“I’ll see you around,” she says, hands me my jacket and walks away, entering the compound before my head even stops spinning.

I want to go after her. I want to shout for her to stop. I want to fix this thing I managed to break. I want to know if she means it that I’ll see her soon, because I don’t think she does. I think she’s just saying it because it’s what I want to hear.

And most of all, I wish I knew what to do with this hurricane of feelings she always creates in me.

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